THE CITY WHOSE wonders had captivated ten-year-old Caterina now welcomed the formidable countess as one of its own. Florence in 1501 was an even greater hub of activity than at the time of her childhood visit. After ousting the Medicis, the republic had been reorganized under a skilled administrator, Piero Soderini. All in all, the city had passed through the political upheavals of the past decade relatively unscathed.
Caterina passed through the municipal gates as a Florentine citizen, surveying the landmarks of her new home as her horse carried her through the narrow, bustling streets. The stern stone blocks of the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of the Florentine government, loomed above as she crossed the Piazza della Signoria; the dungeons of the Bargello stirred painful memories as she rode along the Via del Proconsolo. At last, the street opened into light and color as the marble-sheathed apse of the cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, came into view. Here she turned right toward the road of the Borgo Pinto, where her children had been lodged in the house of a family friend.
There, awaiting her mother's arrival, was Bianca, Caterina's only daughter, holding the sturdy and rambunctious Ludovico. Finally, after almost two years of separation and countless days of worry and fear, she was able to embrace her beloved youngest son. The twenty-year-old Bianca had cared for her brother during her mother's imprisonment, when she and Ludovico were in a similar predicament. Their elder siblings Ottaviano and Cesare had also resented the duty to maintain their unmarried sister and had exploited the Medici influence at court in an effort to unload her, soliciting Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici to help them find a suitable husband for their sister, who was "no longer of an age to be kept at home." Old enough to be mother to her brother, Bianca had remained unmarried, but Caterina would soon put that right.
As soon as he heard of Caterina's return, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, her brother-in-law, arrived, all welcoming smiles. He arranged for her transfer to the Medici house on the Via Larga, a majestic palace constructed by Michelozzo for Cosimo de' Medici, the founder of the dynasty. The palace was familiar to Caterina, for as a child she had stayed there as a guest of Lorenzo the Magnificent and had since returned on several occasions as the wife of Giovanni de' Medici. Now she would call it home.
The days spent with her children were marked by a constant flow of visitors. Some were old acquaintances, but many were merely curious to meet this notorious woman now living quietly in their midst. If they came for titillating gossip, they were disappointed. Caterina never regaled her visitors with tales of her Borgia capture, nor did she speak against her enemies. The Caterina who returned to Florence was a different woman from the vindictive widow she had been in Forlì.
By August 1501, only months after her arrival, Caterina had already moved out of the house on the Via Larga and into the Medici villa known as Castello. Despite the martial overtones, the villa took its name from the nearby ruins of a Roman aqueduct and the cisterns, castella, for water. Originally an austere farmhouse, it had been transformed it into a lovely country estate complete with loggias, courtyards, and stables. Among the jewels of the Medici art collection allocated to this villa was The Birth of Venus,Botticelli's stunning rendering of the goddess of love as an ethereal beauty with long, graceful limbs. Instead of gazing every morning at the dark squalor of a prison cell, Caterina now had the soft pastel hues of this remarkable painting to grace the walls. Slowly the eighteen months of torment faded in her memory. She settled in with little Ludovico and prepared to lead a quiet country life.
But political battles and domestic suits seemed to follow her. No sooner had Caterina settled into Castello than her economic situation degenerated from precarious to disastrous. She had no money, and no means of earning it. Yet her children pressed incessantly for financial assistance. Ottaviano and Cesare needed more clothes, more servants, more trips, and more parties. After they had wrung the meager resources out of their mother, and knowing she had jewels in pawn in Venice, they asked her to sell them for whatever ready cash they would bring. The market was bad; Milan was destitute, France would undervalue them, and Genoa would not buy them. Caterina pressed on, trying to raise what little she could. She had known straitened circumstances before, during the years with Girolamo after the death of Pope Sixtus IV. But she had always had land to raise revenue; she merely had to cut down on costs. Now, living in the Medici villa, she had barely enough to survive. Her one remaining resource was her Medici inheritance, the property and income due to her son Ludovico as the sole heir to Giovanni de' Medici's fortune. But Giovanni's brother Lorenzo had no intention of sharing. He had already spent a good deal of the family patrimony and squandered much of Ludovico's inheritance. In July 1502, Lorenzo demanded that Caterina leave the Medici villa. Claiming the grounds and house as his property, he attempted to oust her from her new home. It was as if he had lit a match under a long-forgotten powder keg. Caterina's pugnacious side reemerged for the first time in three years. The more Lorenzo pushed to expel her from the villa, the more Caterina found the spirit to remain. "She is resolved not to leave if not in pieces," wrote the worried Don Fortunati on July 8, 1502, to Ottaviano and Cesare.1 But if Caterina could withstand the cannons of Cesare Borgia, she could handle the subpoenas of a greedy Medici.
