Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna 9789048552870

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Illustrations, Tables, Figures, and Documents
Abbreviations of Archives and Libraries
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507) : Lost and Found in Renaissance Italy
2. Twice Bentivoglio: Genevra Sforza on the Marriage Market (1446–1454 and 1463–1464)
3. Genevra Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Strategies: Creating and Extending Kinship on a Massive Scale
4. Genevra Sforza in Her Own Words: Patron and Client Relationships from Her Correspondence
5. The Wheel of Fortune: Genevra Sforza and the Fall of the Bentivoglio (1506–1507)
6. Making and Dispelling Fake History: Genevra Sforza and Her ‘Black Legends’ (1506–present)
Conclusions
Index

Citation preview

Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World This series provides a forum for studies that investigate women, gender, and/or sexuality in the late medieval and early modern world. The editors invite proposals for booklength studies of an interdisciplinary nature, including, but not exclusively, from the fields of history, literature, art and architectural history, and visual and material culture. Consideration will be given to both monographs and collections of essays. Chronologically, we welcome studies that look at the period between 1400 and 1700, with a focus on any part of the world, as well as comparative and global works. We invite proposals including, but not limited to, the following broad themes: methodologies, theories and meanings of gender; gender, power and political culture; monarchs, courts and power; constructions of femininity and masculinity; gift-giving, diplomacy and the politics of exchange; gender and the politics of early modern archives; gender and architectural spaces (courts, salons, household); consumption and material culture; objects and gendered power; women’s writing; gendered patronage and power; gendered activities, behaviours, rituals and fashions. Series editors James Daybell (Chair), Victoria E. Burke, Svante Norrhem, and Merry Wiesner-Hanks

Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna

Elizabeth Louise Bernhardt

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Detail from the Diptych Portrait of Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Genevra Sforza by Ercole de’ Roberti (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 684 9 e-isbn 978 90 4855 287 0 doi 10.5117/9789463726849 nur 685 © E.L. Bernhardt / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2023 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

for Daphne



Table of Contents

Illustrations, Tables, Figures, and Documents Abbreviations of Archives and Libraries

9 11

Acknowledgements 13 Introduction 17 1. Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507):

37

2. Twice Bentivoglio

73

Lost and Found in Renaissance Italy

Genevra Sforza on the Marriage Market (1446–1454 and 1463–1464)

3. Genevra Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Strategies

109

4. Genevra Sforza in Her Own Words

181

5. The Wheel of Fortune

217

6. Making and Dispelling Fake History

257

Creating and Extending Kinship on a Massive Scale

Patron and Client Relationships from Her Correspondence

Genevra Sforza and the Fall of the Bentivoglio (1506–1507)

Genevra Sforza and Her ‘Black Legends’ (1506–present)

Conclusions 309 Index 317



Illustrations, Tables, Figures, and Documents

Figure 1.1

Portrait Medal of Genevra Sforza by Antonio Marescotti (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)62 Figure 1.2 Diptych Portrait of Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Genevra Sforza by Ercole de’ Roberti (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)62 Figure 1.3 Bentivoglio Family Donor Portrait by Lorenzo Costa (Church of San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna; Wikimedia)63 Figure 1.4 Portion of Genevra Sforza’s vita by Jacopo Filippo Foresti (Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; World Digital Library)64 Document 1.1 Transcription of Genevra Sforza’s vita by Arienti64 Document 1.2 A Sforza-Bentivoglio Family Tree67 Table 3.1 Genevra Sforza’s Eighteen Pregnancies110 Table 3.2 The Bentivoglio Children146 Table 3.3 Bentivoglio Serving as Godparents in Bologna153 Table 3.4 Political Destinies of Bentivoglio Children162 Table 3.5 Wedding Festivities of Bentivoglio Children168 Table 3.6 Ecclesiastical Vocations of Bentivoglio Children172 Map 3.1 Political Destinies of Bentivoglio Offspring175 Table 4.1 Letters Exchanged Between the Bentivoglio and Gonzaga187 Table 4.2 Letters Currently Known and Attributable to Genevra Sforza208 Table 4.3 Letters Currently Known to Have Been Received by Genevra Sforza214 Figure 6.1 A 1911 postcard featuring a hybrid reconstruction of Palazzo Bentivoglio in Rome277 Figure 6.2 Another 1911 postcard featuring the same reconstruction of Palazzo Bentivoglio in Rome277

AAB ASB ASFE ASFI ASFZ ASMI ASMN ASMO ASPE ASPR ASRI ASVE BCB BUB CAS FEBA FIML MIBA MRBC MOBE MRP NYPM PBN PBC PBO PRBP RIBG SAR SBCC VEBM

Abbreviations of Archives and Libraries Archivio Arcivescovile, Bologna Archivio di Stato, Bologna Archivio di Stato, Ferrara Archivio di Stato, Florence Archivio di Stato, Faenza Archivio di Stato, Milan Archivio di Stato, Mantua Archivio di Stato, Modena Archivio di Stato, Pesaro Archivio di Stato, Parma Archivio di Stato, Rimini Archivio di Stato, Venice Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale, ‘L’Archiginnasio’ Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria Carpi, Archivio Storico Comunale Ferrara, Biblioteca Ariostea Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana Mirandola, Biblioteca Comunale Modena, Biblioteca Estense Mirandola, Biblioteca Comunale New York, Pierpont Morgan Library Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Pesaro, Biblioteca della Curia Arcivescovile Pesaro, Biblioteca Oliveriana Parma, Biblioteca Palatina Rimini, Biblioteca Gambalunga Spilamberto, Archivio Rangoni Sassuolo, Biblioteca Comunale Cionini Venice, Biblioteca Marciana

Acknowledgements This book has evolved out of over two decades of work that began at the University of Toronto under the guidance of Nicholas Terpstra. Over the years Nick has helped me understand so much about early modern history, and I would like to thank him for his ongoing friendship, inspiration, patience and continual interest in my work. I would also like to thank Sarah Blanshei for sharing her wealth of Bolognese expertise with me—as well as for her ongoing friendship and inspiration in Bologna and beyond. She patiently critiqued a draft of this book and has answered so many questions about the past in wise and enthusiastic ways. I don’t know how to thank either of these wonderful people enough. As the time has finally come for this project on Genevra Sforza to reach a larger audience in published form, Erika Gaffney is whom I most greatly thank. She has been amazing as she patiently and enthusiastically listened to talk about this potential monograph for years until a proposal was finally submitted. Enormous thanks to Erika for believing in this book, for her patience with my delivery of it, and for promoting it with AUP! More thanks to her for having led me to Jamie Whyte who turned my original graphics into professionally designed ones within this text. I must also thank Simone Bregni at Saint Louis University who led me to Dean Donna LaVoie who believed in the project and generously provided the subvention funding necessary for its publication; Julie Singer, Chair of Romance Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis, also kindly contributed additional funding; and thanks to the St. Louis–Bologna Sister Cities organisation for their support. Both Natalie Tomas as well as an anonymous reader critically read my first draft under the auspices of AUP—and each offered numerous ideas for positive change; I thank them both very much for their professional insight and for having helped make this project stronger. I would also like to thank several other scholars who helped me early on with my research strategy towards Genevra including Jane Abray, Barbara Todd, Carolyn James and Konrad Eisenbichler. Thanks to generous initial funding over twenty years ago, the Department of History at the University of Toronto gave me the opportunity to pursue original research—and since those days I have added to this project in many ways while continuing to live between Bologna and Rome and experiencing life in many of the places where the stories of this book unfold. I would also like to thank the Society of Italian Historical Studies (under the guidance of Roy Domenico) for having awarded my original project ‘best unpublished manuscript’ in Italian history. Many archivists and librarians helped lead me to fascinating and relevant materials. In particular I would like to thank Anna Maria Scardovi and staff at

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BCB; Antonietta Folchi and staff at ASFE; Maria Barbara Bertini and staff at ASMI; Daniela Ferrari and staff at ASMN; Angelo Spaggiari and staff at ASMO; Giorgio Cicognani at ASFZ; Stefano Bonfatti at SBCC; Sergio Poletti in Mirandola; and Merilla Loiotile at ASPR. Thanks also to Molly Bourne and Alessandro Sarzi who kindly offered me hospitality in Mantua on a particularly long research trip. I owe much to some contemporary bentivoleschi too: Marianna Biondi, Anna Maria De Maria and Monica De Maria for their friendship, enthusiasm and support; and Daniele Mandrioli of the Istituto Ramazzini (located within El Bentivoglio) for his interest in this project. My involvement in this field has been exciting and rewarding over the years thanks to many inspirational colleagues and friends including: Ella Allen, ♰Lary Baker (my amazing high school history teacher), Anna Banasiak, Carla Bernardini, Christopher Black, ♰Jack Blanshei, Molly Bourne, Daniel Bornstein, ♰Ovidio Capitani, Erin Campbell, Mauro Carboni, Jenny Carson, Georgia Clarke, Sarah Cockram, Erika Conti, Elisabetta Cunsolo, Pina Cottonaro, Elena Dalla Torre, Sheila Das, Natalie Zemon Davis, Jennifer M. DeSilva, David Drogin, Bruce Edelstein, Alex Garganigo, ♰Philip Gavitt, Stefano Giovannuzzi, Paul F. Grendler, Mary Hewlett, Holly Hurlburt, Claudia Karagoz, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Julius Kirschner, Carol Lansing, Maria H. Loh, Judy Mann, Rebecca Messbarger, Adelina Modesti, Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Pier Luigi Perazzini, Carolyn Podruchny, Eileen Reeves, Guido Ruggiero, Cyrus St. Clair (who read an early draft—thank you again), David Rosselli, Raffaella Sarti, Deanna Shemek, Michael Sherberg, Jamie Smith, Valerie Taylor, Natalie Tomas, Dana Wessell, Allyson Williams, Iva Youkilis, Betty Zanelli & Marco Visconti Prasca, Gabriella Zarri and Massimo Zini. After many years in Bologna, living in Rome proved helpful to imagine Bologna from a distance, from the centre of the papal mechanism—a move that was fascinating in and of itself and necessary to imagine more about how popes must have considered their rebellious northerly subject city. I would like to thank my inspirational Roman colleagues and friends including Paolo Alei, Monica Barden, Ginevra Bentivoglio, Luca Calenne, Nelly Ciacci, Elizabeth & Thomas Cohen, Lisa Colletta, Crispin Corrado, Anne Coulson, Antonella De Michelis, Julia L. Hairston, Lisa Hine, Valerie Hughes & friends at Core, Matteo Liberti, Ana Paula Lloyd, David Loepp, Lucy Maguire, Laity Mbye, Chicca de’ Medici, Barbie Latza Nadeau, Erin Nester, Vanessa Palumbo, Enzo & Lucy Panetta, Paola Picardi, Vincenzo, Michela & Alessandra Piovano, Alfonso Ragucci, Irene Ranaldi, Rose Marie San Juan, Carol Taddeo, Lori-Ann Touchette & Paolo Porelli, Gabriella Testini and Ruth Viola; Katherine Wilson deserves special thanks here for having kindly and enthusiastically read and commented on this book—and while always reminding me of the joy of writing. I would like to thank a few more relatives and friends over these many years while Genevra has been a part of my life: nonna Antonia & ♰nonno Franco, comare

Acknowledgements 

Sonia Dragonetti & Luciano Martino & family, Pino & Francesco Martino, the many Sinisgalli & D’Alessandro & Martino zii and cugini of Pisticci and Marconia including ♰pacchiana Zamenga, my aunt Carol Johnson Boulris (who also read an early draft—thanks again) & Lori Townsend & family, Connie Bernhardt Hinton & family, Maria & Tony Pietoso & families, Maria Torchia & ♰Nerino Pezzoli & Alessandra & Simona, Teresa Bisognin & Larissa & family, Tina & Isa Cambiaghi & family, Elizabeth Mora & Mateo & family, Miriam Gerver & Mimmo Esposito, Carol Kaplan-Lyss, Barbara Klein, Portia Taylor & Pat McGee & family, Christine & Michel Jordan & leur grande et fantastique famille (Ismaël, Sam, Marine et al.), Emanuela Noviello, Alena Lotz & family, Tim Wichmer & the law office group & families, Lisa Greening, Kim Hagemann, Karen Bjurstrom, Ann Shin, Sonja Hyde-Moyer, Teresa LaViola & Giuseppe Nasone & family, Rosita Romano & family, Maurizio Brasile & family, Filomena Palmieri & Franco Palermo, Stuart Bradley & family, ♰Rina Monti, Klaus Rittmann, ♰Freidrich Rittmann, ♰Padre Enzo a Bagnarola, ♰Leon Bierbaum de Chez Léon, ♰Sona Haydon, Antonella Mele & family, Monique & Nicole Ogiste, Samir Dedja & family, the Sisto family, the Bandello family, the St. Clairs, the Kauffmans, Emmanuel Losio & family, Michela Caronna & family, Aurelio pittore & Manuela, Chiara Zini & Eirien & Stella, Cristina Pondrelli & Lara, the Packmans, gli amici di BCSP, friends at the Irish College, friends at Ambrit, Francy D’Angelo, Layne Mureddu, Cosimo d’Elia, Sandra Rizzi & Lo Scarabeo & Gianni Janigro & family, Ann Marie Behm & Gretchen & family, Mary Judge, Lisa Melandri, Susan Barrett, Philip Slein, Susan Kime, Marianne Klein, Mary Ann Srenco, Gina Grafos, JiaMin Dierberg, Ted Wight, Bruno David, Lino Mioni, many new friends at Tend and Flourish School of Botanicals and many others in St. Louis and from Italiano per piacere and the St. Louis–Bologna Sister Cities organisation: Franco & Nerina Giannotti, Isa Gabbiani Flynn, Scott Hoff, Michael Cross, et al. Finally, I would like to thank my father Roger whose long-term interests in history, architecture, art, and European and Mediterranean culture dominated our family culture and sparked my interests in these same subjects and with my living in Italy and becoming a historian of Italy; over the years he’s also read drafts of this project with the attention of an early modern Bolognese legal scholar. I also must thank my mother Jane for entertaining my baby daughter (now grown up) in the afternoons for months when I completed the earliest versions of this project—and since then for her critical interest in women’s culture. I thank my sister Katherine and her son Khalifa for having taken Daphne and me on journeys to Morocco and elsewhere that have helped put Italian history and women’s culture into greater perspective; and my brother Andrew has offered some critiques and technical support. And I am thankful to Paolo Martino (whose many early modern ways have always fascinated me) for his having helped out on various occasions with Daphne, notably in relation to housing dilemmas. I am also incredibly grateful to

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my friendly and wonderful pets over the years—especially my adorable Yorkies: Schelli, Dixie, Chicca, Masuccio/Chicco, and Cookie—for much love and genuine interest in what I am up to; a couple of them sat patiently with me as I wrote nearly every page of this text. Finally, I am terrifically thankful to my daughter Daphne for having come into my world, for offering me stupendous amounts of joy and love, and for giving me so much perspective on history and life. Daphne has also helped bring me one giant step closer to the subject of this book’s experience as a female involved in family, politics, gender and reputation in (and beyond) old world Bologna.

Introduction Ginevra Sforza helped poison her husband Sante so she could marry his young cousin Giovanni—since they had secretly been in love. She acted viciously in the Malvezzi vendetta and alone ordered the slayings of the Marescotti brothers. She was impious, maligning, avaricious and wicked. Her mother had been a Jew. Like a termite, she gnawed at and eroded Palazzo Bentivoglio. Savonarola called her the devil who disturbed the word of God; in retaliation she sent out men to kill him. She demanded to discuss politics directly with the pope. She was a cruel and ambitious woman, the evil genius of the Bentivoglio family. Her proud boiling sforzesco blood made her commit cruel acts. Against her husband’s knowledge she tried to pull together an army to retake Bologna. He wrote her a nasty letter, blaming her for the ruin of his family—and after she read it, she dropped dead. Her corpse was abandoned in the nettles. She is the first of the four most damned souls of Bologna’s past and one of the most troubled characters in history. When the Bentivoglio palace was destroyed, the family papers all perished, and there are no surviving contemporary documents about her—so it’s impossible to know anything more about Ginevra Sforza. She was such a terrible woman, who would want to study her anyway?

