IN CANTO XXVII of Dante's Inferno, as the Florentine poet wends his way through the darkest circles of the damned, one of the suffering souls halts him. From his prison of flames, Guido di Montefeltro, a celebrated condottiere who gave many years of service to Forlì, begs to know if his beloved town is at peace or at war.
"That Romagna of yours," Dante sadly replies, "is not and never was without war in the heart of its tyrants."1 Between the Guelph and Ghibelline contests and power-hungry tyrants ruling its towns, Romagna had rarely known peace and stability since the distant days of the Roman Empire.
In 1495, the furious, grief-stricken Caterina Sforza added her own episode to Forlì's violent history. After the death of young Giacomo Feo, the countess unleashed a torrent of reprisals. The assassin, Giovanni Antonio Ghetti, was the first to pay. Still stained with Feo's blood, he made a boastful entrance into the main piazza of Forlì, accompanied by his cousin Bernardino and his two clerical accomplices. They summoned the Forlivesi to the square with cries of "Caterina! Caterina!" and "Ottaviano! Ottaviano!" The ubiquitous scribe Co- belli led the rush to the piazza, where Ghetti and his co-conspirators were proclaiming that they had liberated the city from the "traitor Feo." The killers even went so far as to brag that Caterina and Ottaviano had ordered them to do so. Like Cassius and Brutus, they expected to be hailed as liberators for saving the people from tyranny. Or perhaps they were relying on a desperate gambit: when Caterina saw her people rejoicing in Feo's death, she would finally realize how much hostility her lover had engendered over the years and would find it in herself to treat his assassins with clemency. It was a grave miscalculation.
Caterina's chief of police came out to investigate the ruckus, and upon seeing the bloody swords and hearing the braggarts' cries, he hastened to report to Ravaldino. Moments later, he returned, accompanied by a contingent of soldiers. They seized Ghetti by the shoulders, in the same fashion that Ghetti himself had arrested Tommaso Feo four years ago in Ravaldino. And just as Tommaso did, Ghetti struggled free and tried to escape by darting through the crowds. The other assassins scattered; sympathetic townspeople helped Antonio Pavagliotta and several others to scale the city walls, while Domenico da Bagnacavallo found refuge at his cousin's house by hiding in a dowry chest.
The police chief sealed Ghetti's fate with one sentence: "One hundred ducats to whoever brings Ghetti to the countess, dead or alive!" A militiaman by the name of Bernardo chased Ghetti down to the cemetery of Santa Croce. There, among the tombs, Bernardo and his accomplice executed him in the manner by which murderers were punished in Dante's Hell. They cleaved his head from crown to teeth, then lopped off his fingers and other extremities, scattering them among the graves.
But Caterina's thirst for revenge was not sated. Summoning Tommaso Feo from his governorship of Imola, she ordered him to sack and raze Ghetti's house. Tommaso, who had long borne a grudge against Ghetti for conspiring to remove him from the fortress of Ravaldino, eagerly obliged. Ghetti's wife, Rosa, Caterina's former confidante and friend, was inside the castle with several of their children. They all were thrown down one of the deep wells of Ravaldino and left to die. A few days later, the last Ghetti scion was dispatched; soldiers found the five-year-old son in the care of a friend of the family and slit his throat.
The chronicler Cobelli, despite his ill-treatment by Caterina over the Antonio Maria Ordelaffi affair, took pains in his account to specify that Caterina did not order the murder of the women and children.2 The letters flying up and down the Italian peninsula told another story. "She has used maximum cruelty against a priest," wrote the Milanese ambassador Francesco Tranchedini to Duke Ludovico, and "that which seems most detestable, she had women killed, the wives of the two Ghetti brothers, the young sons aged three and nine months and even the nurse. All Romagna is crying to the heavens."3
Whether or not Caterina gave the order for the murder of innocents, she never intervened to save Ghetti's wife or children. Nor did she call a halt when her soldiers rounded up every family known to be hostile to Feo and threw them into dungeons, hanged them in the square, or drove them into exile. Tranchedini, writing from Bologna, was not an eyewitness, but he informed the duke that the local people were horrified to hear that "the countess had cruelly punished anyone she got her hands on, as accomplices of the two who killed Feo."4
The Ghetti family's horrendous deaths marked the beginning of the darkest moment of Caterina's life. She had lost control of her state, her position, and her dignity through her passion for Feo, but in avenging his death she seemed to take leave of her soul.
On the night of the murder, several members of the confraternity of the Battuti Neri retrieved Giacomo's body from the ditch outside the Schiavonia gate, bringing the tattered carcass to the Church of San Girolamo. Cobelli slipped in to see what had happened to Feo. "What shame! What cruelty!" he lamented in his diary. "Such a beautiful face rent like a split pomegranate!"5 The fine brocade jacket once tightly fitted to his broad shoulders now hung from the corpse in shreds, soaked in blood.
The following morning, hundreds assembled outside Ravaldino wearing the somber colors of mourning. The drawbridge was lowered and a procession slowly crossed toward the city gate. The vicar of the bishop of Forlì, dressed in funerary robes, walked in front, accompanied by Scipione Riario, Girolamo's natural son, now in his twenties, who lived with the family. Caterina came next, holding the hand of little Bernardino, her three-year-old son by Feo. Her pale face bore the signs of a sleepless night, but her expression was unreadable. She looked at no one and acknowledged nothing except the little boy by her side.