In Florence, however, documents and ducats were more persuasive than artillery. Lorenzo succeeded in convincing the Florentine courts to grant him custody of four-year-old Ludovico. Using Caterina's eighteen-month imprisonment as an excuse, he declared her an unfit mother and took the child away, along with control of his inheritance. The law was intended to protect a child from parents who had committed crimes; yet Caterina had been a prisoner of war and illegally jailed, as the French could not detain female prisoners.
Caterina threw herself into the courtroom with the same intensity she had displayed on the ramparts. Ordering inventories and witnesses, she began the slow and difficult process of reclaiming her son. Lorenzo was no more averse to devious tactics than Cesare Borgia. He employed his own caretaker of Castello, Alberto, to make her life as miserable as possible. Caterina was financially responsible for the care of her family and servants. Yet she had no sheets and no tablecloths, and she was forced to write to her children to plead for six forks. Don Fortunati, her sole loyal supporter, hounded her children for their lack of consideration. Even her brief joy at the arrival of her stepson, Scipione Riario, who had fought valiantly by her side during the siege of Ravaldino, was clouded by the difficulties of feeding and housing his companions, which brought her household number up to "twenty-four mouths, five horses, and three mules."2
The battlefield of courts and tribunals was new to her, but Caterina found a new Ravaldino to provide her with a refuge where she could gather strength. No bulwarks or gun lofts graced these high walls, which offered an austere and tranquil respite from the upheavals of the outside world. The convent of the Muratte, meaning the "walled-in ones," was founded in 1424 by Apollonia, a pious lady from Siena. Together with thirteen other women, she had made a home in a small house on a bridge over the Rubicon River. By 1433 the women had formed an order and taken the Benedictine rule, but the local bishop worried that their location on a busy bridge would present too many tempting distractions from the life of prayer and work. Giovanni Benci, the second-richest man in Florence after Cosimo de' Medici, donated to the new order a building on the Via Ghibellina, resting against the city walls. The religious sisters were henceforth known as the Muratte, alluding to their enclosure within the Florentine walls.
Benci beautified the convent over the years. The compound contained a church, choir, common sitting room, and refectory for the community life of the sisters, as well as a scriptorium for copying texts and work rooms for making the embroideries and woven clothes that supported them. The sisters followed the Benedictine rule of ora et labora, prayer and work, singing the Divine Office and reciting penitential psalms while doing their handicrafts. The number of women grew and by the end of the fourteenth century the Muratte numbered 170. Five dormitories housed the nuns, and a number of small buildings were added to the complex to allow laywomen to live among the sisters and find peace in their holy way of life.
Caterina had assisted numerous religious communities through her years as countess of Forlì, but she found her spiritual home among the Muratte. The Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who had offered Caterina counsel after her darkest hours, had introduced her to the community. He had preached his first sermon in Florence at their convent and throughout his life maintained an active interest in the well-being of the sisters. As of 1502, Caterina would periodically stay in the convent. Eventually, she would have her own simple cell in the enclosure off the main courtyard. She never took vows but would reside among the Muratte for stretches of time, joining the sisters in prayer and meditation, perhaps even helping them make perfumes and other essences, her own beloved hobby. Caterina, like most noblewomen of her age, frequented spas and thermal baths for her physical health while attending to her spiritual well-being through retreats among these devout women.