The above paragraph summarises the dominant historiographical tradition about Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1440–1507), a tradition that has endured for over five centuries. It is the purpose of this book to show how flawed that tradition is and how it stems from a deeply misogynistic perspective, one that has hidden the real Genevra who dedicated herself and succeeded in fulfilling the gendered role demanded of her by society. Genevra’s story has been easily masked as the records of her life have been scattered over dozens of archives, museums, and libraries. My aim is to reconstruct the real Genevra from those documentary fragments and to analyse how and why her story has been so maligned, beginning around the time of her death, and why the damnatio memoriae of her achievements has been sustained even in modern historiography.1 1 Because she signed her name in her own hand as ‘Genevra’, her own spelling of her name will be used in this text. Some common f ifteenth-century variant spellings include Genebra, Gianevera, Ginebra, Gynevera, Zanevera, Zenevra, Zenevrega, and Zinevra (or variants, as seen in contemporary documentation in Bologna, Milan, Mantua and other places).

Bernhardt, E.L., Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726849_intro

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The chapters of this book display a historical and thus revisionist view of a previously unexamined f ifteenth-century woman who lived a long life at the apex of Bolognese society. This book is therefore not a project about the luxurious life of a wealthy Renaissance aristocrat but instead a critical investigation and re-evaluation of an important woman who has been misrepresented because until now Genevra has served mainly as a target for malicious stories, a scapegoat for explanations about the ruin of the Bentivoglio and of an independently governed Bologna. By grounding this predominantly biographical work on documents contemporary to Genevra’s lifetime, this book aims to contribute to our understanding not only of her life but also to our knowledge of fifteenth-century gender roles, cooperative power and collaborative effort among members of a large Italian family, and crucial elements of family life and relationships in Renaissance Italy. This book also seeks to further our understanding of Bentivoglio-era Bologna, a signif icant international university city ruled in a unique fashion featuring a shared government: part local and republican led by a group of men calling themselves the Sedici Riformatori dello Stato di Libertà and part Roman led by papal representatives (legati papali) and the pope himself. Despite that official diarchy, the Bentivoglio de facto rulers aspired to become de jure signori (legallyrecognised lords) like many of their peers across Northern and Central Italy. And Genevra, sent by Milan to serve in Bologna as consort to two consecutive Bentivoglio leaders and unofficial ‘first lady’ for over fifty years, performed her life role there in the fullest capacity.

Bologna as Backdrop Bologna is where the histories (and stories) of this book have unfolded. Located on an enormous fertile plain in Northern Italy, it has been a popular place to live since prehistoric times. In historic times, the Etruscans called it Felsina (‘hospitable place’), and the Romans named it Bononia (‘good’, ‘wealth’, or ‘advantage’). Throughout the millennia, various peoples have tried to control the area due to its inhabitants’ capacity to create wealth through agriculture and sophisticated items for trade; its central geographic location along a road that became the Via Aemilia (completed 187 BCE) further boosted traffic and its relative importance. The early medieval city was founded as a commune with a charter granted by Holy Roman Emperor Henry V (1116), and its golden age, the twelfth century, was marked by the foundation of its famous studium (the University of Bologna, popularly recognised today from 1088) and the creation of Piazza Maggiore: a large public square and important symbol of Bologna’s autonomy. The city created and experienced diverse types of alternating governments and high political volatility

Introduc tion 

as it became part of the Papal States (from 1278) and was fought over by military leaders, local and foreign families and papal legates. Legates serving various popes governed intermittently from 1325 before Signore Taddeo Pepoli and his sons’ rule (1337–1350) led to selling the city to the Visconti that in turn led to a popular revolt and restoration of the free commune (1376). Sharing authority between a legate and Bologna’s oligarchy (the ‘Anziani’, the senior government officials) began in 1377. By 1389 the Bolognese began building an ex-voto monument, the Basilica of San Petronio, as an enormous symbol of gratitude for having escaped Milanese subjection. Their gigantic, highly visible house of worship constructed by the people in their new town square was meant to dwarf the nearby Cathedral of San Pietro (representative of and sponsored by Rome) located merely along a widened section of the former cardo maximus (the ancient north-south main street). San Petronio had been designed to dwarf even the original San Pietro in Rome—an indication of how the Bolognese felt towards Roman intervention. Over the centuries, libertas (self-rule or freedom from others’ rule) became a civic goal and a symbol of the commune—although it was rarely attained. According to myth, the Bentivoglio family descended from a thirteenth-century love affair of a king called Heinrich (Enrico or Enzo in Italian), a legitimised son of Holy Roman Emperor Federico II, and a country girl named Lucia from Viadagola, a hamlet outside Bologna. Instead of pronouncing the words in their proper order as ‘ti voglio bene’, German-speaking Enzo, who was learning Italian, allegedly told Lucia ‘ben ti voglio’ – thus the family name. According to archival documentation, the Bentivoglio existed several generations before Enzo appeared in Bologna, and many Bentivoglio worked as butchers within the Arte dei Beccai, a prominent and wealthy guild but one forever tied to images of violence due to the realities of the family’s trade: sharp sets of knives and saws, constant slaughterings, and filthy-looking bloodstained aprons and hands. Giovanni I Bentivoglio was the first (and last) member of his family to dominate the city as an actual de jure signore, which meant that he obtained from the Sedici the legal right to rule, a position he held for just over one year before he was defenestrated then stabbed to death by the Visconti (1402). The Visconti, papal legates, other Bolognese families, and a condottiere each again vied for command before other Bentivoglio succeeded at returning to power. Giovanni’s son, Antongaleazzo, a professor of civil law turned condottiere (and the only Bentivoglio to obtain a university degree), led a revolt in 1416 and headed the Sedici before suffering exile for fifteen years; in 1435 upon his return, the Bolognese joyously received him—until he was decapitated by the papal governor, Bishop Daniele Scotti, who considered Antongaleazzo threatening due to his popularity. Antongaleazzo’s illegitimate son, Annibale, was captured by a condottiere, Niccolò Piccinino, but became a hero after escaping imprisonment in Varano. Annibale returned home to lead a quasi

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signoria—a nearly independent court—but for only two years (1443–1445) when he was murdered by the main factional enemies of the Bentivoglio, the Canetoli men. By mid-century so many killings had reduced the Bentivoglio to a family with no grown men left alive to lead in Bologna—so an unlikely candidate in the form of a young wool worker named Sante, an illegitimate grandson of Giovanni, was searched out and ‘discovered’ in Tuscany. He was invited to Bologna to head both the Bentivoglio family and especially the Sedici as no other senior member onboard within that committee was interested in such a contested position. Some of Sante’s success came from the Bolognese familiar with ‘one-family’ leadership practiced in nearby cities (e.g. Este Ferrara, Visconti then Sforza Milan, Gonzaga Mantua, Malatesta Rimini, Medici Florence, etc.), and a significant part of his success and credibility came from his ties to the powerful city of Milan represented by his marriage to Genevra Sforza (concluded 1454). Another major component of his accomplishment came from the ratification of a formal political contract with Rome defined by certain agreements called Capitoli (1447); from that point forward some refer to Bologna’s government as a republic—but merely by contract.2 The unique and ambiguous nature of that Bolognese and Roman agreement (ushering in the period of governo misto or mixed government) forced local ambassadors to travel immediately to Rome for its re-confirmation with the investiture of each successive pope—so this renewal happened twice under Sante then seven more times under Giovanni II. Bologna’s government could further be understood as a governo condiviso (a shared government), a hybrid experiment in which the Sedici held some power but the pope in Rome ultimately managed the city. Despite those two governing frameworks, in the second half of the fifteenth century, Bologna began to function much like an independent court (signoria) as the Bentivoglio aspired for it to become the capital city of the region, modelling itself on how other important cities across Northern Italy functioned. Thanks to Sante’s natural leadership abilities and his ties to Florence and later Milan, Bologna became relatively independent and stable until Sante’s death, seventeen years after his arrival. By that time, Giovanni II, son of Bologna’s hero of libertas and great-grandson of Giovanni I, had grown into a man and was ready to become someone. Together with Genevra as his new wife, they greatly furthered the Bentivoglio cause, actively negotiating their image and reputation in numerous ways. They created the largest family in the city (and one of the largest in Italy) thanks to Genevra’s contribution of eighteen legitimate children (and Giovanni II’s additional contribution of roughly as many more illegitimates), and they successfully arranged for their children to marry into the most prestigious Italian families of their time. The couple continued the development and decoration of the greatest Bolognese family palace ever 2

De Benedictis (1995).

Introduc tion 

built, a two-acre complex along Strà San Donato (today Via Zamboni) adorned by the most skilled artists and artisans available. In addition, Giovanni II became the only Bolognese to obtain the right to coin money. Their distinctive sega (the family’s coat of arms: a trenchant red and gold saw) could be seen across the city on permanent structures as well as on paper versions posted on the homes of hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of openly bentivoleschi partisans. The family sponsored city-wide tournaments for the entertainment of the community while simultaneously displaying their own dominance, including the great tournament of San Petronio of October 1470 and reaching a visual and material peak at the teen wedding extravaganza of their son Annibale II and Lucrezia d’Este (January 1487). Both the tournament and Lucrezia’s entry parade (and many events sponsored over the final decades of the fifteenth century) entertained the Bolognese, making them feel like part of the Bentivoglio community and the great court culture of the era. The family performed such events, working hard to appear dominant, fully in charge, and representative of the largest political base possible. Furthermore, the family successfully fashioned themselves as descending from both a king (Enzo) and a country girl (Lucia) thus promoting their half European/ royal, half local/peasant roots. Their palace included expensive imported marble details and exclusive artistic masterpieces yet was fundamentally built out of locally fired brick from the area’s earthen resources. The children were married into some major ruling families across Italy but also into local Bolognese ones—as Giovanni II had offspring with his Sforza wife but also with multiple servant girls of his domestic staff. One of the best examples of their bicultural image comes from the commissioning at their main summer palace of an important fresco cycle—whose subject was not fantastic historical deeds or famous mythological stories—but instead featured the many steps behind the process of baking a loaf of bread (La storia del pane). In order to achieve their goals, the Bentivoglio tried hard to represent, associate with and please people from all walks of life. For those reasons and others, Giovanni II’s position of leadership in his city was fairly recognised, and his titles reflected his relatively certain position: quasi signore, para-signore, de facto signore, primo inter pares, primo cittadino, P.P., patriae princeps ac libertatis columen, crypto-signore, pseudo-principe, semi-signore, or oftentimes simply Signore—Lord—and even if that final title was perhaps the most commonly used, its sense of certainty remained misleading. On the other hand, and besides the various papal legates representing Rome and despite the many other powerful men of the Sedici, Giovanni II’s huge palace and the many Bentivoglio who filled it (and all of their eventual marriage partners and their offspring and extended families plus their enormous domestic staffs) strongly confirmed his position as the most powerful man in Bologna. He dominated his city politically, economically, socially, symbolically and visually for forty-three years, an unprecedented amount

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of time in a place that had been unscrupulously fought over for millennia. As great-grandson namesake of Bologna’s first signore and son of a hero, Giovanni II was also heir of the community’s longstanding aspiration toward civic libertas.3 For many he served as the incarnation of the potential eventual hope for libertas—as he personally represented Bologna’s ongoing aspirations despite heavy alternate claims by Rome and Milan. Bentivoglio Bologna could be considered closest in political form to nearby Medici Florence, both theoretically republican but strongly tied to one powerful leading family; although, unlike the Medici who controlled an independent banking empire, the Bentivoglio depended on income through tax collection and existed in an ambiguous limbo as a satellite of Rome. And unlike many other Northern Italian court cities like Ferrara or Mantua, Bologna was more open and diverse as a sophisticated university city as well as a hub for religious studies (thanks to the active monasteries of San Francesco and San Domenico) attracting students from across Europe and all while located on an essential thoroughfare that crossed and connected the peninsula. Genevra’s husbands played many roles on the Bolognese political scene, serving simultaneously as quasi courtly princes, chivalrous condottieri, figurehead puppets, and mere popolani because technically they were only Bolognese citizens. 4 Giovanni II alongside Genevra successfully led the Bentivoglio family for decades until, ironically, they became too powerful and were forced into exile when Pope Julius II himself headed a mission to destroy them (culminating in November 1506). After they fled, Julius organised a larger collective body of more acquiescent Bolognese patricians, a Senate, that would govern Bologna but answer more directly to him in Rome. Despite a brief restoration of Bentivoglio power led by Annibale II (May 1511– June 1512), answering to Rome has become Bologna’s fate ever since.5

Genevra among Women Just as Bologna was a community ambiguously defined by its mixed government and its de facto rulers, Genevra Sforza was in a position that had many unique 3 For more on the Bentivoglio de facto signoria, see especially Ady (1937); Orlandelli (1967); Sorbelli (1969); Bocchi (1970, 1971, 1976); Prodi (1982); Basile (1984); De Benedictis (1984, 1995); Robertson (2002); Zangheri and Capitani (2007), Blanshei (2018); Duranti (2018); for libertas, see Duranti (2018), p. 276. 4 Many have noted that the Bentivoglio functioned as part princes, part popolani; see Ady, p. 168; Furlotti, p. 139; Basile (1984), p. 10. 5 For Bolognese socio-political histories, see Ady; Berselli; Blanshei; Bocchi; De Benedictis; Dondarini; Duranti; Fasoli; Orlandelli; Prodi; Robertson; Terpstra; Zangheri and Capitani; and others, as listed in the Bibliography here below.

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facets. Her socio-political fluidity made her unique as she was born in unrecorded circumstances yet was eventually placed into the hub of a complicated web of the most elite Bolognese social and political structures. From childhood Genevra had been carefully groomed for an important negotiated position in marriage, and as she grew older, she would carefully invent herself within the Bentivoglio context over the course of her long adult life. At first Genevra shared common characteristics with illegitimate girls born into the Sforza and other leading Italian families although she remained in a particular sub-category with no dowry; she later shared commonalities with wives of various leaders of other oligarchies and republics, with women of families vying for more official power within the Papal State, with the whole body of patrician women in Bologna and with courtly women in other cities in which she and the Bentivoglio were most closely associated across Northern and Central Italy.6 She also shared similarities with any other wife and mother in Bologna, as she had been married, technically, to mere citizens. Early modern women in Bologna, like those across the peninsula, enjoyed significant influence in many spheres related to family life (as wives, mothers, advisors, intermediaries, mediators, elders, etc.) while they were simultaneously denied many political and legal rights. Italian noblewomen were considered powerful and important influencers based on the status of their birth families (and their ongoing relationships with them after marriage), their understanding and behaviour related to chastity and honour, the status of their husband’s family and the quantitative dowry that they brought into marriage, their capacity to develop and maintain important social circles and courtly networks that could serve their families, and their capacity to produce healthy male children. Despite those significant female powers enjoyed by the elite, like all women, the Bolognese were subject to their fathers (and later their husbands) as the paterfamilias ruled over his household in a patrilineal society and held legal power over fellow family members (patria potestas)—as most principles in regards to women and their judicial status derived directly from Roman law (a substantial part of the ius commune). Patrilocality after marriage was practiced—so women moved out of their natal homes, becoming part of their husbands’ families, and their children born into the relationship were legally his. Furthermore, there was often a significant age difference between spouses—so although women could influence their oftentimes older husbands, men held legal and much practical power over their younger wives who were often less-experienced in worldly ways. In f ifteenth-century (pre-Trent) Italy, marriage was not yet controlled by the Church—so the only requirement was 6 For similar Sforza women, see Daenens; Eiche; Webb. For similar Medici women, see Pernis and Adams; Salvadori; Tomas. For similar women within the Papal State, see Luchs; Murphy; Nico Ottaviani. For similar Bolognese women, see Kovesi Killerby; Muzzarelli; Terpstra.