The Sforza-Feo household made an impressive sight, with ambassadors, ladies in waiting, and an honor guard in polished armor wending their way across the moat. Three pages, dressed in mourning livery, rode with the group. The first displayed Feo's sword and golden spur, the second his helmet, and the last his cuirass, denoting Giacomo's knightly status. Dozens of nobles, both local and foreign, joined the cortege as they headed into the city. Others poured into Forlì from neighboring towns, gathering in the market square, where a giant catafalque had been prepared during the night. The towering monument was draped in gold cloth and surrounded by torches. At the appointed time, the canons of the cathedral, the parish priests, and the confraternities encircled the platform, bearing aloft thirty-three crosses as they sang psalms and prayers. The air was heavy with the scent of incense; a slowly cadenced chant set a stately pace for the procession that then wound to the Church of San Girolamo. Count Girolamo Riario, lord of Forlì, had not received such elaborate obsequies.
Feo was temporarily laid to rest in the chapel containing the splendid tomb of the unfortunate Barbara Manfredi, the murdered wife of Pino Ordelaffi. Never to be outdone by the former ruling family, Caterina would soon commission a monument to outshine that of the discarded Ordelaffi bride. Although he was almost universally loathed in life, Giacomo Feo drew hundreds to his funeral, many undoubtedly spurred by the fear that Caterina might take vengeance on them if they did not appear.
But Feo's funeral offered only a moment of respite. Soon the countess continued her campaign of retribution, using all means at her disposal. Caterina rounded up the rest of the conspirators and targeted virtually anyone who had resented Giacomo Feo. The Marcobelli family, the Orcioli family, and the delle Selle family saw their houses torn down, their warehouses sacked, and their relatives thrown into the Ravaldino dungeons. An entire neighborhood of Forlì was sacked and destroyed as Caterina tried to eradicate all those hostile to Feo. In Imola, Tommaso Feo also worked ceaselessly to avenge his brother, filling the jail cells and torture chambers. Caterina dispatched agents to hunt down the remaining fugitives.
Informers soon betrayed the hiding place of Domenico da Bagnacavallo, and a squadron retrieved the terrified priest from his refuge inside his cousin's dowry chest. Brought to Ravaldino, he was tortured by fire until he gave up the names of his accomplices. His "confession" poured salt on Caterina's open wounds. He swore that when Giovanni Antonio Ghetti had recruited the priest, the assassination had been approved not only by Cardinal Raffaello Riario but also by Ottaviano, Caterina's own son.
Now Caterina's public cruelty reached its apex. The offending priest was stripped almost nude in the square and tied by his feet to the back of a horse. The executioner drove the animal through the streets to just outside the city walls, until they reached the spot where Bagnacavallo and his co-conspirators had killed Feo. The grisly cavalcade then turned and dragged the battered priest down alleys, through refuse, and over stones, then back to the piazza. Despite his numerous wounds, the man was still alive. A partisan of Feo sliced open the offender's face: vicious revenge for the disfigurement of Giacomo. While Bagnacavallo whispered prayers of penitence, the soldiers beat and stabbed him to death, then dismembered the corpse.
Two days after Feo's funeral, Caterina finally tackled her thorny domestic situation. Ottaviano and Cesare, afraid of their mother's grief and anger, had sought safety in the house of the Denti family. Paolo Denti, head of the household, was the soldier who had stubbornly refused to surrender the Riario children to Girolamo's murderers seven years earlier. Now he was risking his life for the Riario heirs again. Ottaviano's conspicuous absence from the funeral rendered him guilty in Caterina's eyes. The Forlivesi watched in astonishment as armed guards surrounded the Denti palace, issuing a summons for Ottaviano and his brother to appear before their mother at Ravaldino. The rightful heir to the city—who had stood with a knife at his throat after the death of his father—was now under arrest at his mother's behest. Convinced that Caterina had gone too far, an angry crowd followed Ottaviano and his armed escort back to Ravaldino. As the shouting Forlivesi approached the ramparts, cannon fire drowned their objections. The townspeople left Ottaviano to face his mother alone. No witnesses, except for a few tightlipped family intimates and Scipione Riario, Caterina's stepson, were permitted at the interview between the heir to Forlì and his regent. Accusations flew and recriminations resounded as the family members aired their many grievances. Ottaviano was put under house arrest and confined to the fortress under the watchful eye of his mother. Scipione, who had objected to the violence of Caterina's reprisals, was locked in one of the dungeons, where he served a bitter sentence of eighteen months.
Caterina's behavior toward her own children shocked Italy. Letters and reports, written by eyewitnesses or reporting hearsay, recounted the lurid tales of the countess's escalating vengeance. Antonio Pavagliotta's mistress had been captured and, together with their three children, murdered. The priest himself, betrayed and captured outside Ravenna, had fared little better than his colleagues. He was brought to the square on a market day, scorched over hot coals, and then beheaded. The bodies of the assassins hung outside the walls of the city, a macabre warning to those who would betray the countess. The heads were affixed to the municipal bell tower, where they remained for over a year, until February 17, 1497, "when there was a strong wind." Caterina, who had ordered such gruesome ornaments removed after the execution of the Roffi conspirators, remained in stony silence this time. She also allowed her troops to run rampant through the city. In the past, she had invariably intervened to protect Forlì from the rapacious behavior of soldiers. But because none of the people had helped her beloved Giacomo, she would not help them either.