The stark convent atmosphere was relieved by several artistic masterpieces. In 1443, Giovanni Benci hired Florence's most sought- after painter, Filippo Lippi, to paint an Annunciation for the high altar of the church. Every time Caterina knelt in the chapel, the luminous pastels and bright flashes of gold leaf brought to life the story of the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. The walled garden in the background resembled the view from the window of her own cell, except that through the magic of Lippi's art, the colors were more limpid and the scenery even more lush. Mary, painted with the ethereal beauty that Filippo conferred on women, bows with eyes cast down in submission to divine will.
Outside the walls of the convent, however, the winds of fortune swirled, waiting to buffet Caterina. On August 18, 1503, Pope Alexander VI died. Not one word of satisfaction has been recorded from Caterina. In what must have seemed like perfect divine retribution, at the exact moment Alexander died, Cesare Borgia also lay deathly ill. A few malicious voices would circulate the rumor that both father and son had accidentally eaten from a dish they had laced with poison, intended for somebody else, but whatever the cause, Cesare could not influence the next election from his sickbed. Pius III Piccolomini was elected a month later, but afflicted with terrible gout, he was ill from the time of his drastically abbreviated coronation ceremony. Less than a month after he was elected, Pius III died. The cardinals returned to the Sistine Chapel, and in one day they unanimously chose his successor, Giuliano della Rovere, who took the name Julius II.
Excitement raced through the Riario family. The nephew of Sixtus IV, Giuliano was cousin to Girolamo Riario. Riario partisans saw the election as an opportunity to return Forlì and Imola to the Riario family, and as a result letters began to fly to and from Caterina's household regarding her eventual return to Forlì. The city was up for grabs. Antonio Maria Ordelaffi had profited from the confusion of two conclaves by claiming the city in a lightning strike. Letters, undoubtedly written by his partisans, sped along the peninsula, claiming that Ordelaffi had been joyfully welcomed by the Forlivesi as their long-awaited rightful ruler. Illness and lack of artillery had prevented him from conquering Ravaldino, stronger than ever after the repairs of Cesare Borgia, but the Ordelaffi supporters lost no time, appearing in Rome within days of the papal coronation with a petition to return Forlì to Antonio Maria. Caterina was apprised immediately that her newly adopted Republic of Florence had abetted Antonio Maria's return to the government. Indignant on her behalf, Caterina's Romagnol supporters urged her to storm the Palazzo Vecchio and to "cry for vengeance until the people were amazed by such ingratitude."3 Despite Caterina's alliances with Florence and her marriage to a Medici, the people of the city by the Arno thought that the Ordelaffis would make more tranquil neighbors. Julius II, on the other hand, remained unconvinced. He appeared reluctant to accept a return of the Ordelaffis and withheld confirmation of Antonio's rule.
During this stalemate between Pope Julius and Antonio Maria, the fortress of Ravaldino remained in the hands of a castellan who was not only viscerally hostile to Pope Julius II, whom he considered a "traitor," but was also head over heels in love with Caterina, going so far as to call her his wife. The Florentines, always ready to press an advantage, had apparently made advances to the deluded soldier, promising him Caterina in marriage if he would turn the castle over to a guardian of their choosing. This strange hearsay, culled from a dinner conversation with a cousin of the castellan, was picked up by the Venetian diarist Sanuto, who loved nothing more than a tale of intrigue involving Caterina.4
The veracity of the story is highly doubtful, but it gives an idea of the effect that Caterina still had upon the popular imagination. Giambattista Tonelli, a long-standing Riario partisan, had already written to Caterina that after the death of Alexander VI, "all the other princes had already returned to their lands" and that he and others were preparing the way for her return to Imola and Forlì. Tonelli's devotion was not spurred by political motives alone. He too had long loved the countess of Forlì. In February 1502 he had expressed his passion, writing, "If I sleep, it seems that I am with you; if I eat, I leave my food and talk to you ... You are engraved in my heart."5
But the very idea of Caterina had the opposite effect among other Romagnoli; Giovanni Maria Ridolfi, a Florentine captain in Romagna, claimed that "if the countess were dead, part of the countryside and the people of Forlì would not be displeased to have Ottaviano, whom they consider a good man."6 Machiavelli asserted that Caterina had made herself too hated to ever regain her state.