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consent by the two parties involved (plus the legal age: twelve for girls, fourteen for boys); in reality consent was an afterthought since decisions ultimately made by male elders for the good of the family were the organising principles behind most marriages, especially for the ruling class. In Florence, women were appointed a formal legal guardian (mundualdus) in order to sign contracts, engage in legal proceedings or represent themselves in court; and in Bologna females were also under the guardianship of male relatives.7 So despite their social connections and their related potential (unquantifiable) ability to influence the men in their lives, women could not hold public office, participate in public affairs, earn an income by opening a workshop or enjoy the benef its of guild membership, or study at the university.8 Women were also tied to their quantifiable worth set in their dowry (their share in their father’s estate that determined their position in life and their marketability as potential wives), which they were not allowed to manage until they became widows; they were also quantified in material terms by the clothing and accessories that they were allowed to wear according to their class status determined by sumptuary legislation created in 1454. Women were also fundamentally tied to their bodies—as every woman in every pregnancy risked her life and was tied to sheer luck at the time of childbirth. Because the lives of married women often revolved around reproduction, from the time of marriage they lived at great risk and had to be seen as replaceable by husbands and families in need of children, especially sons. Elite Bolognese women thus created and influenced their children, organised aspects of their households, spent most of their lives within their homes according to respectable early modern norms, raised their children and influenced them and (to unquantifiable extents) arranged their children’s futures, and sometimes communicated through scribes with other elite friends and relatives. Ruling-class women also had the privilege of patronising artisans and artists; and they certainly enjoyed more material comforts than others but often lived far from their own mothers and female relations, their childhood homes, birth families, and natal cities. Into our era, many of Genevra’s blood relatives and relations through marriage have been the focus of study including Isabella d’Este, Beatrice d’Este, Eleonora d’Aragona, Lucrezia Borgia, Bianca Maria Visconti, Bona of Savoy, Caterina Sforza, Battista Sforza, Ippolita Maria Sforza, and others—and these works are part of a 7 Many thanks to Sara Cucini who provided me with a 1454 rubric reference (the 65th of the 4th book) to a Bolognese text establishing that unmarried women are under the guardianship of their male relatives: see ASBO, Comune-Governo, Statuti, Volume XVIII n. 51 (1454–1463) fols. 347v.–349v. 8 Although this book is set in a city featuring a major university, studying there was out of the question for females who would have been considered monstrous, utterly in disaccord with their role in life that idealised their chastity, modesty, piety and silence. Only in 1732 did a female, Laura Bassi, graduate from the University of Bologna.

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well-established field of early modern Italian women’s studies.9 Despite Genevra’s mixed background and the ambiguities in her life, Carolyn James explains that Arienti had been cautious not to group Genevra directly with other Italian court women while recognising that in reality she was very similar to them.10 Early works about courtly women laid foundations for further research and led to the possibility of addressing individual women within larger contexts and to a greater understanding of the complexity of the early modern elite family experience. Some of the most recent and innovative scholarship involving Italian patrician women has focused on groups of women and men, on courts and societies at large, on gendered power and spheres of influence, on the teamwork of ruling couples regarding art and material culture as well as politics and daily life, the use of piety by princely consorts to reinforce moral authority, and as participants in various diverse narratives and previously unaddressed topics.11 Genevra Sforza was not the only early modern Italian woman whose reputation changed over time—but her story might be one of the most unique in that its adherence to its characterisation from early modern legend survives into our times. Over the centuries many stories, rumours, gossip and misinformation has circulated about females in positions of power who were oftentimes feared, severely criticised, or associated with evil; and so elements of the history of Genevra’s image are similar to ones that have circulated around some others including Lucrezia Borgia, Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici and Catherine de’ Medici.12 Natalie Tomas summarises how most powerful females have stood: ‘criticisms of women in power are simply part of a continuing tradition of vilifying women of power who strove beyond the acceptable model of the charitable, unassuming queen [or other sort of ruler]’.13 On the other hand, images of women enduring the opposite fate have also been possible—some more neutral images of early modern women have changed for the better. Some have become known in hyperbolically positive fashions as heroines, mythical viragos and miraculous exceptions to their sex including Genevra’s own politically-active cousin, Caterina Sforza, whose image exploded after her death 9 For sample early monographs on Italian court women, see Arici; Bellonci; Cartwright; Chiappini; Pasolini dall’Onda; Terni de Gregory. For more recent works on these women, see Breisach; Mazzanti Bonvini; Hairston; Pizzagalli; Lubkin; King; Weisner. 10 James (1996), p. 85. 11 For a sample of recent materials on Italian court women, see the work (and the bibliographies) of Bourne; Cavalli; Cockram; De Vries; Ghirardo; Hurlburt; Laureati; Shemek (2005), (2017); Tomas; Welch. 12 For Lucrezia, see Felloni; Vancini; Laureati. For Alfonsina, see Tomas (2000), (2003); Reiss. For Catherine, see Sutherland; Knecht; Kruse; ffolliott. Genevra’s story, in comparison to those of each of these three women in particular, will be treated extensively in Chapter Six here. 13 Tomas (2000), p. 84; Shemek (1998). For powerful and/or educated early modern women as monstrous, see Grafton and Jardine. The Genevra legends reached the levels of stories about Vittoria Accorambuoni (1557–1585), Bianca Cappello (1548–1587), and Beatrice Cenci (1577–1599).

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although she had already been famous during her lifetime; Genevra’s relation through marriage, Isabella d’Este, whose reputation became exaggerated within the sector of culture and politics; and the Venetian Queen of Cyprus, Caterina Corner, who became known as a famous patroness and beauty thanks to Pietro Bembo’s Gli Asolani.14 And the case of Genevra’s aunt, Duchess Bianca Maria Visconti, is also unique: she was once a powerful woman, loved and respected by milanesi—and yet her story has remained remarkably constant in time, a fate nearly unknown to the reputations of many other important early modern women.15

Much Bentivoglio History—But Not Many Bentivoglio Histories As a result of the Bentivoglio lack of interest in recording their own history in their times, we never read the family’s understanding (factual, idealised or entirely fabricated) of how they saw their own past, how they understood or justified their position in their era, or how they wished to be remembered. In the fifteenth century the Bentivoglio do not seem to have felt ready to use history to serve their present. Although he had a printing shop under his roof, Giovanni II never commissioned a version of his life printed there—nor did he hire Arienti or anyone else to write his biography although Arienti was often nearby (living across a narrow street from Palazzo Bentivoglio), impoverished and in search of courtly writing commissions.16 The Bentivoglio lack of interest in having their family history written down in no way implies their lack of interest and awareness of their own past. On the contrary, the Bentivoglio were perhaps too aware of their past and what it implied. They had illegitimate ancestors, multiple questionable family lines and narratives, they never ruled with granted titles (except for one year) during the entire fifteenth century, and nearly all Bentivoglio men came to tragic ends at the hands of enemies. Even Genevra, Sante’s (and Bologna’s) prized Milanese bride, had major flaws as an illegitimate girl with no dowry; and as Giovanni II’s wife, her position as his sexually experienced older aunt-turned-wife and still with no dowry, looked odd, to say the least. Any of the above elements would have been highly questionable (and unavoidable) in a formally composed family history. As proof of his understanding of his family’s sketchy past, Giovanni II wished to raise up his family in his own time—and perhaps one day creatively refashion his family’s past—but in the meantime he focused fully on shaping his present. His 14 For Caterina Sforza see De Vries, pp. 236–67; Breisach, p. 256; Hairston; Brogi; Ravaglia; Pasolini. For Isabella d’Este, see Kolsky (1984); Reiss and Wilkins (2001); Shemek (2017); Bourne; Bellonci. For Caterina Corner, see Buenger Robbert. 15 Lubkin, pp. 151, 246. 16 See James (2002), pp. 13–24.

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own multiple mottos ‘NUNC MIHI’ (‘now is my time’), ‘SPES MEA’ and ‘HIC OF’ (the former ‘my hope’, the latter a corruption of the German ich hoffe, ‘I hope’), ‘SIC MENS EST ANIMUS’ (‘the mind is the soul’ or ‘it is in my mind’), and ‘UNITAS FORTIOR, DIVISIO FRAGILIS’ (‘unity [is] stronger, division fragile’) all distill his history-related sentiments.17 But by commissioning no history of their own, the Bentivoglio risked leaving their family traces and image for posterity in the hands of fortuna. Due to their circumstances of late 1506 onwards, the family was in fact forced to leave the interpretation of their past and its fashioning to Bolognese historians (and non-partisans) who remained in town after their exile—and then to Bolognese (and later foreign) historian strangers who did not begin to take them into consideration for several centuries after their Bolognese period. Apart from contemporary manuscript documentation mostly left un-consulted (yet carefully preserved) in various archives, as the centuries passed some histories have been written and published about the Bentivoglio. The Bentivoglio feature prominently in the monumental synthesising work of Fra Cherubino Ghirardacci (in manuscript form from the 1590s, published in 1932) followed by a biography of Giovanni II by Count Giovanni Gozzadini (published 1839).18 Gina Fasoli published much about early modern Bologna for decades, including an illustrated booklet, I Bentivoglio (1936), that addresses their political, artistic and cultural issues.19 Cecilia M. Ady led the way in English with The Bentivoglio of Bologna: A Study in Despotism (1937), which remains a reliable scholarly study of many aspects of the political and cultural history of the family; that same year Titina Strano published on Genevra Sforza, but grounded her version in popular legends.20 Gianfranco Orlandelli addressed early modern Bolognese politics, government and finance that necessarily underlines much about the Bentivoglio (1967).21 The director of Bologna’s famous Archiginnasio Library, Albano Sorbelli, also worked on a rendition of the family’s history (written pre–1943, published 1969).22 17 These mottos can be seen in numerous places; for example, nunc mihi is on a Bentivoglio cinquedea dagger at the Museo Civico Medioevale (Bologna) and was also used at the time of Annibale II’s wedding (1487); spes mea is in the Palm Room at the Bentivoglio country palace at Ponte Poledrano; Hic of was described as within Palazzo Bentivoglio by Arienti in Hymneo Bentivoglio, c. 11r; unitas fortior, divisio fragilis is in the courtyard at Ponte Poledrano and on the ceramic floor of the Bentivoglio chapel at San Giacomo; various other Latin mottos (brevi) were stitched into the clothing worn at Annibale II’s and Lucrezia d’Este’s wedding (1487); see my Chapter Three here. Another important motto, ‘per amore tutto bene voglio soffrire’ (‘for love, I want to suffer everything well’) remains more ambiguous—seen on the Catastro Croce at ASFE, on a coffannetto at the Museo Civico Medioevale (Bologna), and on a door of the Sala Grande within Palazzo Bentivoglio, as reported in Arienti’s Hymeneo Bentivoglio. 18 Ghirardacci; Gozzadini. 19 Fasoli (1936). 20 Ady; Strano. 21 Orlandelli. 22 Sorbelli.

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The second half of the twentieth century saw more publications in the field of Bentivoglio studies. Francesca Bocchi contributed a pioneer account of the family’s economic patrimony at the time of Genevra Sforza’s brief widowhood, Il patrimonio bentivolesco alla metà del Quattrocento (1970), as well as many other publications related to the economic and political position of the family.23 Bruno Basile edited a collection of articles about the Bentivoglio quasi-court in his Bentivolorum magnificentia (1984) that opens with an important article by Angela De Benedictis questioning official Bentivoglio title and status; also within that volume Paolo Fazion examines writing by Filippo Beroaldo for the marriage of Annibale II Bentivoglio to Lucrezia d’Este, and Basile himself treats Arienti’s description of their nearby country estate, Zardin viola.24 Basile (together with Stefano Scioli) has recently returned to publish on the 1487 wedding.25 Although the field of Bentivoglio history continues to remain fairly small, several more important contributions include the work of Barbara Furlotti and Anna Maria Trombetti Budriesi on the family’s main country estate at Ponte Poledrano (now called Bentivoglio);26 Georgia Clarke on Giovanni II’s construction of his civic and personal magnificence and Randi Klebanoff on him as Sant’Agricola on the arca of San Domenico—both part of a collection of articles on Bologna and its subordinate yet negotiated position with Rome in a special volume edited by Nicholas Terpstra (1999).27 David J. Drogan has added much to our understanding of the Bentivoglio artistic agenda tied to patronage within San Giacomo and the family palace (2004 onwards).28 Carolyn James’ article about Arienti’s rendition of the 1487 Bentivoglio-d’Este wedding celebration analyses fascinating details within Palazzo Bentivoglio (1997); her monograph on Arienti and a subsequent publication of his letters (1996 and 2002) both carefully address one writer’s literary path while client of the Bentivoglio and d’Este.29 Stephen Kolsky has widely published on various aspects of the early modern books about famous Italian women, courts, and courtiers, and often addresses Arienti’s Gynevera de le clare donne (1992–2005).30 Ian Robertson’s work on Bolognese politics and Roman papal concerns under Pope Paul II brilliantly analyses the actions of the Sedici and includes much on Giovanni II in particular (2002).31 His work together with that of Paolo Prodi, Angela De 23 Bocchi. 24 Basile (1984). 25 Basile and Stefano Scioli (2014). 26 Furlotti (1994); Trombetti Budriesi (2006). 27 Clarke; Klebanoff; Terpstra; and Terpstra has since also made other major contributions to our understanding of early modern Bologna. 28 Drogin. 29 James. 30 Kolsky. 31 Robertson.

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Benedictis and Tommaso Duranti represent the finest detailed studies of Bolognese politics of the fifteenth century. Paolo Prodi has investigated the Bologna-Rome legal and political relationship focusing on the temporal power of the papacy (1982).32 De Benedictis has made major contributions in the fields of political and legal studies, focusing on Bologna’s complex relationship with Rome (1984 onwards), including her 1995 Repubblica per contratto and more recent work treats Julius II’s takeover of Bologna and the fall of the Bentivoglio (2004).33 Duranti has focused instead on questions regarding Bologna’s libertas and on diplomacy among many other related topics (2007 onwards).34 Finally, Aldino Monti has contributed a lengthy multi-faceted article about Bologna’s long fifteenth century that covers many topics related to Bologna under the Bentivoglio (2007).35 Most recently, Gian Mario Anselmi, Angela De Bendictis and Nicholas Terpstra organised an exciting conference called Bologna: Cultural Crossroads (Bologna, 2011) featuring recent Anglo-American scholarship and yielding a collection of scholarly articles.36 A Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Bologna (2018), edited by Sarah Rubin Blanshei, also offers essays in English about Bologna’s past and is an excellent summary of the current state of Bolognese studies across the board; her ‘Introduction’ to the series is our most current and thorough historiographical essay on early modern Bolognese studies and is essential reading for anyone interested in studying the city.37

Why Recover Genevra’s Story? It is interesting to consider how and why Genevra’s story has persisted for so long in Bologna, la dotta, home of Europe’s first university specialising in the highly complex and detailed study of facts and interpretations of facts behind canon law and civil law—which have strongly represented part of the city’s core identity for nearly one millennium already. The critical thinking skills of the Bolognese brought great fame to the city, as they still do. Since the eleventh century when the university was founded, the city has boasted a long tradition revolving around advanced studies, famous professors and a wealthy, thriving Latin-speaking pan-European university community—and all part of a strong and uniquely male cultural identity (until relatively recently when women were legally allowed to enrol and study there 32 Prodi. 33 De Benedictis. 34 Duranti. 35 Monti. 36 Anselmi, et al. 37 Blanshei, pp. 1–25.