Caterina was in a private hell. Her vendetta had brought her only disgrace. Her disclosure to the Forlivesi that she and Giacomo had been secretly married (although she didn't claim Bernardino as her son) impressed no one as a reasonable excuse for the slaughter. Cobelli, totaling the number of people targeted for revenge in the wake of Feo's murder, listed thirty-eight dead and many others tortured, exiled, or imprisoned.6 In the reprisals after the murder of Girolamo, nine had died—a pittance, compared to this bloodbath. Pope Alexander VI, the duke of Milan, and the Signoria of Florence recoiled at what the pope described as the "unheard-of bloodthirstiness committed to satisfy her passions."7
Overcome with misery, Caterina chose to live among the dead. She ordered a memorial to her beloved cast in bronze, the most precious sculptural material available. The large, finely chased casket rested on four exquisitely modeled lion's paws. Feo's monument rivaled Barbara Manfredi's tomb as Forlì's finest work of sculpture. But no Forlivesi, pilgrims, or tourists would ever see it. Instead of placing it in a church, Caterina erected her shrine to Feo within the walls of Ravaldino, where she could dwell on the loss of her husband every day.
Giacomo was not denied the honor of a public monument, however. Feo's sudden rise in status and wealth had made him eligible to endow a private family chapel in the Church of San Girolamo. To fresco its walls, Caterina and Giacomo had hired Melozzo da Forlì, the former court painter to Pope Sixtus IV who had decorated the Riario palace in Rome and immortalized Girolamo Riario on the walls of the Vatican library. Melozzo replicated the grandeur of his Roman frescoes in this work, The Stories of Saint Giacomo,particularly in the martyrdom scene, where the perspective illusion of the deeply vaulted hall employed the same dramatic rendering of space. The mathematician Luca Pacioli lauded the chapel for its "wondrously perfect proportions." Melozzo had died in 1494, much lamented by all of Forlì, especially by his friend Leone Cobelli, who had looked to the older master as his mentor in painting. Caterina now continued the project, hiring Melozzo's best assistant, Marco Palmezzano, to create The Miracle of the Hanged Man,which included several portraits of members of Caterina's family. A striking and youthful Giacomo stands at the center, with Melozzo's perfectly ordered world arrayed around him. Girolamo Riario kneels in sharp profile before the figure of Saint Giacomo, who is resurrecting a hanged man. The expressionless face and turned head seem to emphasize his distance from Caterina's affections. By adding a portrait of her first husband in her lover's chapel, Caterina highlighted Giacomo's loyalty to the Riario clan, reminding viewers that he had faithfully served the count for many years. This image would preserve for posterity Giacomo's identity as a noble retainer of the Riario family, not the countess's gigolo. Caterina kneels behind Girolamo, dressed in pilgrim's garb and shrouded in a heavy widow's veil. She too looks ahead with empty eyes. There, represented amid her deceased husbands, Caterina appears devoid of life, oblivious to young Ottaviano, who bows his head, in a cascade of golden ringlets, toward her, begging for her attention. She seems to ignore even Feo, whose adoring gaze tries to direct her to the miracle of the resurrected man. This portrait captures the devastated Caterina, oblivious to the world around her, looking fixedly toward the afterlife.8
The winter of 1496 was one of the coldest on record. Sleet, hail, and freezing winds howled around the stone walls of Ravaldino. Apprehensive Forlivesi wondered what the future held. Many had noted ominous portents, such as stones falling from the skies. Famine had struck in Romagna, pushing the price of grain too high for the poor people of the city to afford.
Those icy months were further darkened by the appearance of a new disease. The mysterious genital rashes and swollen lymph nodes baffled local doctors as they plied the usual salt-dried serpent powder or leek paste used to treat leprosy or canker sores. The inflammations disappeared after a few days, which seemed merciful, for it was not known that this was merely the first phase of the affliction. The spread of syphilis had begun. Named the "French disease" for the soldiers of Charles VIII who had disseminated it, the deadly infection had arrived for the first time in this part of Europe. With the Holy Year in the offing, celebrating the fifteen-hundredth anniversary of Christ's birth, the menacing auguries and the new plague seemed to herald the end of the world.
The fortress ramparts had become Caterina's tomb where she mourned Feo and dwelled on the wreckage of her lands caused by the French invasion and her own rage. The woman who had bravely stormed into plague-stricken areas, fought off assassins and usurpers, and survived the delivery of seven children, was paralyzed by sorrow, shame, and disappointment. In a desperate letter to her uncle, she confided thoughts about drowning herself.9
But true to Sforza form, Caterina's first steps toward recovery were taken on a battlefield. During the French invasion, Count Guido of Gaggiolo, known as "Guerra" ("War") had profited from the general distraction to capture the town of Castrocaro from the archbishop of Ravenna and that of Cuseroli from his own brother. In November 1495, a Romagnol league of sorts, comprising soldiers from Faenza, Castrocaro, and Forlì, assembled under the command of Achille Tiberti, lord of Cesena. The small but well-trained force marched south to retake these cities and rid Romagna of the bellicose Count Guido. The expedition was successful: Guerra was killed, the castle of Cuseroli was returned to Caterina's friend and ally, and Caterina was given the fortress town of Castrocaro.
