Queens of the Renaissance. M. Beresford Ryley
point of mental deficiency. Il Moro, as Ludovico was called, held the power of Milan, and politically an alliance with Milan would be good for Ferrara. Ercole answered the request by saying that his eldest daughter was already promised to Mantua, but that he had another daughter a year younger, and if the King of Naples, who had adopted her, gave his consent, Ludovico could have her instead. The political value of the marriage remained the same, and Ludovico accepted without demur the little makeshift lady. Hence, at nine years old, Beatrice, as a substitute for her more elegant sister, became engaged to a man of twenty-nine. She was then still living with her grandfather at Naples. But when, in the following year, she returned to Ferrara, to be educated with Isabella, she was publicly recognized as Ludovico’s future wife, and known as the Duchess of Bari, the title to be hers after marriage.
It was over this engagement that Beatrice was made acutely to realize the difference of life’s ways with the plain and the bewitching. The young Marquis of Mantua soon became an ardent lover of his golden-haired lady. He wrote to her, he sent her presents; a slight but pretty love affair went on between the two during all the years of their engagement. And when in due course they were married, it was with every show of eagerness upon the side of the handsome bridegroom. Ludovico, on the other hand, took no notice whatever of the childish Beatrice; there was no interchange of winning courtesies, no presents, no letters. Twice, when the marriage was definitely settled, Ludovico put it off; and on the second occasion, at any rate, no girl could avoid the sting of wounded vanity. Everybody had been eager to marry Isabella. Beatrice also, according to the notions of her time, was grown up, and far too clear-witted not to understand the gossip following upon Ludovico’s second withdrawal. Unmistakably she was not wanted. Her future husband had his heart already filled. There was another woman in the case, and a woman loved with such intensity that Il Moro literally had not the courage to face marriage with a different lady. On the arrival of the ambassadors asking for a second delay, an agent of the court wrote that everybody was annoyed and the Duke of Ferrara extremely angry.
This was in April, 1495, and for several months Beatrice lived on quietly in the Castello at Ferrara. To deepen the dulness, not only Isabella, but her half-sister Lucrezia, was now married. Among the people of the court it was openly said that the marriage with Ludovico would probably not take place at all. Beatrice went back to lessons, music—she was all her life a great lover of music—and to needlework in the garden. But she probably felt fiercely dispirited and without hope. Thankfulness for life itself cannot exist in youth. At fifteen it is not possible to thank God for just the length of time ahead. Most likely, also, she hated Ludovico. No girl of any spirit could have done otherwise, and Beatrice had more spirit than most.
Then, suddenly, in August, another ambassador arrived from Milan, and even then hopes began to float again. The ambassador had come this time with a present from the bridegroom to his betrothed. It was exquisite—a necklace of pearls made into flowers, with a pear-shaped pendant of rubies, pearls, and diamonds. The ambassador came also to fix a day for the wedding. Ludovico had at last made up his mind to the rupture with his mistress, Cecilia Gallerani, the rare and beautifully mannered woman, who has been compared, with Isabella D’Este and Vittoria Colonna, as among the most cultured women of the Renaissance.
Now, at last, Beatrice became brusquely a person of importance. The subject of Cecilia Gallerani was dropped like a burning cinder, and outwardly everything smoothed to a satin surface. There was more money than in the Mantuan marriage, and no expense was consequently spared in Beatrice’s trousseaux. Only Leonora still worried a little. Ludovico came of a bad stock—the only one among the family to show fine qualities had been the famous Francesco Sforza, founder of the dynasty.
As for the present duke’s father, and Ludovico’s brother, Galeazzo Maria, he had been a fiend, whose very soundness of mind was questionable. True, Ludovico’s own ability was indubitable. The skill with which he had steered himself from exile into the regency could not be questioned. Moreover, though nominally only Regent, he had already commenced to drive in the thin end of the wedge of usurpation. The real duke was old enough to control his own state, and had recently been married to Isabella, daughter of the King of Naples. Notwithstanding this, the regency continued with a grasp tightened, rather than loosened, upon the affairs of Northern Italy. Meanwhile preparations for the marriage were rapid and luxurious, and as soon as possible, though it was then in the depth of winter, Beatrice and her suite started for the wedding. At Pavia Ludovico was waiting to receive them, and as soon as Beatrice had been helped on to a horse, wonderfully caparisoned for the occasion, the two rode slowly side by side from the water’s edge—she had come by boat up the Po—across the bridge that spans the river Ticino, and through the gates of the Castello of Pavia.
Alinari
THE BRIDGE AT PAVIA
It would be interesting to know what lay in the minds of both. In the case of Ludovico one surmise has as much likelihood as another. He was a man much experienced in women, and to a person whose mistresses were always beautiful and interesting, Beatrice, at first sight, could have offered very small attractions. She had not the features to possess beauty of the finest quality. At the same time she was compensated by almost all the minor enticements. The smooth and delicate freshness of youth was fragrant in her, and, like Isabella, she was extremely graceful in body. But the chief attraction of her face sprang from its oddity, and the inner rogue it suggested. According to rigid canons she was plain, but her plainness was so near to prettiness that it was as often as not over the border.
The first impression given by her portrait in the Altar-piece, said to be Lemale’s, is disappointing. From her personality the expectation is of something different—a little more distinguished, a little more wanton, and a little more incontestably seductive. But a mild fascination comes with familiarity. Waywardness and intelligence are both in the face; the gift of humour is clear as day. Her expression radiates a mixture of sauciness and wisdom. In certain clothes and in certain moods she must have looked adorable, more especially before she was actually dressed, when her curls hung upon her shoulders.
What Beatrice thought of Ludovico is more easily hazarded. The man was handsome, and bore every sign of a personal force of character. His profile formed too straight a line, but in the general effect his features were impressive and masterful. Beatrice was fifteen, and as Isabella’s plain sister had never yet been incensed with too much flattery. Ludovico had in fact reached at her childlike heart with unequal advantages; confronted by this suave and dignified person a girl’s imagination had everything to feed upon.
They were married next morning, and a few days later Beatrice made her state entry into Milan—Ludovico, Giangaleazzo, the real duke, his wife Isabella, and every Milanese person of importance, meeting her at the gates. She and Ludovico then rode side by side in a procession through the town, the horses being decorated and the streets lined with people to cheer them as they passed.
But the really interesting incident of the day was the meeting of the two girls, the reigning duchess and the duchess of the Regent. The situation pushed them into antagonism, and into mean and agitated rivalries. Isabella’s was the position of easier righteousness, Beatrice’s the one of more colossal temptations. Everything moreover in the future was to help them into unfairness. The wife of the futile duke was cringed to by nobody. All Milan cossetted and flattered the wife of the Regent who held the power, and suggested still greater power in the future. To have been meek and secondary would have required a temperament of great spiritual vitality. Beatrice came of a worldly family, and the reasons for not tethering ambition grew to be very specious. Giangaleazzo, as head of the State, was too clearly incapable. Il Moro did all the work, bore all the responsibility, and when necessary, all the execration. Why should an idle, dull-witted boy, who did nothing, enjoy the benefit of public precedence? Why should Beatrice and her husband walk humbly behind these two, whose importance was as a balloon inflated for the occasion?
Corio says that from the first days of her arrival in Milan, Beatrice chafed at yielding place to Isabella. But Corio, who wrote many years after the death of Beatrice and Ludovico, was bent upon making the worst of them. And to contradict him there is a good deal of correspondence which goes to show that at the beginning the girls were glad enough to have each other