A multitude of extant letters suggests that many in Imola and Forlì were amenable to her return and that she had several sympathizers in Rome who also tried to pave the way for her restoration. Cardinal Raffaello Riario and Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, after a long absence during the reign of Alexander VI, returned to Rome to press for the restitution of the Riario scions. It seemed certain that either mother or son would soon be back in Romagna.
Pope Julius continued to demur. Even when Antonio Maria Ordelaffi, the sometime suitor, frequent troublemaker, and eternal pretender to the throne, died of illness in February 1504, Julius II still did not pronounce in favor of the Riario family. Cesare and Galeazzo were quick to blame their mother, viewing her as a political liability. In a letter to Ottaviano, the two brothers parroted Captain Ridolfi's position (written only three days earlier) that the Romagnoli would "never allow the restoration of the countess if not at her death."7 The simple truth was that Pope Julius didn't want to give away Forlì, especially to the Riario heirs. Skilled at reading people and a formidable man himself, he took Ottaviano's measure instantly. "Nel suo gippone c'e poco bambaza,"8 said the pope, in his colorful, forthright way, describing the twenty-five-year-old prelate as having little stuffing under his shirt. Julius was looking for strong allies and wanted to bring the entire area of Romagna under direct papal control. Concerned by the open corridor of entry into Italy for the king of France, Julius would end up spending most of his pontificate trying to seal Italy off from another French invasion, ultimately wresting Bologna from the Bentivoglio family and invading Ferrara. The pope intended to sever Rome's relationship with France.
But what did Caterina want? After long years of battles, betrayal, imprisonment, and legal strife, was Caterina really planning to return as countess to rule Forlì? Of all the Riario family members dancing attendance on Pope Julius II, Caterina knew him best. Julius had crossed swords with her late husband Girolamo Riario after the Medici assassination in the Pazzi conspiracy as well as during Girolamo's persecution of the Colonna family. She knew that the pope could not be swayed once he had made up his mind, and despite the exuberant hope of her partisans, she knew he had no reason to favor his Riario cousins. She encouraged her supporters in Romagna, hoping that if she could catapult her family onto the ruler's throne, then Julius might accept it as a fait accompli, but she had few illusions about her allies in Rome. In October 1503, Caterina wrote to Ottaviano, warning him of the treacheries and dangers of the pontifical court. "The iron is hot and it is time to strike it," she advised her son, persuading him to press his suit for Forlì. At the same time she issued a stern warning. "Guard yourself from those you trust and those who offer you advice, know the foul tempers that are all around you; if you allow yourself to be led by others, you will wind up with your cap over your eyes, so wake up!"9
Unlike earlier years when she would have leapt on her horse and galloped to the heart of the action, seizing by force what she desired while others hesitated, the older, wiser Caterina sat back in Florence and watched events unfold. After years on the tightrope of Italian politics and in the web of domestic intrigues, Caterina seemed ready to step back from the throne and let her sons take charge.
Her sons, however, were not as popular as Captain Ridolfi seemed to think. Ginevra Bentivoglio, of the ruling house of Bologna, was shocked by the intense dislike Caterina's arrogant sons provoked in the Bolognese and only her respect for Caterina kept her from turning the Bentivoglio house against the Riario family.
The year 1504 brought such a cascade of contradictory and bizarre correspondence that Caterina must have wondered what was in store every time she opened a letter. One report claimed that Imola had cried out for Spanish rule; another declared that the town pined for the Riarios. Venice seemed interested at one point, and then the cities seemed ready to revolt against church rule after the imposition of the dazi. This flurry of rumors was interspersed with love letters from her old soldiers, some expressing themselves brusquely, while others penned awkward verses to her.
What do you want from me? I've given you my heart!
You have my fidelity, my servitude.
Don't be ruled by ingratitude.
Gentle spirits cannot live without love.
Your favor for me is beatitude.
How can you leave me in solitude?10
By the end of 1504, it became clear that Pope Julius II had no intention of putting Imola and Forlì in Riario hands again. Even Ottaviano had given up and began asking once again for a cardinal's hat in return for any claim on his state.