But this Pyrrhic victory was short-lived. The archbishop of Ra- venna claimed protection from the Republic of Venice, which had been willing to deal with Guerra but would not tolerate Caterina's possession of the town. The military machine of the Most Serene Republic trained its sights on Caterina's tiny garrison. Terrified at the prospect of conflict with his fickle Venetian allies, the duke of Milan implored Caterina to return the town. Caterina dutifully obeyed her uncle, but the taste of battle had revitalized her spirits.
As the winter wore on, Caterina shifted her focus from her own woes to her subjects. Confronting a famine, caused by both the cold weather and the troops' trampling on the fields, she purchased large quantities of grain to sell cheaply to her people. From February to June, five hundred pounds of flour a day were distributed free of charge to the poor of Forlì. Concerned about protecting the destitute from starvation in the future, Caterina and the archbishop of Forlì subsidized the local confraternities to form the Company of Charity, which would guarantee food to deprived families.
The salt shortage of 1496 was only slightly less serious. The wet winter had kept the salt beds in Cervia from drying out, so they could not be harvested, and without the precious mineral people would be unable to cure meats and preserve other foods. Caterina bought four hundred sacks of salt for transport from the Adriatic coast to Forlì. So precious was this shipment that it traveled under the protection of a military detachment. Arriving in big chunks and full of sand, the salt nevertheless allowed Forlì and Imola to stave off famine for a year.
While dedicating time and energy to repairing her relationship with her subjects, Caterina also began to rebuild her personal world. She started by tearing down the palace where she had lived with Girolamo, leaving no beam standing to remind her of "every memory of that place where she had suffered shame and disrespect."10 The destruction of the house on the piazza where she had lived among the people coincided with the unexpected illness and death of her own twelve-year-old son, Giovanni Livio. This child, born shortly after her arrival in Forlì, had been the symbol of her new life and her role as the wife of Count Girolamo of Forlì. But during the twelve years since that joyous day, Livio's godfather had murdered Girolamo, the city had turned against her, and now she had alienated her citizens. No longer a Forlivesi or a Riario or a Feo, she was all Sforza.
The remains of her old house were reused for new building projects, the most important being her new home in the fortress of Ravaldino. As a child in Milan, Caterina had flourished within the confines of family castles. The Sforzas had excelled in constructing strong castles for security but also for pleasure. The high walls of Ravaldino protected Caterina from the danger of assassination as well as the critical eyes of the world. During the course of 1496, Caterina transformed part of the dank Ravaldino into a comfortable and luxurious living space reminiscent of her childhood home. Within the square belt of the ramparts, Caterina built a palace nestled by the maschio, or keep. High vaulted ceilings—instead of low coffered wood—displayed Caterina's taste for modern architecture. As in her former palace in Rome, there were richly carved columns and exquisitely painted walls, punctuated by decorative reliefs, bearing her coat of arms. Delicately designed ceramic tiles paved the floors in the warm yellows and reds typical of Romagna. This became her intimate inner sanctum, known as Il Paradiso. Open loggias embellished with frescoed vines and garlands looked out over a vast park with orchards that supplied her table with fruits; exotic trees, imported for their height, formed a shield around Caterina's playground. A large herb garden encircled the little hut Caterina used for her "experiments," the production of formulas for beauty creams and medicinal remedies. Outside the castle walls, a large forest offered Caterina and her family quarry for their favorite sport, hunting. The two-mile circumference was delineated by thick bushes, which contained ample boar, stag, and hare. Caterina's Paradise was connected to the main keep by a covered walkway, where a spiral staircase wound up to her lookout point on the maschio. The military portion of the fortress was never neglected: the barracks, the squares where she could review the troops, and the dungeons were all repaired and updated. The domestic renovations had simply transformed the gloomy fortress into a magnificent castle.11
The year 1496 held one more tragedy for Caterina. In May, her half sister Bianca died in childbirth. Caterina joined Bianca's husband, Tommaso Feo, in Imola to mourn. After the death of her husband, sister, and son in a short time, Caterina turned to her family and set about mending fences with her children. She began with Ottaviano, thinking to arrange a fitting marriage for her firstborn. She negotiated an engagement to Isotta Bentivoglio, the daughter of Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna. This marriage would cement family alliances, but in the summer of 1496, Isotta surprised everyone by declaring her intention of taking religious vows and joining a convent. The embarrassment caused by her abrupt rejection of Ottaviano increased Caterina's already considerable doubts about Bentivoglio loyalties. In the wake of Feo's death, numerous rumors implicated Giovanni Bentivoglio (among many others) in the murder. Conspirators in the assassination, thieves, and even one of Caterina's more unscrupulous accountants had found refuge with the Bentivoglios. Caterina perceived the refusal of marriage as a betrayal and it nearly drove her into another vengeful fury. Her rapid-fire letters to her uncle insisted that she had been "atrociously provoked." "I tolerated this [Bentivoglio's offenses] with much patience, yet fury often weakens patience, and furthermore, demonstrating that many wrongs and injuries don't have any effect, often encourages the wicked to do even worse." Caterina closed the letter, however, with the promise to "tend toward forgiveness rather than vendetta."12 Nonetheless, Caterina had already sought revenge by sending assassins into Bologna to murder one of her bitterest enemies, Giovanni Battista Brocchi. They failed and Caterina sheepishly had to admit to her uncle that she had sent the killers. In her defense she wrote, "I have been gravely wronged, and I still want to get my hands on him, to further thwart those who conspire against me... I confess, I did not do a good thing, as you said, but there is no need for Mr. Giovanni [Bentivoglio] to act amazed, as I am made of the same stuff as he."13 In the end Caterina took a more diplomatic revenge, threatening to offer shelter to the Malvezzi clan, implacable enemies of the Bentivoglios. But the rising tide of hostility was weakening the two former allies.