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too, from 1876). In that same city, a gendered story rife with misinformation and miseducation representative of a strain of patriarchal and misogynistic thinking has developed and thrived for over half of a millennium. Nobody within or beyond Bologna’s scholarly community set out to critically review the case of one of the best known and most exaggeratedly construed females from one of the city’s most famous eras—the Renaissance; and the work of those who participated in the slandering of Genevra (or simply in the repetition of stories) has been left unchecked. Misrepresentations of Genevra have grown into the twenty-first century despite decades of revisionist work on much early modern women’s history, although we are well into fourth-wave feminism as a global movement, and besides the fact that Bologna was considered to have been a city where at least some early modern women excelled and were believed to have enjoyed certain greater advantages when compared to females of all other Italian cities. The strong Bolognese scholarly tradition alone makes one question how one woman got caught up in unscholarly tales invented and propagated in the most erudite of European cities. With these themes in mind, this book investigates false histories invented and recycled about a female historical figure. It traces the development of them and serves as an explanation as to how they came about, how they survived for so long, and why one woman has been so detested in the local historiography. It is a study of historical facts and the repeating of inventions until they nearly became ‘facts’ as part of a papal-led and Bolognese-supported damnatio memoriae campaign. This book brings two main points forward: it is a fact-driven biography of an important early modern Italian woman who has never been treated in a scholarly fashion. It is based on contemporary documentation uncovered in masses of material housed in over thirty archives and libraries. It recounts the story of one of the relatively few people of fifteenth-century Bologna whose individual biography is able to be written in the first place thanks to surviving contemporary documentation. It contributes to our understanding of a unique elite woman and her participation in marriage, family and socio-civic life of Renaissance Italy that can be compared to the lives (and histories) of some of Genevra’s relatives and acquaintances (named above). It also adds to our understanding of a woman’s place in early modern Bologna—an understudied city when compared to Florence, Venice or Rome—one with different politics, and one where it has been claimed that women had greater opportunity. There are definitely some unusual parts to Genevra’s story and some gaps: her birth records have not surfaced, and we do not know who her mother was. She was married twice into the same family and never had a dowry. She died in exile and has no death marker. Palazzo Bentivoglio, her home and Bologna’s grandest fifteenth-century palace was destroyed—completely razed to the ground. Although much from the palace was saved or has otherwise survived elsewhere, the loss of their enormous residence promoted the general idea that few traces survive about the

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family. Beliefs continue to circulate about how little exists about Genevra or other Bentivoglio in the archives due to the loss of the family’s chancery records; however, the Gonzaga for example kept two-way records of their correspondence with the Bentivoglio; and even the surviving one-way correspondence, as in the case with the Sforza, can yield significant findings. The Bentivoglio ‘guasto’ (the enormous rubble heap left after everything valuable or salvageable had been removed from the dismantled and destroyed palace, and as depicted on Bolognese maps drawn from 1507 until the eighteenth century when the Teatro Comunale was built upon parts of its foundations) lives on in la via del Guasto and the Giardino del Guasto; but the word ‘guasto’ itself, referring to something ruined and destroyed, does not attract positive attention or make one believe there could be much worthy Bentivoglio material available to study. Genevra was also left unstudied due to inconvenience: it has been difficult to study the life of someone whose details are often fragmentary or embedded in other dense (and often un-inventoried) archival materials; and after the Bentivoglio were forced to flee to numerous locations across Northern Italy, each taking certain items with them and corresponding from a variety of locations, traces about Genevra’s circumstances have been spread thinly and across many archives. These facts and the negativity surrounding Genevra in the Bolognese historiography surely turned off a lot of potential historian investigators: who would want to study such a ‘negative’ and ‘un-researchable’ person? Overall Genevra’s historical past and creative posthumous situation force us to consider the roles played by patriarchy as well as fortuna across history—including the circumvention of her history despite archival documentation. This book therefore offers a revisionist explanation that strives to report about and analyse the life story of one person in the past—and it shows how one person’s life has necessarily been tied up with the lives and histories of many others: that of her father and uncle (the duke of Milan), her two husbands (Sante and Giovanni II Bentivoglio), her many children/grandchildren/stepchildren, the Bentivoglio family at large, Pope Julius II, the city of Bologna and its place within the Papal State, the history of gendered relations between Renaissance Italian women and men, and the history of the Italian family and of early modern women in relation to it. This text builds on the Bolognese scholarship mentioned above and begins by introducing Genevra Sforza as an historical figure explored in a variety of ways. The first chapter gives us an idea of how she was seen by her contemporaries—and is based on a wide variety of fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century archival sources—including contemporary public information recorded in chronicles, miscellaneous fifteenth-century publications and art. Chapter Two stems from an analysis of correspondence between the Bentivoglio and the Sforza, now carefully preserved in Milan. It focuses on the private, behind-the-scenes details of her two forced marriages to Bentivoglio men and the role played by her manipulating uncle,

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Duke Francesco Sforza. Chapter Three explores Genevra over the course of many years as a loyal wife and prolific mother (one of the most prolific of early modern Italy) and how she and especially Giovanni II (and his own additional brood of illegitimates) organised the lives of so many children for the progressive good of the family. Information on these children stems from Bolognese baptismal records and other contemporary sources leading to further investigations in archives and libraries across Italy. Chapter Four analyses Genevra’s correspondence with Italian courtly families, especially with the Gonzaga in Mantua, yielding information about Genevra’s role and understanding of herself, her family and her staff; Genevra’s letters were found among thousands of letters exchanged and then examined in context. Chapter Five looks at how Genevra and the Bentivoglio were forced out of Bologna and what became of them thereafter—in multiple locations—until her death shortly afterward. Chapter Six stands alone as it explores the development of legends invented about her that have been snowballing since the time of her exile and death. What could one person have done to merit such a reputation for so long? How should we understand Genevra’s life in contrast to the legends repeated about her? How do untruths enter our understanding of the past, and why do we allow them to continue to do so, especially in relation to women? What was Genevra’s life like, and what can we learn about it and from it? These are some of the questions that drove my research for years and whose answers are the heart of this book.

Bibliography Ady, Cecilia M. The Bentivoglio of Bologna: A Study in Despotism. London: Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford, 1937. Anselmi, Gian Mario, Angela De Benedictis and Nicholas Terpstra, eds. Cultural Crossroads from the Medieval to the Baroque: Recent Anglo-American Scholarship. Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2013. Antenhofer, Christina. ‘Il potere delle gentildonne: l’esempio di Barbara di Brandenburgo e Paula Gonzaga’ in Letizia Arcangeli and Susanna Peyronel, eds., Donne di potere nel Rinascimento (Rome: Viella, 2008), pp. 67–87. Arici, Zelmira. Bona di Savoia, duchessa di Milano (1499–1503). Torino: G.B. Paravia, 1935. Basile, Bruno, ed. Bentivolorum Magnificentia. Principe e cultura a Bologna nel Rinascimento. Rome: Bulzoni, 1984. Basile, Bruno and Stefano Scioli. Le nozze dei Bentivoglio (1487): cronisti e poeti. Napoli: La scuola di Pitagora, 2014. Bellonci, Maria. Lucrezia Borgia la sua vita e i suoi tempi. Milan: Mondadori, 1939. Bernhardt, Elizabeth Louise. Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics and Reputation in Renaissance Bologna. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2007. Berselli, Aldo. Storia della Emilia Romagna, 3 vols. Bologna: University Press, 1976–1980. Blanshei, Sarah Rubin, ed. A Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Bologna. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Bocchi, Francesca. Atlante Storico di Bologna. Bologna: Grafis, 1997.

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Bocchi, Francesca. ‘I Bentivoglio da cittadini a signori (con albero genealogico)’ in AMR, n.s. vol. 22 (1971): 43–64. Bocchi, Francesca. Il patrimonio bentivolesco alla metà del Quattrocento. Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1970. Bocchi, Francesca. ‘Il potere economico dei Bentivoglio alla fine della loro signoria’ in Antonio Ferri and Giancarlo Roversi, eds., Il carrobbio: rivista di studi bolognesi, anno 2 (1976): 77–89. Bourne, Mary Harris. Out from the Shadow of Isabella: The Artistic Patronage of Francesco II Gonzaga, Fourth Marquis of Mantua (1484–1519). Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1997. Bourne, Molly. Francesco II Gonzaga: The Soldier Prince as Patron. Rome: Bulzoni, 2008. Breisach, Ernst. Caterina Sforza: A Renaissance Virago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Brogi, Cecilia. Caterina Sforza: la più bella, la più audace e fiera, la più gloriosa donna d’Italia, pari se non superiore ai grandi condottieri del suo tempo. Arezzo: Alberti, 1996. Buenger Robbert, Louise. ‘Caterina Corner Queen of Cyprus’ in J.R. Brink, Female Scholars: A Tradition of Learned Women before 1800 (Montreal: Eden Press Women’s Publications), pp. 24–35. Cartwright, Julia. Beatrice d’Este Duchess of Milan, 1475–1497: A Study of the Renaissance. New York: E.P. Dutton and London: J.M. Dent, 1903. Cartwright, Julia. Isabella d’Este. Marchioness of Mantua, 1474–1539: A Study of the Renaissance. 2 vols. New York: Dutton and London: J. Murray, 1903. Cavalli, Jennifer A. ‘The Learned Consort: Learning, Piety, and Female Political Authority in Northern Courts’ in Nicholas Scott Baker and Brian Jeffrey Maxson, eds., After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy (Toronto: CRRS, 2015), pp. 173–192. Chiappini, Luciano. Eleonora d’Aragona, prima duchessa di Ferrara. Rovigo: STER, 1956. Clarke, Georgia, ‘Magnif icence and the City: Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Architecture in FifteenthCentury Bologna’ in Nicholas Terpstra, ed., Renaissance Studies (Special Issue): Civic Self-Fashioning in Renaissance Bologna, vol. 13, nr. 4 (1999): 397–411. Cockram, Sarah D. P. Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga: Power Sharing at the Italian Renaissance Court. London: Routledge, 2016. Daenens, Francine. ‘L’erudito e la concubina. Indagini su Pacif ica Samperoli’ in Studi Pesaresi, vol. 7 (2019): 51–86. Daenens, Francine. ‘La mancata dote di Camilla Sforza d’Aragona’ in Studi Pesaresi, vol. 4 (2016): 7–45. De Benedictis, Angela. ‘Quale corte per quale signoria? A proposito di organizzazione e immagine di potere durante la preminenza di Giovanni II Bentivoglio’ in Basile, ed., Bentivolorum magnificentia, (Bologna: Bulzoni, 1984), pp. 13–33. De Benedictis, Angela. Repubblica per contratto. Bologna: una città europea nello Stato della Chiesa. Bologna: Il mulino, 1995. De Benedictis, Angela. Una guerra d’Italia, una resistenza di popolo: Bologna 1506. Bologna: Il mulino, 2004. De Vries, Joyce. Caterina Sforza and the Art of Appearances: Gender, Art and Culture in Early Modern Italy. Ashgate: Surrey, UK and Burlington, VT: 2010. Dondarini, Rolando, Carlo De Angelis and Francesca Bocchi. Atlante storico delle città italiane: EmiliaRomagna, vol. 3. Da una crisi all’altra (secoli XIV–XVII). Bologna: Grafis, 1995. Drogin, David J. ‘Art, Patronage, and Civic Identities in Renaissance Bologna’ in Charles Rosemberg, ed., The Court Cities of Northern Italy: Milan, Parma, Piacenza, Mantua, Ferrara, Bologna, Urbino, Pesaro and Rimini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 244–324. Drogin, David J. ‘Bologna’s Bentivoglio Family and Its Artists: Overview of a Quattrocento Court in the Making’ in Stephen J. Campbell, ed., Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity 1300–1550 (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum distributed by the University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 72–90. Duranti, Tommaso. Il carteggio di Gerardo Cerruti, oratore sforzesco a Bologna, 1470–74. Bologna: Clueb, 2007. Duranti, Tommaso. ‘Libertas, Oligarchy, Papacy: Government in the Quattrocento’ in Sarah Blanshei, ed., A Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Bologna (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 260–288.

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Eiche, Sabine. ‘Towards a Study of the “Famiglia” of the Sforza Court at Pesaro’ in Renaissance and Reformation, n.s. 9 (1985): 79–103. Fasoli, Gina. I Bentivoglio in Nuovissima enciclopedia monografica illustrata (Florence: Barbera, Alfani e Venturi, 1936): 1–65. Fasoli, Gina. ‘La storia delle storie di Bologna’ in Atti e Memorie della Deputazione per la Storia di Romagna, n.s., 17–19 (1969). Fazion, Paolo. ‘“Nuptiae bentivolorum”. La città in festa nel commento di Filippo Beroaldo’, in Bruno Basile, ed., Bentivolorum magnificentia (Bologna: Bulzoni, 1984), pp. 115–133. Felloni, Marco. ‘Lucrezia tra mito e storia’ in Il mito di Lucrezia Borgia nell’età contemporanea: atti del convegno nazionale di studi (Ferrara: Liberty House, 2003). ffolliott, Sheila. ‘Exemplarity and Gender: Three Lives of Queen Catherine de’ Medici’ in Thomas F. Mayer and D. R. Woolf, eds., The Rhetorics of Life-Writing in Early Modern Europe (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 321–340. Furlotti, Barbara. ‘Il ciclo delle storie del pane e i Ruralium commodorum libri: una proposta per una lettura parallela’ in Schede umanistiche, vol. 2 (1994): 139–163. Ghirardacci, Fra Cherubino. Della historia di Bologna: parte terza [1426–1509)], Albano Sorbelli, ed., in Rerum italicarum scriptores, vol. 33, pt. 1. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1932. Ghirardo, Diane Yvonne. ‘Lucrezia Borgia as Entrepreneur’ in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 1 (2008): 53–91. Gozzadini, Giovanni. Memorie per la vita di Giovanni II Bentivoglio. Bologna: Tipi delle belle arti, 1839. Hairston, Julia L. ‘Skirting the Issue: Machiavelli’s Caterina Sforza’ in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 3 (2000): 687–712. Holly Hurlburt. The Dogaressa of Venice, 1200–1500: Wife and Icon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. James, Carolyn. Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti: A Literary Career. Florence: Olschki, 1996. James, Carolyn. The Letters of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti (1481–1510). Florence: Olschki, 2002. James, Carolyn. ‘The Palazzo Bentivoglio in 1487’ in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, vol. 41, nos. 1–2 (1997): 188–194. King, Margaret L. Women of the Renaissance. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Klebanoff, Randi. ‘Sacred Magnificence: Civic Intervention and the Arca of San Domenico in Bologna’ in Nicholas Terpstra, ed., Civic Self-Fashioning in Renaissance Bologna (Special Issue): Renaissance Studies vol. 13, no. 4 (December 1999), pp. 412–429. Knecht, R.J. Catherine de’ Medici. London and New York: Longman, 1998. Kolsky, Stephen. ‘Bending the Rules: Marriage in Renaissance Collections of Biographies of Famous Women’ in Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, 1300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 227–248. Kolsky, Stephen. Courts and Courtiers in Renaissance Northern Italy. Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Kolsky, Stephen. The Genealogy of Women: Studies in Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris. New York: P. Lang, 2003. Kolsky, Stephen. The Ghost of Boccaccio: Writings on Famous Women in Renaissance Italy. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Kolsky, Stephen. ‘Images of Isabella d’Este’ in Italian Studies, vol. 39 (1984): 47–62. Kolsky, Stephen. ‘Men Framing Women: Sabadino degli Arienti’s Gynevera de le clare donne Re-examined’ in Mirna Cicioni and Nicole Prunster, eds., Visions and Revisions: Women in Italian Culture (Providence and Oxford: BERG, 1992), pp. 27–40. Kovesi Killerby, Catherine. ‘“Heralds of a Well-Instructed Mind”: Nicolosa Sanuti’s Defense of Women and Their Clothes’ in Renaissance Studies, vol. 13, no.3 (1999): 255–282. Kovesi Killerby, Catherine. Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200–1500. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Kruse, Elaine. ‘The Blood-Stained Hands of Catherine de Médicis’ in Carole Levin and Patricia Ann Sullivan, eds., Political Rhetoric, Power and Renaissance Women (Albany, Ny: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 138–155.