Although Caterina lost her lands, she regained her youngest son. On June 5, 1505, the lawsuit with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici was resolved and Caterina came into what was left of her Medici husband's wealth. Most important, little Ludovico was returned to her. As Caterina was reestablished as the sole guardian of her son, she legally changed his name. Henceforth he would be known as Giovanni di Giovanni de' Medici to perpetuate the name of his much admired and beloved father. Not even in her wildest dreams could Caterina guess how important that name would one day be to the city of Florence.
As she took her final step back from politics, Caterina focused on her children. She moved back to the Castello villa, which had been returned to her along with custody of her son, intent on raising little Giovanni herself. She had already written to one of her former soldiers to ask him to find a small horse to teach the seven-year-old boy to ride and hunt, as she herself had done years ago on the Sforza estate in Milan.
Caterina's interest in her other children did not diminish. At long last, she had found a husband for her gracious and lovely Bianca. Her first fiancé, Astorre Manfredi, had been deposed and murdered by Cesare Borgia. The passions of a second betrothed, the considerably older count of Caiazzo, had cooled while waiting for Caterina's political troubles to be over. But Triolo de' Rossi, the count of San Secondo in the region of Parma, had brought joyous news during the trying year of 1503 by asking for Bianca's hand. Caterina's twenty-two-year-old daughter was married on July 28, 1503, and Caterina's first legitimate grandchild, Pietro Maria, was born a year later.
Ottaviano likely remained a bitter disappointment to his mother, although she never openly expressed her displeasure with him. By 1503 he had garnered a reputation in Rome as "obese in the body and fat in the head."11 Still oscillating between his desire for high prelature and a secular life, Ottaviano was considering a marriage proposal with a Venetian noblewoman along with a military condotta for Venice in 1503. Ultimately, Ottaviano fell back on the family's ecclesiastical reserves. His uncle, Cardinal Raffaello Riario, ceded the diocese of Viterbo and Volterra to him, and Ottaviano became a bishop in 1507. Unlike his uncles, he would never wear the red hat of the cardinal. Remembering the mistakes his own uncle Sixtus IV had made, Pope Julius avoided appointing the rapacious members of his family to high positions in the church. Although Viterbo had been a papal city for many years and still enjoyed a fair revenue, Ottaviano continued to hound his mother for money and gifts even at the age of thirty. "Could you send a large piece of ciamellotto cloth, in either black or purple, because I am with a monsignor every day and don't have the right clothes, imagine how I feel,"12 he lamented in a letter of June 20, 1507. One month later, he wanted a new mantle and then on August 12 he asked for fifty ducats to buy himself a gabbano, a long clerical robe, so he could present himself before the pope as stylishly dressed as the other prelates. In 1508 Ottaviano found himself with clerical duties and no idea how to carry them out. He asked his mother, who spent much of her time in ecclesiastical circles, to send him a "good and honest vicar" to help him, as well as one of his mother's large missals in which all the notes for Holy Week were written, so he would not be lost while presiding over the most solemn Masses of the year.
But Ottaviano's most frequent refrain was to ask that his mother intervene with one of her many relatives to make him a cardinal. Caterina never seemed inclined to pressure her sister who was married to the Holy Roman Emperor to assist Ottaviano. Maximilian I had remained aloof during her defense at Forlì, nor had he intervened in her imprisonment. Completely absorbed in subduing the Netherlands and his unruly German nobles, Maximilian would not meddle in the petty affairs of Italy. Caterina may have also been concerned about the effect of Rome and power on the weak-willed Riario men. It had utterly corrupted Ottaviano's father, Girolamo, and her son had always been more of a Riario than a Sforza. She did, however, take care of Cornelia, Ottaviano's illegitimate daughter, bringing her to live at the convent of the Muratte and ensuring that she was well raised and decorously married.
Cesare, her second oldest, was her most successful son. Named archbishop of Pisa at the age of nineteen, he was well liked in the Curia. But like his older brother, Cesare showed more interest in what he could obtain from his mother than any concern for her well- being. More documents testify to his business interests than his pastoral care—not surprising, since it seems that Archbishop Riario preferred to reside in Rome in the splendid palace of his uncle Cardinal Raffaello Riario. After renouncing any claim on Forlì, Ottaviano and Cesare were awarded twenty-five hundred gold ducats a year between them by Julius II for their losses, to be raised by a dazio on sheep and supplemented by papal funds.