Having failed to unite Ottaviano with the Bentivoglio family, Caterina decided to arrange for him to gain some military experience. From June to September she bombarded Duke Ludovico of Milan with letters asking him to "get sixteen-year-old Ottaviano's career off to a good start."14 Ludovico, perhaps sensing that in military matters Ottaviano was more of a Riario than a Sforza, responded with a new marriage proposal. The next candidate was a daughter of Marquis Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua, a wealthy state traditionally allied with Milan. Caterina's diplomatic refusal cited the "poor and turbulent condition of things in Italy,"15 but her desire to avoid outside political interference is evident in her letter. Amid complaints regarding Giovanni Bentivoglio, who "wants to govern here as well," Caterina hinted at her doubts about the Gonzaga family's motives for the match. Ottaviano, however, spent no time despairing over his lost fiancées. He was already involved with a carpenter's daughter, who bore him a child in 1497.
The marriage offers continued; in 1497 Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici offered his daughter and in 1498 the Gonzaga offer was renewed. But Caterina held out for a military career for her firstborn. In June 1498, Ottaviano's long-awaited condotta arrived. He would be employed by Florence in the war against Pisa for the amount of seventeen thousand ducats. The contract had been negotiated by a new friend of the countess, Giovanni de' Medici of Florence. Caterina proudly prepared one hundred light cavalry and one hundred infantrymen to accompany her son on his first steps toward glory. Ottaviano returned in August after a modest success, although reports revealed that he ran a disorderly camp and was incapable of disciplining his soldiers. Nonetheless, the proud mother celebrated her son with a commemorative medal. The papal bull by which Sixtus IV gave Forlì to the Riarios permitted the family to mint their own coins. Girolamo had used this privilege only once or twice during his reign, but Caterina had struck several coins since his death. In the earlier medals, Caterina, invariably represented in profile, wore a low-cut dress and her uncovered hair tied back, with a single loose strand framing her face. A diadem of pearls crowned her brow, indicating her status as sovereign. On the recto of two of the surviving coins the words TIBI ET VIRTUTI, "to you and to virtue," frame a figure of Fortune, while another from 1493 shows winged Victory riding in a two-horse chariot encircled by the motto VICTORIAM FAMA SEQUETUR,"fame follows victory." In 1496 Caterina minted another set of coins in which the figures of Victory and Fortune made way for mention of Ottaviano. Caterina still appeared on the front, but now tightly cloaked in a widow's veil, older and more sober than in the earlier medals and taking her first steps back from the throne to prepare the way for her son. The medal commemorating Ottaviano's Pisa campaign was designed by Niccolò Fiorentino, who made no attempt to idealize the nineteen-year-old. With an empty expression and heavy jowls, Ottaviano already looked like an old man.16
Caterina's maternal attentions were not limited to Ottaviano, the heir to Forlì and Imola. Her second born, Cesare, had been destined for a career in the church since his childhood, and on February 19, 1492, at the age of twelve, he was given his "first tonsure," the shaving of the hair from his crown, leaving only a ring of locks encircling his ears, nape, and forehead. Now Caterina endeavored to ensure that he collected the benefices and titles customary among Renaissance prelates. Her relations with Cardinal Raffaello Riario had soured since the death of Feo because Caterina was certain that Cardinal Riario had encouraged, if not personally sent, the assassins. Despite Cardinal Riario's many displays of assistance through the years, Caterina complained about him ceaselessly to Duke Ludovico in 1496. "I don't know if he thinks he is dealing with a child here or if it is because I am a woman that he thinks he can beat me with his words," she railed in a letter dated April 11, 1496. "If I told you all the anguish and troubles he has made me suffer: I would seem like more than a martyr for his behavior and continual fabrications about me."17 This time Caterina got her revenge through diplomatic channels. In the fall of 1496, as the cardinal lay seriously ill, Caterina convinced the duke of Milan to transfer his abbeys and benefices in Milan to Cesare upon his death.
Bianca Riario, Caterina's only girl, was growing up to be as lovely as her mother. Fifteen in 1496, Bianca had been intended for Astorre Manfredi of neighboring Faenza since she was eight. The official engagement was several years in the making, as the political consequences were significant for both Florence and Bologna. The Medicis were hesitant to allow Caterina a foothold in Faenza, and Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna, Astorre's grandfather, had long dithered about the match, sometimes supporting and sometimes opposing it. In 1495, during those last happy days before Feo was murdered, the engagement was finally made official, and ten-year-old Astorre paid his first visit to Forlì. He rode with an honor guard of thirty men, impressing the townspeople with his horse and handsome clothes. Caterina struck another medal for the occasion, but the festivities were short-lived. In December 1495, Ottaviano Manfredi, Astorre's cousin and pretender to the rule of Faenza, attacked the little town to wrest it from the child Astorre. Caterina joined forces with Giovanni Bentivoglio to subdue the attack, but the scuffles caught the eye of Venice, which was looking for a foothold in the heart of Romagna. Venice offered itself as "protector" of Faenza, openly interfering in local politics. Soon Faenza appeared to be slipping into the hands of Venice and the future rule of Astorre seemed irreparably compromised. Venice worked tirelessly to oust the town's loyal castellan and replace him with one of their own collaborators. Caterina, recognizing the hostile maneuver, immediately warned the duke of Milan. But Milan's lingering fear of the French gave precedence to the duke's tenuous alliance and he remained silent. In the midst of the overbearing Venetian presence in Faenza and Caterina's own misgivings about Giovanni Bentivoglio's intentions, Bianca's wedding was soon called off.