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Laureati, Laura, ed. Lucrezia Borgia. Ferrara: Ferrara arte editore, 2002. Laureati, Laura, ed. Il mito di Lucrezia Borgia nell’età contemporanea: atti del convegno nazionale di studi. Ferrara: Liberty House, 2003. Lubkin, Gregory. A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Luchs, Alison. ‘A Note on Raphael’s Perugian Patrons’, in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 125 (1983): 29–31. Mazzanti Bonvini, Marinella. Battista Sforza Montefeltro: una “principessa” nel Rinascimento italiano. Urbino: Quattroventi, 1993. Monti, Aldino. ‘Il “lungo” Quattrocento bolognese: agricolture, sviluppo, istituzioni’ in Zangheri and Capitani, eds. Storia di Bologna, vol. 2 (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2007), pp. 1043–1088. Murphy, Caroline P. The Pope’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice della Rovere. London: Faber, 2004. Muzzarelli, Maria Giuseppina and Antonella Campanini, eds. Disciplinare il lusso: la legislazione suntuaria in Italia e in Europa tra Medioevo ed Età moderna. Rome: Carocci, 2003. Nico Ottaviani, Maria Grazia. ‘“Nobile sorella mia honoranda”: società e scritture femminili: alcuni esempi perugini’ in Casagrande, ed., Donne tra medioevo ed età moderna in Italia (Perugia: Morlacchi editore, 2004), pp. 135–162. Orlandelli, Gianfranco, ed. Bologna: comune, 1116–1506. Reggimento, 1506–1796. Milano: Giuffrè, 1967. Pasolini dall’Onda, Pietro Desiderio. Caterina Sforza. Rome: Loescher, 1893. Pernis, Maria Grazia and Laurie Adams. Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici and the Medici Family in the Fifteenth Century. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. Pizzagalli, Daniela. La signora di Milano: vita e passioni di Bianca Maria Visconti. Milan: Rizzoli, 2000. Prodi, Paolo. Il sovrano pontefice: un corpo e due anime, la monarchia papale nella prima Età moderna. Bologna: Il mulino, 1982. Ravaglia, Francesco Luigi. Donne guerriere in Forlì. Forlì: A. Raffaelli, 1959. Reiss, Sheryl E. ‘Widow, Mother, Patron of Art: Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici’ in Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins, eds., Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy (Kirksville (MO): Truman State University Press, 2001), pp. 125–157. Reiss, Sheryl E. and David G. Wilkins, eds. Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy. Kirksville (MO): Truman State University Press, 2001. Robertson, Ian. Tyranny under the Mantle of St. Peter: Pope Paul II and Bologna. Belgium: Brepols, 2002. Salvadori, Patrizia. ed. Lettere [di Lucrezia Tornabuoni]. Florence: Olschki, 1993. Shemek, Deanna. IDEA (Isabella d’Este Archive). http://isabelladeste.web.unc.edu/ (accessed 21 November 2018). Shemek, Deanna, ‘In Continuous Expectation: Isabella d’Este’s Epistolary Desire’ in Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek, Phaethon’s Children: The Este Court and its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara (Tempe, Az: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), pp. 269–300. Shemek, Deanna, translator and editor. Isabella d’Este: Selected Letters. Toronto and Tempe: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies / Iter Academic Press and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017. Sorbelli, Albano. Marsilio Bacci, ed. I Bentivoglio: signori di Bologna. Bologna: Cappelli, 1969 and 1987. Strano, Titina. Ginevra Bentivoglio e la fine di una signoria. Milano: Fratelli Treves, 1937. Sutherland, N.M. ‘Caterine de Medici: The Legend of the Wicked Italian Queen’ in Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 9, no. 2 (1978): 45–56. Terni de Gregory, Winifred. Bianca Maria Visconti, duchessa di Milano. Bergamo: Istituto italiano d’arti grafiche, 1940. Terpstra, Nicholas, ed. Civic Self-Fashioning in Renaissance Bologna (Special Issue): Renaissance Studies vol. 13, no. 4 (December 1999). Terpstra, Nicholas. ‘Women in the Brotherhood: Gender, Class and Politics in Renaissance Bolognese Confraternities’ in Renaissance and Reformation, new series vol. 14, no. 3 or old series vol. 26, no. 3 (1990): 193–212.

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Tomas, Natalie. ‘Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici and the “Problem” of a Female Ruler in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence’ in Renaissance Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (2000): 70–90. Tomas, Natalie. The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence. Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Trombetti Budriesi, ed. Il castello di Bentivoglio: storia di terre, di svaghi, di pane tra Medioevo e Novecento. Florence: Edifir, 2006. Vancini, Gianna. Lucrezia Borgia nell’opera di cronisti, letterati e poeti suoi contemporanei alla corte di Ferrara: studi nel V centenario delle nozze di Lucrezia Borgia e don Alfonso d’Este. Ferrara: Este, 2002. Webb, Jennifer. ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: Varano and Sforza Women of the Marche’ in Katherine A. McIver, ed., Wives, Widows, Mistresses, and Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible through Art and Patronage (London, Routledge, 2016), pp. 13–31. Weisner, Merry. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993 and 2000. Welch, Evelyn. ‘The Art of Expenditure: The Court of Paola Malatesta Gonzaga in Fifteenth-Century Mantua’ in Molly Bourne, ed., Renaissance Studies, vol. 16, no. 3 (2002): 306–317. Welch, Evelyn. ‘Between Milan And Naples: Ippolita Maria Sforza, Duchess of Calabria’ in David Abulafia, ed., The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–95 (Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1995), pp. 123–136. Zangheri, Renato and Ovidio Capitani, eds. Storia di Bologna: Bologna nel Medioevo (Vol. 2). Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2007.

1.

Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507): Lost and Found in Renaissance Italy

Abstract: Contemporary documentation uncovered in numerous archives, libraries and museums testifies that Genevra Sforza (ca. 1441–1507) lived her life and fashioned her public identity as a traditional Italian courtly figure strongly supporting the Bentivoglio cause in Bologna. Duke Francesco Sforza placed her there as wife of two consecutive de facto signori, Sante then Giovanni II; and as Bentivoglio consort, Genevra lived at the apex of society, contributing to her family and city in positive and traditional ways. Facts about Genevra uncovered in a wide variety of contemporary sources concur that she acted appropriately for her gender, social condition and era, and that she was liked by contemporaries—in contrast to legends repeated about her in Bolognese historiography for 500 years. Keywords: Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio, women’s biography, Bologna history, early modern biography, fifteenth-century Italy, Renaissance Italy

Introduction The Bentivoglio dominated Bologna on many levels, and the Bolognese saw them involved in all sorts of projects and events. Due to their mere de facto status, the Bentivoglio made an extra effort to be noticed in order to gain fame, power and security. As the faces of the Sedici, Sante and Giovanni II carefully calculated their behaviours, and their names and actions fill the pages of the city’s chronicles as they struggled to balance theoretical political subordination to the pope with the enjoyment of significant civic power and independence. For decades they walked a fine line amidst other family heads vying for power and sometimes invidiously operating in their shadows. Giovanni II worked especially hard to propagandise his position as the wealthiest and most powerful man in Bologna, always hoping to move beyond de facto status. Consequently, chroniclers witnessed his deeds

Bernhardt, E.L., Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726849_ch01

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and wrote about him more often than any other man in town. The woman most often mentioned within the body of Bolognese chronicle literature was also a Bentivoglio: Genevra Sforza. What was important to most chroniclers boiled down to public, political events: marriage alliance information and related festivities for leading families, military feats, arrivals and departures of ambassadors, deaths of members of the Anziani, and information that reached Bologna from afar about popes, cardinals and various rulers. Voices spoke in awe of the great order of certain events, and most showed an intense interest in quantitative detail. Taking the norm for granted, the majority neglected to record much about the status quo, which would have meant writing about popular culture and the lives of most people. Bolognese chroniclers were an eclectic group of males interested in current events, and their works range from a handful of lines on a single page to dense writing that fills up several thousand double-sided folio sheets. These Bolognese loved their city and were fascinated by what went on in it—they eagerly awaited news that became known to them through personal eyewitness experiences and the outcomes of group exchanges in Piazza Maggiore, the locus of Bolognese intelligence back then—and into our own times (if we discount virtual media platforms). After hours spent socialising in public, once back home at their desks, these steadfast writers holding quill pens with drippy ink filled their pages with history’s raw materials: myriads of details of public events and out-of-the-ordinary changes to the quotidian civic life they experienced in piazza.1 Some chroniclers were plain folk including a construction worker (Nadi), minor clerics (church rector Anelle, church custodian Pillizoni), a businessmen working as a money lender (Codibò), a shopkeeper selling perfumes (Gengini), and at least one notary (Mamelini). One of the longest and most fascinating was written by an illegitimate son of an old notarial family (Tuate), and another intriguing massive one was penned by a man descended from an ancient noble family (Ubaldini). Some included illustrations of events in the margins of their pages. These Bolognese history-minded souls were different from commissioned humanist historians in Florence, Milan, Naples, Rome, Venice and other cities where rulers oftentimes had their city’s histories created for their own needs.2 Despite the 1 For signed manuscript chronicles, see Ubaldini; Gengini; Tuate; Nadi; Barbiere; Mamelini; Bianchetti; Anelle; Pillizoni; Zili. For anonymous manuscript chronicles, see the nine anonymous chronicles listed under ‘Anon’. (and with generically named manuscripts) in the bibliography here below. For published chronicles, see Codibò; Nadi; Varignana; Borselli; Tuata. For overviews of Bolognese chronicle sources, see Quaquarelli; Bastia and Bolognini; Pezzarossa; Sorbelli (1900). 2 Francesco Sforza manipulated contemporary events (‘history’) for the creation of his own image and propaganda as a defence against his precariousness in Milan; see Ianziti; Simonetta. In Naples, Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457), Bartolomeo Facio (d.1457), and Antonio Beccadelli (1394–1471) worked for King

Genevr a Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507) 

university backdrop, the Bolognese were not deep-thinking humanist historians, individual analysts of cause-and-effect like Leonardo Bruni in Florence—but they were literate, respectable citizens who left records of those aspects of life in Bologna that seemed to them interesting and worthy of memorial.3 It is significant that none of these chroniclers were commissioned by the Bentivoglio (or by any other family or entity) to do their writing.4 They voluntarily constructed their texts—so their words leave us with ideas about what the public really thought; they bring us as close as we can come to truths and commonly held opinions about life in fifteenth-century Bologna. The near unanimity of the vox populi could be a result of chroniclers experiencing events and reasoning through them as a group, unburdened by the built-in partiality of a commission. Their consensus has been considered higher than that of chroniclers working in other early modern Italian cities.5 Many mentioned extraordinary females whom they had heard about from afar rather than women they might have actually seen. But at least five chroniclers recorded details about local women of their community: Mamelini began his chronicle at the time of his marriage and included information about his wife, the birth of their children, his wife’s birth assistants, god mothers, wet nurses and others. Nadi talked extensively about the women and children in his life; in his entry about the death of his wife he added that he had loved her dearly, ‘yo l’amava quanto fose imposibole’. Pillizoni covered stories of both females and males miraculously cured by the famous madonna at the Church of San Francesco. And in immense volumes with some evocative marginal sketches, Tuate and Ubaldini both talked about women from all walks of life including healers, beatified females, saints, nuns, sickly girls, prostitutes, princesses, queens, mothers, newborns, women killed for gambling losses or as victims of crimes of honour.6 Alfonso of Aragon who needed to justify his rule as leader of a contested kingdom; for more background on Alfonso and his writers, see Ryder. For Rome, Fubini; Calamari. Well aware of humble origins and in need of political legitimacy, Venice created a civic history for itself through the use of visual and textual means, particularly with Doge Andrea Dandolo’s involvement; see Fortini Brown. While the city of Florence discovered the practical use of civic historians early on, the Medici did not find such a writer until Machiavelli composed his Istorie fiorentine for them (1520). For general coverage of Renaissance historians, see Cochrane. 3 In his Historiarum florentini populi libri XII (written between 1415 and 1444), Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444) offered reasoned explanations of events (ratio) and made judgments about them; he is thus considered the first modern European historian. Flavio Biondo (1392–1463) also wrote a new sort of narrative termed ‘commentary’; with it he elevated the telling of contemporary events to the level of what became known as history. For humanism in history and for more on Cicero, Bruni, Salutati, Valla, Biondo, Guicciardini and others who began a more critical practice of history, see Kelley; Cochrane. 4 Bruni, for example, fashioned a semi-fictitious image for Florence with his Laudatio florentinae urbis, a panegyric of Florentine republicanism used for the city’s survival in face of Milan’s aggressiveness; see Baron. 5 Cochrane, p. 106. 6 See Mamelini; Nadi (the quote is from his 16 July 1462 entry); Pillizoni; Tuate; Ubaldini.

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Even though Genevra Sforza twice married into Bologna’s leading family and lived her life more publicly than any other Bolognese woman, and although she does appear in many entries, Genevra was recorded relatively rarely since the chronicle genre was mainly concerned with political events involving men. For the purposes of this argument however, it does not matter much that the chroniclers (and most citizens) were somewhat distant from Genevra’s private life and the behind-the-scenes workings of the Bentivoglio and were thus imperfect in their understanding of her and them. The Bolognese public and its many curious eyes and ears had little or nothing to do with the full spectrum of events in the personal story of any figure. This chapter focuses on the public image of Genevra Sforza, on how contemporary people perceived her and chose to record her in a large body of historical literature and other miscellaneous sources for over fifty years. This chapter catalogues when and where Genevra appeared in public—according to the public—and it also documents her presence in other surviving contemporary semi-public sources; it does not analyse detailed information about Genera uncovered from private correspondence, which will be addressed in subsequent chapters. And please note that this chapter, unlike all of the ones that follow, does not go into deep analysis of any particular aspect of Genevra’s life. This chapter is necessarily heavy on biographical detail because until now no other publication has focused on her overall life story based exclusively on contemporary archival sources. Previous accounts have either relied on (or have entirely focused on) non-contemporary fabrications about her written by Bentivoglio adversaries after the family was forced out of Bologna (November 1506). This portrait of Genevra is a first attempt at capturing the salient components of the life of a fifteenth-century woman whose biography has until now been left in the hands of posthumous enemies—so please bear with the many details of this chapter as its goal is to outline the events of her life that will be analysed in depth in the chapters to come.

Genevra as Sante’s Wife Many Bolognese chroniclers begin their entries for 1454 with an account of Genevra Sforza’s coming into town. Her arrival as the child-bride (ca. age thirteen) of thirtyyear-old Sante Bentivoglio was greatly celebrated, and detailed descriptions of the event often span several pages.7 The arranged alliance, the ages of the bride and groom, the types of festivities offered, and the behaviour of the crowds appear 7 Nadi, pp. 31–32; Pugliola, f. 286r; Tuate, f. 183r; Ubaldini, f. 578v; Varignana, p. 202; Borselli, p. 91; Barbiere, 1454 entry; Anon., Cronica, BUB 3841, no.1, f. 3v.

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to have been the norm among nobles’ wedding celebrations across early modern Italy. From our accounts we learn that on 9 May 1454 certain Bolognese citizens on horseback ride to Pesaro to greet Genevra at her father’s home with the intention of escorting her back to Bologna; ten days later they returned with her. Thousands of spectators saw her as she rode down Strada Maggiore that had been widened for the occasion and decorated with hanging woollen banners. Embellishments on the Strà San Donato, where the Bentivoglio resided, included a pavilion with a fifty-foot tree shading the square that had been placed in front of the family home, a fifteen-foot high wooden structure built in the form of a colossal snail on which musicians played, and a special fountain with three continuously running spouts offering red wine, white wine and water. Male guests wore some of the 300 pairs of distributed hose decorated with the Bentivoglio sega emblem. And two wooden credenzas exhibited the family’s silverware in front of their home; in Rome a fresco painting of silver objects made for Genevra’s cousin, Caterina Sforza, probably resembles what the Bentivoglio display looked like.8 On 20 May Genevra was accompanied to mass at the Basilica of San Petronio in Piazza Maggiore by a significant group of people: 634 couples of young people and thirty-six couples of women wearing gold brocade and rich crimson dresses. The sacred Madonna del Monte was brought down from the hill church of San Luca to help celebrate.9 The Sedici had offered £5000 of Bologna’s gabelle (civic taxes meant for communal needs) for the spectacular celebrations.10 So far Genevra’s enormous wedding celebration in which an estimated 2000 people directly participated (not including public participation from crowds) sounds like others offered for various Sforza brides. However Genevra’s scheduled mass did not go as planned: when the wedding party arrived at the basilica it was turned away due to recent sumptuary legislation (redacted 1453) strictly enforced by Cardinal Legate Giovanni Bessarione.11 Even though Genevra was marrying the de facto signore of an important city, Genevra and her entourage could not wear anything they could afford or desire— doing that was reserved exclusively for legally-recognised rulers and their consorts.12 Wearing sumptuous attire and accessories for wealthy women of the patrician class was thus limited and restricted; by stopping the wedding 8 As seen in the painting (ca. 1477) by Melozzo da Forlì, Sala della Piattaia, Palazzo Riario (now Palazzo Altemps), Rome. 9 Ubaldini, ff. 578r–585v; Tuate, ff. 183r–184v. 10 ASB, Riformatori dello stato di libertà, Lib. Part., 1, f. 1574 (15 June 1454) as seen in Robertson, p. 85. 11 The Bentivoglio relationship with the cardinal was not severed for long; after the wedding, Bessarione apparently gifted the couple sweetmeets, candles, peacocks, and malmsey (Poggio, f. 563 as seen in Ady, p. 50); and in 1459 Bessarione (referred to as Cardinale Niceno) agreed to serve as godfather to the couple’s first-born son, Ercole; see AAB, Fonti battesimali, vol. 1, f. 23v. 12 Williams, p. 84.