One of her sons doted on his mother. Galeazzo, named for Caterina's father, was sixteen when his mother was released from the Castel Sant'Angelo. He was the brightest of the Riario boys, and Caterina had always nurtured high hopes for him. When he was only thirteen, she had tried to get him a condotta, but ultimately she sent him to Raffaello Riario to complete his education in Rome. At nineteen he married Maria della Rovere, niece of Pope Julius II and sister of the duke of Urbino. One of their daughters would take vows and become a religious sister of Caterina's beloved Muratte. His reputation as a just man and his powerful connections made Galeazzo a favorable candidate as ruler of Forlì and Imola during the years when a Riario return seemed possible. Despite never reclaiming the family throne, Galeazzo lived a successful life and showed a kindness to his mother that his brothers never had. His regular letters express genuine interest in his mother's health and peace of mind; he offered to come to her side at any moment she might need him. Of all her boys sired by Riario, the son bearing the treasured name of her father was her most steadfast.
Her youngest son by Girolamo had been named Francesco but nicknamed "Sforzino." Little information remains about him. Sforzino was fourteen when his mother moved to Florence and he most likely remained in her household for several years beyond that. He too followed an ecclesiastical career, ultimately becoming the bishop of the Tuscan town of Lucca, a few short miles from Pisa, where Cesare was archbishop.
As of 1505, Caterina's energy and drive centered on her beloved Giovanni. Caterina had used her relationship with the marquis of Mantua to influence the Florentine courts, and although she would not exploit her sister Bianca Maria's marriage to Maximilian to obtain Ottaviano's coveted cardinal's hat, she did beg their intervention to retrieve Giovanni from the clutches of his Medici uncle.
Just when Caterina emerged victorious from her custody suit, Florence was entering one of its most glorious artistic zeniths. Michelangelo's David had just been hauled into place in front of the Palazzo dei Priori in the center of town, where Caterina would have seen it as she marched to face her opponents in the legal arena. Caterina had much in common with David: like the shepherd boy, she had been thrust into the hard world of politics at a tender age; like the Jewish king, after a long and bitter battle to gain her crown, she had fallen victim to her own lust and cruelty; and like the author of the psalms, she had found solace in adversity through repentance.
Caterina hired tutors to impress reading and writing into the willful head of her spirited son, who cared little for study, preferring swimming and riding. Tutors came and went at the villa. No sooner had one drummed some flowery Latin verses into the child's head than another was on his way from Romagna.
The hours of the day not dedicated to Giovanni were occupied with Caterina's favorite hobby, botanical experiments—brewing concoctions for everything from antidotes for various ailments to cosmetics. The large garden at Castello offered her possibilities for growing her own herbs, and she corresponded regularly with people all over Italy to obtain ingredients and new recipes. She eagerly awaited shipments of new products from her long-standing friend Anna in Rome, a Jewish woman who prepared the best creams for smoothing unsightly bumps and wrinkles from the skin. Another, Luigi Ciocca of Mantua, could barely contain his excitement as he scribbled across the page that he had obtained a special unguent used by Isabella d'Este, the marquise of Mantua herself. This treasured prize was believed to be the beauty secret of the woman known as the "the First Lady of the Renaissance" and whose likeness would be immortalized by both Leonardo and Titian.
Caterina also gathered remedies and cures. She kept on hand numerous ointments for scrapes and cuts, a necessity with a boisterous boy in the house. Sometimes she used compresses of sage on a skinned knee or elbow; for more serious wounds she prepared a mixture of wax, pine resin, a paste made of milk solids, water and lime powder, and vinegar. Sleeping potions and painkillers were also numerous on her shelves, along with medications for the plague and antidotes to poison. Her labors and discoveries would be posthumously published in her name as Gli Esperimenti.