By 1496 the towns of Romagna realized that they had little protection from the nibbles and scratches inflicted by their larger neighbors. Venice raided Caterina's lands with alarming regularity, stealing livestock and ruining crops. Finding her uncle unwilling to assist her in obtaining justice, she assembled her own standing force of eight thousand soldiers ready to deter the Most Serene Republic. Some of the men were her own citizens looking to defend their homes, while others were soldiers of fortune hoping to make a little money in eternally war-torn Romagna. In 1496 only one other large northern state remained hostile to Venice, and so Caterina turned her attention to her neighbor Florence.
With the expulsion of Piero the Unlucky and his family, Florence had appointed more representatives to the governing body, expanding the popular voice in the republic after years of Medici oligarchy. The driving influence behind this reform was a Dominican friar from Ferrara, Girolamo Savonarola. The forty-four-year-old had gaunt features honed by an ascetic life and dark eyes that blazed from under the black hood of his habit; his dynamic preaching had mesmerized the Florentines. His prophecy that Italy's sinful ways would have dire results had presaged the arrival of Charles VIII of France. Nobles and peasants, old and young, and men and women flocked to his sermons and turned their minds to repentance.
Giovanni and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco of the cadet branch of the Medicis had also reaped immense profits from Piero's disgrace. They had changed their names from Medici to Popolani, meaning "of the people," shamelessly pandering to anti-Medici sentiment while greedily appropriating Medici villas, jewels, and art. Giovanni "Il Popolano" began frequenting Forlì in the summer of 1496. A wealthy businessman, he went there to hire some of Caterina's well-trained troops for an imminent war with Pisa, which had taken advantage of Charles VIII's departure to declare independence from Florence. However, political observers in the know suspected that his real motive was to lure the countess of Forlì to the side of Florence and France in the latest arrangement of Italian political divisions.
The young Medici was thirty when he first met Caterina. With flowing light brown hair, warm eyes, and aristocratic features, Giovanni paired physical beauty with a splendid education. Many a woman in Florence had already succumbed to the boyish charm of this lover of art, literature, and brilliant conversation. At thirty-three, Caterina was still renowned as a beauty, and at long last, her excellent schooling at the Sforza court found an appreciative admirer in Giovanni Popolano.
As an honored guest, the Medici was lodged inside the official residence at Ravaldino, but before long Caterina offered him rooms in Il Paradiso. In mid-October, Francesco Tranchedini, Ludovico the Moor's eyes and ears in Forlì, warned the duke of Milan that Giovanni was living in the fortress and that he had seen Caterina "caressing him." The envoy concluded that Caterina would be "willing to go so far as to marry him to satisfy her lust."18
Ostensibly, other business concerns had protracted Giovanni's stay. The winter, a war, and internal disorganization had caught Florence with no stores of food for its people. By contrast, Caterina had reaped a modest harvest in Forlì and had put away huge grain stores to ensure that her people had food throughout the winter. Late in 1496, Giovanni and Caterina officially became business partners. In the spring of 1497, 130,000 bushels of grain were shipped from Forlì to Florence, garnering considerable income for Caterina, food for Florence, and frayed nerves for the duke of Milan.
Duke Ludovico pelted Caterina with endless demands for clarification regarding Giovanni and her position toward Florence, as the rumors increased. Caterina coolly denied any intimate relationship with the Florentine businessman, even going so far as to gently taunt the duke when she was confronted with a recent report that she had tried to obtain permission for the marriage from the king of France. "According to some chatterboxes, I have had any number of husbands," she pointed out before flatly denying a marriage to Giovanni. "I am no longer at that age when others should think that these youthful appetites reign in me; foremost on my mind is my duty to govern these states."19 Patently untrue, but Caterina had no intention of being tethered by her uncle. To him, she consistently maintained that she was eternally loyal and grateful to Milan, Giovanni was just a welcome guest, and Ottaviano would be willing to accept his condotta to fight for Milan at any moment. The duke, no stranger to political deceptions himself, was not completely fooled, but all that the frustrated Ludovico could do was lament that she sold so much grain to Florence.
Meanwhile, within the walls of Il Paradiso, Caterina had finally found a soul mate. No arriviste like Girolamo or stable boy like Feo, Giovanni was her equal. They shared similar interests: Caterina had remained a voracious reader all her life, and with Giovanni she could discuss literature. Like all Florentines, he had a scientific bent and took an interest in Caterina's botanical experiments, assisting her in obtaining the more exotic ingredients. Despite his reservations about the relationship between Caterina and Giovanni, Tranchedini acknowledged in a letter to the duke of Milan that Caterina's household seemed tranquil and her children appeared to get along well with the Florentine. As a member of a ruling family from a greater state, Giovanni would pose no threat to her sons, and at long last Caterina knew peace with a man whom all her children, from Ottaviano to little Bernardino, respected and admired.