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party from entering San Petronio, Bessarione was making a statement that the Bentivoglio were not legally in power in his city—a declaration that they were mere citizens. Bessarione’s legislation is also what provoked Nicolosa Sanuti into writing her Latin treatise on the defence of women, considered the first text written by a female in the Querelle des femmes debate. The overly-elegant and enormous group of revellers thus paraded back into Bentivoglio territory where they attended mass at San Giacomo, the Bentivoglio family’s church in their parish of Santa Cecilia, across the street from their home. On 21 May, day three of the celebrations, we know a joust was held. At the end of some descriptions, chroniclers include a detailed guest list and noted the presents that each foreigner, local citizen, guild, and town in the Bolognese countryside offered alongside an estimated monetary value for each gift. The guest list allows us to discover who the allies of the Bentivoglio were, and their quantifiable gifts reveal how their guests considered them.13 It is noteworthy that although chroniclers describe exactly who attended the festivities and offer specific details about what many guests wore, nobody happens to mention the attire of either Genevra or Sante. Not one chronicler provided specific details about the couple—the obvious focal point of the event as well as of the sumptuary legislation. Although chroniclers learned a lot about the wedding, they were perhaps distant enough that they did not personally glimpse the couple or did not recognise Genevra or Sante in the huge crowds; or perhaps they did not want to record details of their attire that broke the codes set in Bessarione’s sumptuary legislation. Chroniclers did however unanimously characterise Madonna Genevra’s arrival as magnificent. Nadi’s words exemplify public opinion when he describes the events as ‘huno grandissimo trionfo e huna grandinisima festa…una sengolarisima festa e trionfo bastaria in chorte de re de chorona’ (‘a great triumph and a great celebration on par with that of a crowned king’).14 Although it went unknown to many chroniclers, at the time of her wedding, Genevra sat for a formal portrait medal sculpted in profile and struck by Antonio 13 See Chapter Two here for analyses of wedding details. 14 The entire entry reads as follows, ‘Rechordo de m. santi de y bentivogli chome adì 19 de mazo 1454 menò la sua spossa novela fo fiola del signiore alisandro fradelo del chonte franciescho ducha de milan intrò in bolognia con huno grandinisimo trionfo e fesese huna grandinisima festa e bali e bagordi adì [19] e adì 20 dito partosine da la chassa del dito miss. Santi e andono insino in piaza a chopie a chopie a vissitare la chiessia de san peteronio chon uno grandinisimo trionfo fono 634 chopie de zuvani tuti vestiti de seta e 36 chopie de done vestite de imborchado a oro e de charmessin e 20 chopie vestite de rossa e morelo fo tenuto dal pouelo una sengularisima festa e trionfo bastaria in chorte de re de chorona el nome de la dita spossa M.a zanevara’, in Nadi, pp. 31–32. Nadi was a literate construction labourer who kept a compassionate diary about his family and his projects; at times Nadi seems to have been one of the closest witnesses to Bentivoglio family life. He worked for them at their various properties and at Santa Cecilia—which explains how he knew so relatively much about the family’s business.

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Marescotti (Figure 1.1).15 But since its reverse side is blank, the young bride (and Marescotti as a medalist) both lost a significant opportunity to create a personal message through the use of a motif accompanied by a motto—the feature of so many similar contemporary medals. Perhaps they could not agree on an appropriate message regarding the alliance in time for the wedding. Such medal portraits in classical form served as tokens of friendship and social memory to be exchanged among members of the nobility. Genevra’s cousin, Caterina Sforza, exchanged many of hers, and she amassed a significant collection of eighty-four from across her social network; 16 unfortunately it remains unknown with whom Genevra exchanged versions of hers. Beyond chroniclers, one of the most famous dancing masters of the day, Guglielmo Ebreo (ca.1420–ca.1484, and who went by Giovanni Ambrosio after conversion to Christianity), attended Genevra’s 1454 wedding and recorded much about it. Music and dance were enormous indicators of refinement and status and popular courtly pastimes across Italy, and we know that Ebreo composed, choreographed and named a bassa danza (a ‘low dance’, the most popular type of fifteenth-century court dance) specifically after Genevra, calling it ‘Zinevera.’ The bassa danza required natural grace and intelligence, and like all dances, it allowed dancers to express carefully mastered skills. Zinevera was intended to have been danced by a couple in which a man and a woman were equal in their steps and leadership—perhaps a metaphor for marriage or how Ebreo imagined Genevra’s life would unfold with Sante.17 Ebreo recorded the Zinevera as one of thirty major court dances and related festivals in his De pratica seu arte tripudii vulgare opsculum (On The Practice Of The Art Of Dancing), dedicated to a first cousin of Genevra’s, Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan.18 About forty years later, when Giacomo Filippo Foresti of Ferrara included Genevra’s biography in his popular collection of women’s lives, he recorded that Genevra was known to move in an unusually elegant fashion, possibly related to her interest in dance.19 After Genevra’s wedding and during her first decade in Bologna (when she would have been ca. age 13–23), we hear a few more details about her from chroniclers. A male baby named Ercole was born to Sante and Zanevera; baptismal records 15 It is now part of the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; see Luciano. 16 De Vries, pp. 45, 166. 17 Guglielmo Ebreo stated that certain skills were needed to dance a bassa danza including misura, memoria, partire di terreno, aire, maniera e movimento corporeo; see Daye, p. 109. 18 For more on Ebreo, his text and dancing, see Sparti; for the Genevra dance in particular, see Ebreo’s choreography transcribed in Sparti, ‘Bassadanza chiamata Genevra in doi’, pp. 128–131. 19 See ‘Genebria bononiensis’ in Foresti, ff. 164–165. Over 120 editions of this incunabula survive. See Figure 1.4 (below) for a reproduction of a portion of the text including the woodcut print.

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show he was born in May 1459 and baptised the following month.20 Although Genevra had previously given birth to a daughter named Costanza, her little girl went unmentioned by chroniclers and unrecorded in the city’s official baptismal records kept at the Cathedral of San Pietro (where births went recorded beginning only in January 1459). Decades later Arienti recalls in his Gynevera de le clare donne (Genevra among illustrious women) that Genevra frequented the newly formed convent of Corpus Domini (f. 1456) and spent time there with its founding abbess, Caterina de’ Vigri (d. 1463), who later became a saint and who remains Bologna’s only female saint—still known locally as ‘la santa’. Arienti remembers that Caterina welcomed Genevra and called her a small dove, metaphorically a pure and innocent girl, ‘Sia la ben venuta, la mia colombina’.21 We can imagine Genevra spending some of her time there during her teenage years as a young mother in Bologna, far from anyone whom she would have known from her childhood home back in Pesaro. Genevra’s later heavy patronage of Corpus Domini helped it become, ironically, Bologna’s most aristocratic convent despite its Clarisse (Poor Clare) affiliation. A final tantalising clue about Sante’s and Genevra’s interests stems from an inventory taken after Sante’s death; from it we learn that Genevra and Sante had collected sixteen books of poetry—but as the titles of these volumes went unrecorded, we are left with no clues regarding what sorts of authors or types of manuscripts attracted the couple.22

Genevra as Giovanni II’s Bride A few months after Sante’s death (1 October 1463) Genevra’s name reappears in chronicles—as a bride again. Seven months and one day later (2 May 1464), she was married to Sante’s young cousin, Giovanni II Bentivoglio. The public knew they had been granted a dispensation to marry from Pope Pius II and that it cost them 300 ducats. Although chroniclers did not explain why the request was made or granted, we can assume the dispensation was due to the level of kinship between the bride and groom—and we can assume that the public knew it too. But meagre information was all that went recorded by chroniclers for Genevra’s second wedding.23 20 Ubaldini, f. 600r. Ubaldini’s record is confirmed and further specified by the city’s official baptism records; see AAB, Fonti battesimali, vol. 1, 1459–1474, anno 1459, f. 23v. Hercules is listed as having been born to Sancti di Bentivolus et di Genefere of the parish of Santa Cecilia, born 25 May and baptised 26 June, patrini being Virgilio Malvezzi, Cardinal Riario, and Nicola Meleto. 21 See Arienti, ‘Vita de Catherina beata da Bologna’ in his Gynevera, p. 205. 22 Bocchi, pp. 123–135. 23 ‘Dominus Iohanes de Bentivolis desponsavit dominam Ginebriam filiam domini Alexandri domini Pisauri et quondam uxorem domini Xanti Bentivoli. Pius, acceptis 300 aureis super aff initatem,

Genevr a Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507) 

No public festivities or any decorations went recorded. No author exclaimed that celebrations were fit for a king. No guest list or gift list was drawn up—and nobody special was recorded to have come to Bologna for the event—actually no names of any guests went recorded anywhere in surviving documentation. Such minimal coverage of the marriage of the newly indoctrinated de facto leader of Bologna is confusing (and will be explored in Chapter Two here). As odd as it seems, no public activities were known to have taken place regarding the most important Bolognese marriage alliance for its first citizen and his noble bride—a major lost opportunity for Giovanni II to fashion his position in the spotlight. Chroniclers might have remained silent about a marriage that could have been seen as unusual or negative for the leader of their government. Some chroniclers who touched upon indiscreet topics stopped after recording generalities claiming that such things were not to be discussed, ‘e non se ne parla’ (as Tuate wrote several times when approaching controversial topics). But at this time chroniclers did not even make such remarks to cover up opinions about the marriage. As chroniclers recorded nearly nothing at the time, the public was left with a grand opportunity for future speculation.24

Genevra as a Prolific Mother Genevra appeared in chroniclers’ books and in other sources in perhaps the most important role in her life, as a mother, thanks to her ‘fecondo ventre’ (‘fertile belly’) as Arienti called it or her ‘fecundissima’ (‘extremely fertile’) nature as Foresti put it.25 After Genevra’s delivery of Ercole in 1459, her next child recorded was another male, Annibale II, in 1469. Due to the joy felt at the birth of a boy, the bells of San Giacomo were rung and festivities were offered by the Bentivoglio to the people of Bologna.26 Just as Costanza’s 1458 birth had gone unmentioned before the arrival of Ercole, the births of females Bianca (1467) and Francesca (1468) also went unrecorded by chroniclers. Years later, Genevra would be remembered on a stone inscription embedded into the base of the family’s tower (which once stood next to their palace) as the wife of Giovanni II and as the mother of eleven of his surviving dispensationem fecit’, in Borselli, p. 97; ‘2 mazo M[esser] zoano di bentivogli sposo madona Gianevera moglie di M[esser] Santo di bentivogli a dispensa del papa pio’, in Tuate, f. 191r. For these few words repeated by chroniclers about the wedding, see also Barbiere, f. 15r; Nadi, p. 55; Pugliola, p. 755; Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 620r; Varignana, p. 323; Anon., Sommario, BUB 580, no. 4, 2 May 1454. 24 An inventory, supposedly from Giovanni II’s wedding, does exist, but only in an eighteenth-century edition based on something written forty-three years after the wedding. It claims Giovanni received 195 gift items worth Lire 547,131; see Schiassi. 25 Arienti, Gynevera, p. 7; Foresti, f. 164. 26 Nadi, p. 59.

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children, seven girls and four boys (five others died young).27 Some chroniclers include general information about Genevra as mother to many of Giovanni II’s children, and some offer brief descriptions of the children.28 At least two chroniclers witnessed Genevra’s participation at an important baptismal ceremony held on 1 September 1473. Cardinal Riario of San Sisto passed through Bologna on the way to Milan to celebrate his brother Girolamo’s wedding to Genevra’s cousin, Caterina Sforza. At that time, Giovanni II honoured the cardinal and asked him to confirm one of his sons and stand as godfather. In return Cardinal Riario offered a jewel to the baby and a beautiful large pearl to Genevra—whom he would then consider as family.29 During these same years, a Milanese ambassador, Gerardo Cerruti, mentioned Genevra eleven times over the course of his Bolognese appointment between 1470 and 1474; but in his dispatches (he sent over 1361 often lengthly letters to Milan), he noted her mostly in a fleeting fashion: by naming her as mother, as having recently delivered a child (twice), as an expert in veil wear and care, and when she left town; on some occasions when he spoke about Giovanni II’s wife he did not even refer to her by name.30 Before coming to Bologna Genevra herself presumably grew up around her father and at least for a few years around his young wife, Costanza Varano, and Costanza’s extended family in and around Pesaro—a family known for its female scholars and pious women. Although Genevra remains beyond the scope of her article on the Marche, Jennifer D. Webb acknowledges and discusses the highly educated dynasty of Varano and Sforza women and their lasting contributions.31 Genevra too must have been raised with sensibilities toward education, particularly the value of women’s education. Genevra and Giovanni II could have been influenced by these exceptionally educated women of the Sforza family: by how Bianca Maria Visconti had her own children (including children of the extended Sforza family—and Genevra herself) educated in Pavia or by how Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona d’Este 27 Borselli, p. 111. 28 Ubaldini, vol. 3, f. 712r; Varignana, p. 553; Anon., BUB, ms. 1410, 1497 entry. 29 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 658r; Varignana, pp. 438–439. 30 See Cerruti in Duranti (2007): letter 61 (Giovanni II and Genevra [unnamed] do not want her daughter [with Sante], Costanza, to marry a son of Galeazzo Marescotti); letter 444 (Giovanni II’s stepson Ercole [Genevra’s son with Sante; she remains unnamed] is in Pesaro); letter 525 (some comforted Zenevra regarding Fabricio (?); letter 624 (Zenevra gave birth to a male baby); letter 821 (Giovanni II’s stepson Ercole [Genevra’s son with Sante; she remains unnamed] is in Pesaro); letter 874 (Giovanni II con la madona (with his unnamed wife) went to Ponte Poledrano for 6–8 days); letter 1027 (Zenevrega gave birth to a girl); letter 1159 (La magnifica madona Zenevra is consulted about the wearing of veils); letter 1171 (information given about Zenevra’s brother Costanzo’s wedding in Naples, her name is alternatively spelled Zinevra here too); letter 1229 (Zinevra and problems with veils sent to Bona); letter 1248 (Hieronymo Rannucio goes to thermal baths with Zenevra). 31 See Webb.

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and Marchesa Paola Malatesta Gonzaga chose to educate their young children in nearby Ferrara and Mantua.32 Whomever influenced her, we know that Genevra thought highly of education for her children and may have helped Milanese courtier and humanities professor Francesco dal Pozzo (called Puteolano, d. 1490) find a job at the University of Bologna. Since he had previously worked for the Sforza court in Milan before becoming a university professor of rhetoric and poetry in Bologna, he could have been called by Genevra for his services as a tutor for her own children. It is certain that Genevra and Giovanni II wanted him nearby as they offered him a room within Palazzo Bentivoglio.33 Two other famous humanists associated with the university, Filippo Beroaldo the Elder (1453–1505) and Antonio Cortesi Urceo (called Codro) (1446–1500), also tutored Bentivoglio children.34 Even Giovanni II’s illegitimate daughters, presumably born to household servants, received an education as can be seen from Isabeta Bentivoglio Bargellini’s long letters signed by her own trained hand and sent to Isabella d’Este.35 Genevra herself corresponded privately with members of some of the most illustrious and powerful families of her day, many of whom were her own blood relatives, including the Sforza dukes and duchesses of Milan, the Este dukes and duchesses of Ferrara, the Gonzaga marquises and marchionesses of Mantua, and members of the de facto ruling Medici family in Florence (to be explored in Chapter Four). Genevra also employed beautiful penmanship when she signed her own name, spelling it ‘Genevra’.36

Genevra in Her Prime: Public Events, Exclusive Weddings, Her Favourite Convent, and More Art Early on in her second marriage, Genevra appeared in the limelight as she helped Giovanni II celebrate his advancing career. To honour a peace treaty concluded between Italians and Turks (22 December 1470), some Bentivoglio men travelled to 32 The practice of hiring important teachers for children’s education was practiced by Eleonora d’Aragona in nearby Ferrara; see Gundersheimer, pp. 46–54. Paola Malatesta and husband GianFrancesco Gonzaga’s hiring of Vittorino da Feltre made Mantua famous with its children’s school La giocosa; see Paglia, pp. 150–158. For Bianca Maria Visconti, see Webb p. 19, and Felicangeli as seen in Webb, p. 29. 33 Grendler (1999), pp. 479–480; Ady (1935), pp. 156–159. For Puteolano’s teaching of the Bentivoglio children (and for more on Bentivoglio tutors in general) and the hypothesis that it was Genevra who attracted Puteolano to Bologna, see Grendler (2002), p. 217; Grendler, (1999), pp. 479–480. 34 Grendler (1999), pp. 479–480. 35 See two of Isabeta’s letters at ASMN, AG 1143, 19 February 1494; ASMN, AG 1143, 2 May 1494. 36 For a sample manu propria signature, see ASMN, AG 1143, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga, 13 November 1493. As explained in the Introduction, Genevra’s own spelling of her name is used in this text.