Now in her forties, Caterina still excited the admiration of many, and often a passionate love letter would arrive by post. Warriors fighting at the front dreamed of her; those setting off to seek their fortune wrote to ask for her encouragement. Physically, she kept herself worthy of admiration, drying her hair in the sun to keep it fair and diligently applying preparations to lighten her skin, cover freckles, and wipe away her first wrinkles.
Caterina's household experienced a happy expansion in 1508. Bianca, Caterina's devoted daughter, brought her four-year-old son Pietro Maria and her newborn girl to visit Castello. Caterina doted on them, so much so that Bianca later wrote her mother to thank her for all the attention she had showered on the children. Bianca so appreciated her mother's qualities that she left Pietro Maria in Caterina's care to learn to ride and hunt. Bianca corresponded regularly with her mother, occasionally sending a wheel of Parmesan or a package of candied fruit, Caterina's favorite sweet.
Caterina had found peace at last, preparing the next generation to carry on the Sforza tradition and living in the countryside as she had during her first carefree years of childhood. But as had often happened in her turbulent life, hardship arrived once again. This time danger was not from outside, but from within her own body.
In April 1509, Ottaviano broke a year-long epistolary silence to reprimand Don Fortunati, the faithful parish priest who was always by Caterina's side, that he had not been told that his mother was seriously ill. He complained that he had heard this news from a third party because Don Fortunati's letter of March 14 had not arrived until June 21.
Caterina had suffered a terrible bout of fever, probably the first signs of tuberculosis brought on by the malarial quartan fever that had afflicted her for all of her adult life. She wrestled with the illness for a month and by the time Ottaviano wrote she had already emerged victorious—yet very fragile—from the struggle. Caterina knew it had been a close call. Her first thought upon recovery was to make a pilgrimage to Loreto in thanksgiving. It must have been heartwarming to hear that several of her friends had vowed to make the same trip when they heard of her illness and her recovery, and she was reinvigorated by plans for the trip and seeing old friends.
But just as the May flowers bloomed, Caterina's health started to fail. This time she was gripped by a racking pain in her chest, called mal di costa, "rib sickness." The many years of malarial fever had given way to pleurisy and the membranes in her chest cavity were inflamed, making each breath and coughing fit excruciatingly painful. Her two doctors, Giuliano degli Anterigoli and master Giovanni de'Malingegni, hovered at her bedside, using the traditional cure for pleurisy, hot barley cakes applied to the chest and side, but to no avail. Without cortisone to reduce the inflammation or medicines to treat the underlying tuberculosis, there was little to be done but bind her chest tightly, administer narcotics to ease the pain, and wait for the end.
Her saddened friends offered prayers and Masses all over Italy. The religious sisters in the convents that Caterina had long supported recited their rosaries day and night for her. But by May 28, Caterina had been transported from Castello to the Medici house on the Via Larga, where, lucid and in complete possession of her faculties, she asked for a notary to write her will. Surrounded by two priests, two doctors, and three Florentine citizens of the Medici household, Caterina put her worldly affairs in order.13
Her first point was to commend her soul to the glory of Heaven, but for her earthly remains Caterina wanted no pomp and expense. Unlike Renaissance rulers who purchased elaborately carved marble coffins and bronze monuments, Caterina asked to be laid to rest without ceremony in the church of the convent of the Muratte.
From her restored fortune, Caterina thanked her new city by leaving a bequest for the care of the Florentine cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore and for the maintenance of the city walls. To her best friend and confessor, Don Fortunati, she allocated the task of organizing one thousand Masses for her soul to be said within two months, and asked the sisters of the convent of the Muratte to offer thirty Masses a year for her soul in perpetuity. She left four gold ducats a year to the convent for the lifetime of the abbess in thanks for this service.
Savonarola had once told her that almsgiving was particularly pleasing to God, so she left a sizable donation to the Dominican convent of Santa Caterina across the street from where the great preacher had once lived. She asked them to construct a room for the use of her son Giovanni, so that his spiritual formation could continue after her death. Caterina also took pains to care for her grandchildren, both legitimate and not. Cornelia, Ottaviano's natural daughter, and Giulia, Galeazzo's daughter by Maria della Rovere, were both left money for their dowries and what remained of Caterina's beautiful clothes and linens. Giulia, the fruit of a successful marriage with a noble family, was given one thousand ducats, while Cornelia, Ottaviano's daughter, was given two thousand. At long last, she acknowledged Carlo Feo as her legitimate son by her marriage to Giacomo Feo and left him two thousand gold ducats.