Giovanni's arrival also brought considerable economic improvement. With their grain business flourishing, he helped Caterina to get her jewels out of pawn. He brought exquisite Florentine luxury goods to Caterina and her children. She put aside her widow's wear and soon returned to her stylish ensembles. The Forlivesi were well aware of the relationship between Caterina and the young Medici; loose tongues claimed that the countess was "afraid of a cold bed." Unlike previous occasions, she ordered no beatings for rumormongering.
Happy and confident, Caterina began to find the will to look inward again. Busy months had bolstered her strength, and at last, as the first fruits of June ripened in her orchard, she turned to mending her spiritual troubles. She had heard much about Girolamo Savonarola from Giovanni. Caterina's old acquaintance Sandro Botticelli had become one of his followers, known as the piagnoni, and had been renewed through repentance. The friar arranged "bonfires of the vanities" in Florence, helping citizens rid themselves of the lures and temptations of the sinful life. Women brought clothes, makeup, and ribbons; artists brought their more erotic drawings; men brought cards and dice; they all looked to start anew on a steady path toward Heaven.
The horrible massacres following Feo's murder weighed heavily on Caterina's conscience, especially now that she had found a greater, richer love than her earlier blind passion. The Holy Year was now only three years away. In 1500 she would be able to travel to Rome to obtain remission for all of her sins by praying at the shrines to Saint Peter and Saint Paul. But the troubled times in Italy and the ever-present specter of death had Caterina concerned about the welfare of her immortal soul. She wrote to Savonarola in the summer of 1496. Her letter has been lost, but the friar's response has been preserved. Savonarola exhorted her, telling to her to pray but also to ensure that others prayed for her as well. Understanding her active character, he also counseled her to do good works and to donate generously to the needy, because "charity extinguishes sins, as water puts out fire. Above all," Savonarola advised, "employ every care and attention to dispense justice to your subjects."20
Caterina followed the friar's advice and dedicated herself to charitable works in Forlì and Imola, supporting shrines and organizing confraternities. She also took an interest in a Florentine community of nuns known as the Muratte. The convent, founded in 1424, sat at the end of the Via Ghibellina, by the city walls. The convent had enjoyed Medici protection for many years and had been substantially rebuilt by Lorenzo the Magnificent after a fire in 1475 had nearly destroyed the structure. The sisters lived by the rule of Saint Benedict, dedicating their days to manual labor, which they did while reciting constant prayers. Caterina bestowed generous gifts on the sisters. Whenever they in turn sent her sweets or other fruits of their labors, Caterina always thanked them kindly but insisted that they should not worry about acknowledging her donations. Their holy prayers for her soul were recompense enough.
It was also probably the friar's influence that persuaded Caterina to grant pardons to her most hated enemies: the Tartagni family and Giovanni Brocchi. As she sought her own forgiveness, it was her duty to offer the same, as Savonarola certainly would have reminded her.21
One last item needed to be settled in Caterina's life—her irregular situation with Giovanni. By August 1497, Caterina and Giovanni were expecting a child; in September she married the young Medici in a secret ceremony in the fortress of Castrocaro, far from her uncle and his spies. Concealing her marriage to Feo had been due to his low station, but this time Caterina needed to keep Duke Ludovico in the dark until the complicated web of Italian alliances saw a reflowering of friendship between Milan and Florence. Her realm, life, and soul stood on an even keel for the first time in her life, and Caterina looked forward to the future. Probably in this year, the late summer or fall of 1497, the most famous portrait of Caterina was executed. Today gracing the Pinacoteca Civica, the art museum of Forlì, the image of a lovely young woman seated by a window is attributed to Lorenzo di Credi, the former collaborator of both Leonardo and Botticelli, who ran a flourishing studio in Florence. The painting was executed in the avant-garde style of female portraiture pioneered by Leonardo. Caterina turns her head for a three-quarter view, typically used for men: a bolder image than the modest profile portraits of earlier years. Her long fingers delicately arrange jasmine buds in a bowl. This inclusion of hands was the latest rage in portraits, as they provided a precious clue to the personality of the sitter. Caterina sits tall, with her hair pulled gently back and coiled at the back of her head as a few red-gold tendrils frame her face. Steady brown eyes gaze warmly at the viewer. Behind her head a red curtain hints at the fiery character that fascinated Italy, while her beloved castle of Ravaldino is portrayed outside the window in front of her. Her simple but elegant clothes reflect the Florentine distaste for ostentation, not straitened circumstances. No jewels encircle her fingers or throat; the radiance of her skin provides sheen enough. The thirty-five-year-old newlywed Caterina looks serenely out on the world. She had love and success. And now she was immortalized through art. In May 1497 the first edition of Jacopo Filippo Foresti's Lives of Illustrious Women22 was printed, featuring Caterina's biography.