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Milan to celebrate the truce with Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza. In turn, he offered a military contract to Giovanni II with an annual salary of 7000 ducats. Within the context of the peace settlement—but more specifically to celebrate Giovanni II’s prestigious new employment—a jousting tournament was held after the coldest days of winter passed (24 February 1471). Details of the conspicuous event were recorded, many days of processions and festivities were offered, and Giovanni II commissioned a large mural of the event on the ground floor of his palace.37 After the jousting, and with her own hands, ‘per le mano di Madonna Zanevera di Bentivogli’, Genevra offered prizes to the winners of the tournament: four arm’s lengths of green damask cloth to Simone da Alessandria and a gift of a small gold purse with two gold ducats inside to Ongarino.38 Since Genevra’s presence in the Bentivoglio home was concrete proof of the amicable ties between Milan and Bologna, and as she herself had been a Sforza prize for Bologna, Genevra was the ideal presenter of a public award at an event that celebrated a gift from Milan and the friendly ties between Milan and Bologna. Genevra’s performance of gender reflects that set by other conventional courtly figures of the times, including Battista Sforza, her half sister in Urbino. Genevra was greatly influenced by how Battista had been depicted by Piero della Francesca (post 1472) in a diptych facing her husband, Federico di Montefeltro, and eulogised as a chaste, modest and devout woman as specified on the obverse of the painting. Genevra had the diptych painting copied (starring herself and Giovanni II) through the hand of Ercole de’ Roberti (ca. 1475, Figure 1.2).39 The diptych is further tied to another similar earlier work by Bonifacio Bembo depicting Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti (ca. 1460). These sets of portraits demonstrate how closely Genevra was tied culturally and socially to relatives in Milan and Urbino—and how closely court artists worked. Genevra’s and Giovanni II’s companion portraits would have been displayed within the family’s palace and admired by its many residents and guests. In particular, Genevra is portrayed as an idealised fifteenth-century beauty with blond hair, a fashionably high forehead, ivory coloured skin, thin lips and pink-tinted cheekbones; and such female beauty in Renaissance art was linked to virtue, goodness and integrity. Her many pearls worn around her neck are noteworthy too: not only were they precious and costly but they were also further symbolically linked to goodness, purity and virtue. 40 From the inventory drawn 37 Ubaldini, f. 647v. See room ‘H’ labelled ‘Saletta ove era dipinto eccellentemente un torniamento con la strada che fece’ from the Disegno originale, BCB ms. B4132, part 0; see also Fiorentino. 38 Pugliola, ff. 783r–784r (he claimed that the prize was twenty-four arms’ lengths of the fabric); see also Ubaldini, f. 651r; Varignana, pp. 405–406. 39 The diptych portrait, along with many other miscellaneous Bentivoglio objects, are now held at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 40 For more on pearls and ideal beauty, see Williams, pp. 86–87.

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up after Sante’s death, we also see earlier details of Genevra’s jewellery including pieces composed of hundreds of pearls. 41 The portrait thus highlights Genevra as an ideal matron in terms of fifteenth-century visual codes. The convent of Corpus Domini continued to serve as a home away from home for Genevra on multiple occasions over the course of her fifty-two years in Bologna. Genevra spent time there as the young wife of Sante (as seen above) and would return there after his death; she appears in chroniclers’ accounts in relation to Corpus Domini on other occasions too. 42 For example, on 2 April 1475 she led a major public procession to celebrate the entry into the convent of two young aristocratic girls: Lena Marsili and Marchexana Malvezzi. The Marsili would later chose to tie themselves to the Bentivoglio through the bonds of godparentage while the Malvezzi were cousins of the Bentivoglio. Led by Genevra herself, these young ladies were paraded across town as part of a large group including forty other women, the Anziani and ‘quaxi tuta Bologna’ (‘almost all of Bologna’). 43 In these same years Genevra was granted at least six convent passes and permits to enter Corpus Domini and other Bolognese religious institutions as she turned to them regularly for her needs. 44 Convent connections demonstrated piety and virtue—and in nearby Ferrara Eleonora d’Aragona closely connected herself to convents that helped validate her own moral authority to rule. Genevra did not need to make ties with convents in the same fashion as Eleonora since she did not govern like her as a princely consort but stood merely as wife of a de facto ruler in a mixed political system. 45 Although due to her own ambiguous status (as well as that of all of the Bentivoglio), perhaps Genevra needed the convent on her side even more than Eleonora. In the month following the 1475 convent procession, Genevra returned to her childhood home in Pesaro where she actively represented the Sforza family at the wedding of her half brother, Costanzo Sforza, when he wed Camilla d’Aragona. 46 Enormous festivities began on 26 May, and their celebrations were recorded by at least one commissioned writer. Within her natal city, Genevra led an entourage of 41 Bocchi; Muzzarelli, p. 63. 42 For more about the Bentivoglio there, see the Corpus Domini reference in the bibliography; see also McLaughlin; Arthur. 43 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 661r; Varignana, p. 441. 44 For details of the Corpus Domini passes, see my Chapter Three. In relation to other Bolognese religious institutions, in 1470 Genevra was granted license to participate in all the orations and vigils of the Order of S. Agostino, see ASFE, Fondo Bentivoglio, Lib. 9, no. 16. On 23 February 1475 she was granted permission to enter S. Michele in Bosco, see ASFE, Fondo Bentivoglio, Libro 10, no. 34. In 1480 she received a dispensation to enter Corpus Domini from Sixtus IV and was granted the possibility of eating, drinking, sleeping and confessing there, see ASFE, Fondo Bentivoglio, Libro 11, no. 13. 45 For Eleonora’s governance techniques involving piety, see Cavalli, p. 174. 46 For the wedding description, see Niccolò Alberti; Sparti, p. 213; Bridgeman.

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noble women, including thirty from Pesaro, who greeted and accompanied Camilla on her way from Costanzo’s nearby Castello di Novilara to what would become her new home in Pesaro. Genevra and ladies described as the finest Pesarese women received Camilla and led her through the recently constructed Sforza palace and into her new rooms. At a formal dinner, Genevra sat with Camilla and the most important female and male guests including dukes, counts, ambassadors and various signori. Because the wedding took place after the deaths of Genevra’s and Costanzo’s father (Alessandro Sforza), Costanzo’s mother (Costanza da Varano), and Costanzo’s only other full sibling (Battista Sforza Montefeltro), Genevra served as Costanzo’s closest and most important elder relation. Genevra played a leading role throughout the festivities representing the Sforza family of Milan and Pesaro as well as the Bentivoglio family and the city of Bologna. Back in Bologna, local chroniclers did not record Genevra’s absence from their city, which could have lasted several weeks. And if Genevra had any contact with (or knowledge of) her own mother, who might have been in or near Pesaro, it went unrecorded. 47 Although Genevra’s children celebrated their marriages in Bologna, Genevra was recorded by chroniclers as having been participant at only six festivities. Although it is likely Genevra actively participated in all of her children’s celebrations as well as those of the illegitimates of Giovanni II, she was only mentioned in regard to the weddings of Bianca (1481), Francesca (1482), Violante (1485), Eleonora (1486), Annibale II (1487), and Alessandro (1492). 48 We also know that Costanza, Bianca, Francesca (twice), Annibale II, Eleonora, Violante, Alessandro, Laura, and Ermes plus Giovanni II’s illegitimates including Leone, Maria Isabetta, Griselda, Isotta and Lucia all celebrated their weddings in Bologna too. Genevra would have surely been present at these important family celebrations alongside her husband and family—but at these events she apparently stayed out of the spotlight as chroniclers did not notice her. To turn to specifics regarding when she was recorded, chroniclers knew that three of her daughters (Bianca, Francesca, Eleonora) were all married by proxy on the same day, 11 July 1481.49 At Bianca’s 29 September 1481 public departure to wed Niccolò Rangoni, Genevra was present to bid her daughter farewell as she 47 No mention of Genevra’s mother has been uncovered anywhere in this research. She was not a documented concubine of Alessandro’s like Pacifica Samperoli had been; she was presumably an unknown and unrecognised woman who might not have survived Genevra’s birth. 48 For Bianca, see Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 676r; Varignana, p. 462. For Francesca, see Varignana, p. 471. For Violante, see Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 690r; Varignana, p. 481. For Eleonora, see Varignana, p. 486. For Annibale II, see Tuate, ff. 208v–209r; Ubaldini, vol. 2, ff. 695v–700r; Varignana, p. 490; Anon., BUB, ms. 1410, ff. 59r–59v; Anon., BCB, ms. Malvezzi 78, no.5, ff. 1–5; Anon., BCB, ms. B464, Narrazione delle nozze d’Annibale Bentivoglio con Lucrezia d’Este. For Alessandro, see Varignana, p. 529. 49 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 676r. Ubaldini also claims that Violante was married by proxy on 5 February 1485; see Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 690r.

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left for Modena accompanied by four carriages of noblewomen and many citizens but it was not stated whether Genevra accompanied her to continue celebrating.50 On 24 January 1482, Genevra publicly appeared when Francesca left for Faenza accompanied by two carriages carrying women alongside fifty-two mules supporting her personal belongings; chroniclers again left it unspecified whether Genevra made the trip with her daughter to her new home.51 In February 1485, at the time of Violante’s marriage, after what was described as a ‘magna festa’ (‘huge party’) including ‘corte bandita’ (i.e. continuous festivities and banquets) lasting two days, it was noted that two members of the Sedici, Andrea Grato and Mino di Rossi, offered the bride and her family a celebratory dinner before Violante would leave for Rimini.52 In October 1486, the public knew that Genevra was present when Eleonora celebrated her wedding with a ‘magna cena’ (‘extensive dinner’) followed by dancing. Chroniclers described those who attended as ambassadors, citizens and noblewomen in fine clothes; a group then left to meet Eleonora’s husband Gilberto Pio in Carpi but yet again, no further details offer Genevra’s specific contributions to these events.53 Plans to ally with Ferrara were a top priority for Giovanni II and Genevra since their first-born son, Annibale II, was baptised with Ercole d’Este as godfather (14 February 1469).54 Nine years later (1478), a marriage by proxy took place in Ferrara for Annibale II to wed an illegitimate d’Este girl;55 and nine more years would pass before their public wedding would be held in Bologna (1487). Genevra was recognised then when she publicly greeted and lavishly entertained her new daughter-in-law Lucrezia in the company of an enormous cortège of ladies who were considered the finest Bolognese women. Some recorded that the Magnifica Madonna Ginevra invited fifty women to celebrate with Lucrezia. Others mentioned that 120 of the finest Bolognese women, wearing gold brocade and velvet, were invited to celebrate. It seems that 120 young women were invited as cohorts of Lucrezia while Genevra entertained fifty older women of her own generation specified by the Varignana chronicler as ‘donne del suo tempo in soa compania’.56 The ladies initially visited San Petronio and then celebrated over a meal followed by dancing and an allegorical 50 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 676r. 51 Varignana, p. 471. 52 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 690r; and Varignana, p. 481. 53 Varignana, p. 486. 54 AAB, Fonti battesimali, vol. 1, 1459–1474, anno 1469, f. 102r. 55 Tuate, f. 203r; and other contemporary sources. 56 Tuate, ff. 208v–209r; Anon., Narrazione delle nozze, ff. 1–5; Ubaldini, vol. 2, ff. 695v–700r; Varignana, p. 490. An eighteenth-century anonymous manuscript of the celebrations included the guest list and a total of ca. 120 women of unspecified ages; see Miscellanea di documenti letterari e storici, parte 14: Narrazione delle nozze d’Annibale Bentivoglio con Lucrezia d’Este 1487, BCB, ms. B464, ff. 142–146.

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play starring an actor who played the part of a nymph named Lucrezia. Genevra hosted the enormous female party within Palazzo Bentivoglio in its Sala Mazore on the piano nobile—the main room on the most important level of the palace designated for public entertainment and presumably adjacent to where Genevra kept her apartment and ate her meals with other females.57 1488 turned out to be a complicated year for the Bentivoglio. In June, after Genevra’s and Giovanni’s II son-in-law, Galeotto Manfredi, was killed in Faenza, Giovanni II was imprisoned nearby for fear he might ‘aid’ Faenza by capturing it for himself. Giovanni II was held at the Fortress of Modigliana for eight days before Lorenzo de’ Medici became involved; he took him to Cafaggiolo, where they negotiated over dinner before he released Giovanni II.58 Although Nadi was the only chronicler to have recorded Genevra’s assistance regarding Giovanni II’s release, contemporary letters held at ASMN and ASMO confirm her aid.59 As an offering of thanks after the coup d’état in Faenza, the Bentivoglio immediately commissioned Lorenzo Costa to paint a life-size PGR (per grazia ricevuta—for favours received) fresco of family members for their chapel within San Giacomo (Figure 1.3).60 In striking Renaissance style, this large painting features the Madonna and child, Genevra and Giovanni II, and eleven of their legitimate children. As an ex-voto however, few Bentivoglio appear humble or thankful—Genevra and Camilla (lower left, in a nun’s habit) might be the only ones painted with an appropriately modest gaze.61 Five months later (27 November 1488) chroniclers record Genevra as one of many potential victims of a conspiracy against the Bentivoglio, led by the family’s Malvezzi cousins. Four sons of Battista Malvezzi had planned the killings together with other men from prominent families.62 The Malvezzi wished to murder the entire 57 See the Disegno originale, eseguito da Pagno Fiorentino per il Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bolonga, BCB, ms. B4132, part 9; according to this later sixteenth-century map, the ground floor of the palace was designed for apartments for sons (Alessandro, Ermes, Annibale) and for many specifically ‘male’ spaces and activities including rooms for guests, guards, the chancery, falcons, storage space for arms and artillery, and the public loggia, the courtyard, and the guastuone space. Rooms for Genevra Sforza and other females were all located upstairs—with the one exception of daughter Laura’s apartment, located on the ground floor, at least according to this non-contemporary plan. 58 Nadi, pp. 136–138. 59 For details about Genevra’s role in the release, see Chapter Four here. 60 Varignana, p. 499. It is unknown how the Bentivoglio offered thanks after the discovery of the Malvezzi conspiracy. 61 Costa worked for the Bentivoglio for thirteen years; during that time he also frescoed scenes from The Iliad on a loggia garden wall within their palazzo and painted two renditions of several Bentivoglio singing; see Wallace. The Iliad frescoes were lost in 1507; the Concerto is at the National Gallery, London; Concert with the Children of Giovanni II Bentivoglio is part of the Collection Thyssen-Bornemisza, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Spain. 62 Nadi, pp. 144–146.