Her maids were cared for with dowries and new positions, but one in particular, Mora Bona, most likely a freed slave in her retinue, was placed in the service of her son Giovanni. Her other servants were rewarded and her debts paid by Don Fortunati. The kind priest, as executor, was entrusted with Caterina's letters, books, and papers and would become custodian of her literary legacy. That he also received fifteen hundred ducats was revealed to him only a month after her death.
The castle from which Girolamo Riario had first earned his title of count, Castel di Bosco, was left to Galeazzo Riario, who as a non-cleric would be able to pass the title down through his line.
Her beloved Giovanni, as she always referred to him, received all the family holdings within the territory of Florence, which were considerable despite his uncle Lorenzo's mismanagement. One third of Caterina's will provided dispositions for Giovanni. The eleven-year-old boy would be raised in the house of Jacopo Salviati, of a noble Florentine family long associated with the Medicis. Don Fortunati would continue to supervise the education of the child. Caterina also imposed a condition on the inheritance: that Giovanni be married as soon as possible. She knew the importance of his lineage and the merging of the Sforza and the Medici families and hoped to ensure a dynasty even after her death. The Riario name had become a curse, but the Medici name was magic.
Ottaviano, Cesare, Galeazzo, and Sforzino, her four sons by Girolamo, would then divide all the holdings and goods outside of Florence plus an inheritance left by their father. The greedy foursome wrote Don Fortunati two weeks after their mother's death, announcing their decision to consider the now wealthy Giovanni their full brother. Four days later Ottaviano wrote again, asking for his mother's dogs and falcons and reminding Don Fortunati to make a perfectly even division of her belongings. Even five years after his mother was dead and buried, Ottaviano still complained to Don Fortunati that he had not had "all that was his."
It might seem strange that Caterina's will makes no mention of her beloved daughter, Bianca, and her two legitimate grandchildren, but as Caterina was dividing properties left in trust by several husbands, it was probably easier to give Bianca her bequest outright, as her daughter would have certainly been by her side from the first illness, thus saving her the difficulties of settling Giovanni's affairs and then receiving the inheritance from him. Caterina had obviously thought out the complexities of her estate beforehand to have made such clear dispositions.
Caterina faced her last hours much as she had confronted other challenges. As she had done in her defense of Ravaldino, she gave orders and organized strategies through her will and then waited for the siege of her illness to end. It didn't take long. Burning the candle at both ends for most of her life as mother, warrior, ruler, lover, extravagant sinner, and meek penitent had taken its toll. Although many noblewomen like Isabella d'Este or Catherine de' Medici lived into their sixties, Caterina's life spark had shone brightly and was extinguished quickly. For the first time in her life, Caterina surrendered. A few hours after she wrote her will, Caterina Riario Sforza died at the age of forty-six.
Condolences poured in from all over Italy, from the broken-hearted laments of those who had long loved her, to fervent promises of prayers from the many priests and nuns who had benefited from her generosity. Michele Marullo of Constantinople, who had been at Caterina's service at Ravaldino during the siege of Cesare Borgia, wrote a long poem in honor of Caterina in measured verse, full of classical allusions.
Her body was placed in a simple tomb in the austere chapel of the Muratte. Fifty years later, Cosimo de' Medici, the first grand duke of Tuscany, placed a marble slab on her grave, crowned with the combined coats of arms of the Sforza and Medici families, to commemorate his celebrated grandmother. It bore the simple inscription CATERINA SFORZA MEDICI. The tombstone was destroyed in 1835 and her remains were lost ten years later; the convent of the Muratte was transformed into a prison. The honors and losses that characterize her gravesite reflect her extraordinary life. From triumph to defeat, notoriety to obscurity, great gain to devastating loss, Caterina remains a woman who will not be forgotten.