Caterina's contentment was not shared by the duke of Milan or his envoy. After months of denials, the astounded Tranchedini was bitterly embarrassed by the arrival of a letter from Giovanni Bentivoglio, confirming the marriage. "Nisi maledictos homo qui confidet in homine et maxime in muliere," "Cursed is the man who places his trust in men and even more so he who trusts a woman," wrote the exasperated ambassador. Venice took the opportunity to reprove Duke Ludovico for his inability to control Caterina. The doge was uninterested in the sentimental aspect of her arrangements because, as he wrote, "it is the nature of the female sex." What he found objectionable were "her mistakes in public office." The Venetian ruler insisted that "the duke, her uncle, should make sure she understands her role and duties in the present state of Italy." In short, the crown jewel of Romagna, Forlì, with its strong fortresses, strategic position, and well-trained troops, now shimmered in the palm of Florence.
The spring of 1498 was enlivened by a splendid carnival thrown by Ottaviano while Caterina was in the final months of her pregnancy. Dances, parties, and banquets heralded a golden age of relations between Forlì and its rulers. The new arrival to the Sforza-Medici household, Ludovico Sforza de' Medici, was born on the night of April 6 in the fortress of Ravaldino. Caterina named the boy after her uncle, in the hopes of mending fences, but no Milanese ambassador was present at his baptism. The birth was a joyous event nonetheless, and the fruit of Caterina's most fulfilling relationship.
Soon, however, the celebratory atmosphere was swiftly dispersed by gathering tumult. Girolamo Savonarola, the brilliant preacher who had led cynical Florence to repentance and had directed Caterina toward the road to salvation, was executed in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence on May 23, 1498. The Dominican had gone so far as to criticize Pope Alexander VI himself, insistently calling for church reform. Several pro-Medici supporters had plotted against the friar and in 1497 Savonarola was banned from preaching. The priest continued his work anyway and in April he was imprisoned and tortured to obtain a spurious confession of heresy. He was hanged and burned, and then his ashes were scattered in the Arno to ensure that no relics could be collected to venerate the renegade preacher as a martyr.
Today Savonarola seems an enigmatic figure; some portray him as the Inquisition personified, others as a power-hungry politician, while still others work to have him proclaimed a saint. The Savonarola Caterina knew was a stern but supportive adviser who helped her return from spiritual death. Although Caterina's correspondence contains no comment on the sad end of Savonarola, her support of the friar's beloved Muratte continued until the end of her life.
That summer, Ottaviano left with his condotta for Pisa, accompanied by Giovanni and a trusted castellan. But the sight of the eldest Riario taking the field flanked by a Medici brought out the vindictive side of the Most Serene Republic. Caterina found herself under constant attack, from little turf invasions to full-scale assault on her castles. The indomitable countess knew it was only a matter of time before she would find Venetian troops digging under her very walls, but she responded to her uncle's warning with a valiant reply: "When Venice attacks, I will have enough spirit to defend myself!"23 Besides relying on her own troops and well-built fortresses, Caterina was also anticipating aid from her new allies and family in Florence to fend off whatever the Venetians might bring. She expected to meet Venice head-on in battle, declaring to her uncle, "If I must lose because I am a woman, I want to lose like a man."24
But the mainstay of her alliance and the pillar of her new happy life was tottering. Giovanni, like many of the Medicis, was cursed with gout and suffered a serious attack after his return from Pisa. He spent one romantic week with Caterina in the fortress but then retired to the thermal baths in Bagno in Romagna for treatment. Gout, an arthritic condition characterized by large amounts of uric acid deposited in the joints, was alleviated by drinking large quantities of water. Sweating in the hot baths also helped eliminate toxins from the body. Giovanni departed for Bagno on August 28 in hopes that the waters would relieve his painful and debilitating condition. Caterina's daughter, Bianca, also unwell, went with him. The first days brought good results. Giovanni wrote to Caterina on September 2, asking for hats and cloths to change during his steam baths. The young Medici was feeling well and felt certain he would be home soon. Urgent political matters occupied most of their correspondence; they both knew that Venice was on the verge of an attack. Giovanni trusted Caterina's judgment in military matters and reiterated his faith in her wisdom. On September 11, emphasizing the need for secrecy, Giovanni recommended no longer using the usual secretaries but only direct correspondence. That businesslike letter was the last between husband and wife. On September 12 Caterina was urgently summoned to Bagno, where Giovanni died that night in her arms. His body was claimed the next day by his brother Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and brought back to Florence for burial. Caterina was alone once again. The lover who had changed her life, the father of her infant son, her friend and ally had slipped away, taken not by sword or dagger but by a fever. Caterina, heartbroken, rode back to Forlì and into her fortress. She donned mourning clothes and draped the bright walls of Paradise in black, but she could spend little time crying over her lost love. Every bit of her energy was directed toward preparing for the Venetian attack.
The swift and ferocious assault at the end of September probably saved Caterina's sanity. Florence had sent a pitifully small force to prevent the Venetian army from entering Tuscan and Romagnol territory. The mercenary captain Dionigio Naldi, assisted by Caterina's fine troops, held the Apennine Pass into Tuscany. The Florentine Simone Ridolfi, a close friend of Giovanni, and his handful of men were overrun at Marradi on the dividing line between Florence and Romagna. Caterina had long predicted this strategic approach by Venice, but the Florentines had paid no heed. Now it was Caterina's soldiers from Imola who turned the tables and rescued the castle. Caterina had saved the day, Florence reaped the profits, and Venice sharpened its knives against the countess of Forlì.