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Bentivoglio family—Giovanni II, Genevra, their children and grandchildren.63 The conspirators planned first to attack the Bentivoglio males downstairs where they dined, then Giulio Malvezzi was to proceed upstairs to Genevra’s quarters to kill the children.64 Genevra was one active member of a large family to be eliminated—but there was no specific desire to kill her in particular, and nothing else went recorded regarding her reaction to the conspiracy or her role in its aftermath. Nadi reports how justice was served to the conspirators: eleven were hanged that night, several more over the coming months, and many were sent into exile. Even seven months later, Nadi heard about a Malvezzi injured by bentivoleschi in Rome.65 The Bolognese knew of Genevra’s devotion to the Madonna of Loreto, and she could have been planning a trip there after the tumultuous events of 1488. We know that Genevra left for Loreto in September 1489 in the company of four of the Sedici, various prominent citizens, 100 horses, ten mules, and two carriages of women on a tour that lasted twenty-eight days.66 Giovanni II had also travelled to Loreto on at least one other occasion (March 1485) in the company of many citizens and returned to Bologna after thirteen days.67 Although accompanied by leading male citizens, it appears that Genevra and her carriages loaded with women took their time visiting the shrine and expressing their devotion to a madonna who remains one of the most popular in Italy even today. To commemorate Genevra’s pilgrimage, Arienti translated Battista Spagnuoli’s Latin booklet on the history of the Shrine of Loreto into Italian for her and then dedicated it to her.68 Genevra may also have arranged a jousting match upon her return.69 Arienti’s translation seems to also have been carried out in gratitude after Genevra helped place his daughter (Angelica) in Corpus Domini and another daughter (Ursina) in San Lorenzo. And when Ercole d’Este wished to offer Angelica Arienti a convent dowry of 100 ducats, for safekeeping he gave it to Genevra—his trustworthy relative in Bologna linked to Corpus Domini.70 63 Tuate, f. 210r; Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 705r. 64 Anon., Cronica, BCB, ms. B79, f. 162r. 65 Nadi, pp. 144–146. 66 Nadi, pp. 151–152; Anon., Cronica di Bologna, 1428–1512, BUB, ms. 3841, no.1, f. 9r. 67 Borselli, p. 110; Ubaldini, f. 690r. 68 See Spagnuoli; Stoppelli. 69 She was said to have ordered Francesco Pedota of Mirandola, university chancellor, to organise the tournament and offer a prize of raso cremesino (red silk satin) to the winner; see Leandro Alberti, vol. 3, f. 160v.; it remains unclear however where non-contemporary Alberti found this information. 70 ASMO, Ambas. BO, b.1, fasc. 7, Arienti to Eleonora d’Aragona, 10 April 1492; ASMO, Ambas., BO, b.1, fasc. 7, Arienti to Ercole d’Este, 6 May 1493; and ASMN, AG 1146, Arienti to Isabella d’Este, 10 July 1505 as seen in James, pp. 20, 123, 129, 222–223. James also notes that Genevra worked together with Giulia Manzoli Bentivoglio (wife of Count Ercole Bentivoglio of the senatoriale branch of the family) in helping Arienti’s daughters in exchange for literary projects; see James, p. 20. Ghirardacci claims that Giulia

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On 20 June 1492, Genevra was recorded as having participated in her son Alessandro’s wedding to Ippolita di Carlo Sforza. Young Ippolita arrived in Bologna riding a white horse and was accompanied by ten carriages of women. Genevra received Ippolita into her home and welcomed her ‘con una bella rechoglienza’ (‘with a fine reception’) but chroniclers knew nothing more than that.71 Chroniclers caught only glimpses of Genevra’s activity—so today we are left to fill in many blanks about how she and Giovanni carefully organised and participated in these most important family events, meticulously planned over the course of many years for the future of all Bentivoglio. Chroniclers followed Genevra when she made further bonds with Corpus Domini when two of her own daughters entered the convent. Genevra’s sixth daughter Camilla professed in 1494 as did her tenth daughter Isotta after a failed alliance with her betrothed, Ottaviano Riario. A third young girl named Ginevra Bentivoglio entered the convent then too; although she was also described by chroniclers as a daughter of Giovanni II and Genevra Sforza, this Ginevra was a grand-daughter of Genevra Sforza, the daughter of Ercole di Sante Bentivoglio.72 Genevra played an active public role at one final wedding in Bologna—and one feted to further tie the Bentivoglio with the most important circle of Italian families. On 29 January 1502, Pope Alexander VI’s daughter Lucrezia Borgia passed through Bologna on her way to Ferrara to join Alfonso d’Este in what would be her third and final marriage. Nadi reported that Madonna Zanevara invited many Bolognese women to her home (‘chon asaiseme done de li nostri zetadini’) for the occasion. We know that Genevra took Lucrezia’s hand and led her into the Sala Mazore where a fine party was held with dancing, singing and jesters (‘una bela festa de balare e chantarini e bofoni’) until guests left to continue celebrations at the finest of the Bentivoglio country palaces, Ponte Poledrano (now called ‘Bentivoglio’).73 Genevra organised special events for her famous guest in both her city palace and country estate. Through this alliance, Lucrezia was tied to the d’Este family—where Genevra and Giovanni II had successfully placed their their first-born son. Entertainment organised for Lucrezia was meant to be on the level of how Roman aristocrats would have celebrated, and Lucrezia’s extravagant reception was on par with the festivities that Genevra and Giovanni II offered for the marriage alliance celebrations of their own most important sons. accompanied Violante (and Genevra) to Rimini at the time of Violante’s wedding in 1489; see Ghirardacci, p. 254. Genevra had also been accompanied to Ravenna by Andrea Bentivoglio in the summer of 1483; as seen in James, p. 113. 71 Varignana, p. 529; Varignana noted that ‘fu estimada [Ippolita] avea circha anni 12’. 72 Camilla and Ginevra were described as figliuole del Magnifico M[esser] Zoane di bentivogli, see Tuate, f. 220r. 73 Nadi, pp. 306–307.

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Genevra was a woman whose successful parties and religious processions were the highlights of many pages of chronicles. The Bolognese saw her, discussed her and depicted her as a magnanimous hostess and leader of festivities worthy of commemoration in their carefully documented records of the city. They recognised that Genevra often entertained women and that she played a most active role when warmly receiving female guests. Hosting high-level events with herself as the most significant nexus of patrician women (and therefore becoming known as the finest female host in the city) was important for Genevra in order to create and maintain her primary social position in Bologna.

Genevra as a Mature Woman: In Literature, the Arts and Ambassadorial Reports Bolognese notary and aspiring courtier Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti chose Genevra Sforza as the nexus for his collection of famous women’s lives, Gynevera de le clare donne (Gynevera among illustrious women), a work completed in the early 1490s and presented to Genevra sometime in 1492 (Document 1.1).74 In June of that year Arienti presented a second manuscript copy of the same text to the young marchesa of Mantua, Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, another potential female patron.75 Besides naming the collection after Genevra and dedicating it to her, her biography appears first in it, and many of the thirty-three lives are connected to her. Despite her most prominent position in this book, Genevra’s own role as patron behind its creation remains unknown. In appreciation of the work, Genevra had Arienti appointed vicar of Minerbio, presumably a sinecure administrative position of this small town located twelve miles outside Bologna and roughly midway to Ferrara.76 Arienti’s was an important and original collection of women’s lives, inspired by Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus (Concerning Famous Women, ca. 1362) or possibly Plutarch’s second-century De virtutibus mulierum (On the Virtues of Women, f irst published 1485), and Gynevera was one of a handful of Italian collections of women’s lives compiled in the late f ifteenth century when the genre reached its height in terms of popularity.77 But while Plutarch and 74 See Document 1.1 for a transcription of Genevra’s vita within Gynevera. For more on Gynevera, see Benson, pp. 33–64; Kolsky (1998); Kolsky (1992), pp. 27–40; Chandler; James (1996), (2002). 75 For the presentation of the text to d’Este and a description of her warm reception of it, which Arienti in turn forwarded to Genevra, see ASMN, AG 1143, Arienti to Isabella d’Este, 29 June 1492; and ASMN, AG 1143, Arienti to Isabella d’Este, 31 July 1492 as seen in James (2002), pp. 20, 125–127. 76 ASMN, AG 1143, Arienti to Isabella d’Este, 31 July 1492 as seen in James (2002), pp. 20, 126–127. 77 See Boccaccio and Petrarca in the bibliography; for other contemporary collections of women’s lives made by Italians, see Antonio Cornazzano, De mulieribus admirandis (1467), dedicated to Bianca Maria

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Boccaccio focussed on ancient Greek, Roman and Christian women, Arienti’s choice of women includes contemporaries, women related to Genevra Sforza and other Bolognese women. Carolyn James suggests that Arienti could have included so many local women in order to help Genevra better understand her adopted city’s past—although by the time he presented it to her she was an older woman who had been in Bologna for nearly forty years.78 Pamela Benson considers Gynevera to be one of the most feminist texts in its genre due to the inclusion of so many powerful women, many of whom were rulers, soldiers and scholars, and whose ambitions and accomplishments did not focus on the family or religion.79 On the other hand, Stephen Kolsky notices how Arienti praises contemporary women functioning in politically subordinate roles, women who supported the traditional institutions of society (marriage, virginity, chastity, widowhood). 80 If we focus on Genevra’s vita alone, Arienti praises her for beauty, virtue, grace, fecundity, affability and piety, recording her as a pious mother completely devoted to her large family. Although she is the focal point of the collection, Genevra stars in this book not as a powerful autonomous woman but as the epitome of conservatism set among a group of more active untraditional females—leaving critical readers with much room for discussion. We are left wondering what Arienti wished Genevra (then in her f ifties) to glean from this text; we also wonder how the then teenage Isabella d’Este, related through marriage to Genevra and the second recipient of this book, could have interpreted and acted upon the same messages. A fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript entitled Colloquoi tra Zanevera di Bentivoglio e Sismondo poeta, circa la Comparazione delle gemme e dell’oro col vero Amore (Dialogue between Genevra Bentivoglio and Sigismondo de’ Poeti about A Comparison Of Gems And Gold With True Love) also focused on Genevra and was dedicated to her.81 The text is a dialogue between author and dedicatee about the qualities of precious material possessions versus the importance of friendship. The debate concludes that ‘vero amore’ (i.e. partisan loyalty/ friendship) is more enduring than precious stones and metals and should be valued as such. The text offers a positive metaphor about the admiration felt from an important, aristocratic Visconti; Bartolomeo Goggio, De laudibus mulierum (1487), dedicated to Eleonora d’Aragona d’Este; Vespasiano da Bisticci, Il libro delle lode e commendazione delle donne (1480); Iacopo Filippo Foresti, De plurimus claris selectisque mulieribus, sometimes abbreviated as De claris mulieribus (1497), dedicated to Beatrice d’Aragona; Agostino Strozzi, Defensio mulierum (ca. 1500–1501), dedicated to Margherita Cantelma; Mario Equicola, De mulieribus (1501); Bernardino Cacciante, Libro apologetico delle donne (1503–1504). 78 James (1996), p. 79. 79 Benson, p. 44. 80 Kolsky (1992), pp. 32–35, 38–40. 81 Poeti, as first seen in James (1996), p. 78.

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family (de’ Poeti) for relative newcomers involved in local politics (the Bentivoglio and Sforza), and it clearly serves as a reminder of the value of partisan support in a contested city. From baptismal records we know Genevra was asked to serve as godmother to newborns from some of the most wealthy and influential Bolognese families including the de’ Poeti (and also the Ranuzzi, Malatonchi, Benci, Sassoni, Fantuzzi, Orsi, Volta, Bolognini, and fellow Bentivoglio)—which further helped create that ongoing sense of vero amore.82 In her later years, as the art of printing was spreading, Genevra was involved with an innovative paper production shop and press run by Ercole Nanni (active in Bologna in the 1490s) whose press was sometimes referred to as the Tipografia Ginevera Sfortia in honour of his patron.83 At least three of Nanni’s high quality and rare editions with spectacular woodcuts were dedicated to her. They included Pope Pius II’s De duobus amantibus: Euryalo et Lucretia (the story of lovers who come to a tragic end, 1492), Fra Domenico Cavalca’s Pungi lingua (part of 14th c. Dominican spirituality, 1493) and Aesopus moralizatus (extremely popular stories often used as a school text, 1494).84 While those books that were love stories, tongue twisters and illustrated children’s fables were dedicated to Genevra, Nanni dedicated many more and many different sorts of texts to Giovanni II including Antonio Cornazzano’s Vita di nostra donna (a life of Mary, 1493), Antonio Arquato’s Prognosticon (a text of astrological prophecies, 1493), Fior di virtù (an extraordinarily popular vernacular school reader from ca. 1300–1323, with no author named, 1493), Diogenes Laertius’ Vitae et sententiae philosophorum (a biography of Greek philosophers, 1494), Manfredi’s Defensio prognostici eiusdem (the work of an astrology professor at the university, 1494), Carolus Drusianus’ Iudicium eversionis Europae (another book of astrological prophecies, undated), Jacomo Filippo da Bergamo Foresti (Bergomense)’s Confessione (undated), and the Historia di San Giuliano (probably a text of the saint’s life and legends, with no date and no author given).85 In sum, the Bentivoglio sponsored the printing of an incredibly varied group of works with different purposes. Genevra’s name also appeared in a contemporary book on palmistry, published in Bologna in 1504 by Bartolomeo della Rocca; the text reports 82 Carrati, BCB, ms. B849, ff. 55, 79, 90; Carrati, BCB, ms. B851, ff. 25, 92, 95; Carrati, BCB, ms. B852, f. 22; AAB, Fonti battesimali, vol. 3, f. 101r; AAB, Fonti battesimali, vol. 4, ff. 362r, 385v. 83 For more on Nanni, see Sorbelli (2003); Scardovi Bonora; Antonino. 84 Many thanks to Paul Grendler for help identifying the diverse purposes of these texts. 85 I thank Anna Maria Scardovi for help in locating these incunabula. Editions of printed books dedicated to Genevra Sforza can be seen at BCB: De duobus amantibus at 16.Q.IV bis. 2; Pungi lingua at 16.H.V.36; Aesopus moralizatus at 16.Q.III.14. Genevra also rented a paper production mill (within the parish of S. M. Maggiore) to a Giuliano of the parish of S. Cecilia as seen in Frati, p. 184. And, for example, the last page of the text of Pope Pius II’s De duobus amantibus (Euryalo et Lucretia), reads that it was printed ‘in lo aedificio da charta de la Illustrissima madonna Ginevera Sfortia di Bentivogli: per mi Hercules de nani’ on 31 August 1492.

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that the folds in the palm of Genevra’s hand formed an equilateral triangle that was associated with her exceptional talents and fortune.86 Foresti’s 1497 incunabula biography of Genevra summarises many examples from her long life, recalling multiple examples of her piety, including her desire to remain at home following the example of religious women. He includes how Genevra visited holy sites and acted piously towards the religious and the poor; she prayed often to God and closely listened to His word. He concludes that Genevra venerated the saints, consumed only moderate amounts of food and drink, and dressed modestly (Figure 1.4).87 Although we hear that she preferred to stay home, we do not know how often she might have accompanied her husband to mass across the street where he was known to have attended service each morning at San Giacomo. We do know that she organised festivities and dinner parties in her home on the occasion of the feast of San Giacomo (July 25).88 We also know a few things about Genevra’s personal chaplain, Don Battista da Signa, who offered in-palace religious services and spiritual guidance.89 Signa was miraculously cured by the madonna at San Francesco, as were others who worked for the Bentivoglio; his sharp sense of humour became the subject of Arienti’s Ateonia (1493) that details a prank that Signa and Genevra’s son, AntonGaleazzo, played on an ambitious fellow priest, Don Ateon.90 Genevra closely associated with a chaplain whose characteristic attributes included piety, modesty, sophistication and humour—and it was known that both Arienti and Signa looked to Genevra Sforza and Isabella d’Este for patronage.91 Although ambassadors recorded inside information about how Genevra and Giovanni II functioned as a mature couple in the 1490s, their documentation also serves to reinforce what the public knew about the family. A Milanese ambassador, Francesco Tranchedino, spoke highly of Genevra in his private accounts sent to the dukes of Milan; he admired the open ways in which the Bentivoglio conducted their affairs and felt he could discuss Bolognese foreign policy directly with Genevra.92 A Florentine ambassador, Pandolfo Colenuccio, also reported that every political event 86 Bartolomeo della Rocca Cocles (Coclitis), Chyromantiae ac physionomiae anastasis (Bologna: Joannem Antonium Platonidem Benedictorum, 1504) as referred to in Ady (1937), p. 182. 87 Foresti, ff. 164–165. 88 She held one such party on 25 July 1491 as seen in Ady (1937), p. 164. 89 For Don Signa, see Pillizoni, f. 25r; he had been deathly ill before the madonna at San Francesco cured him of his intense thigh pain. Other Bentivoglio-related stories there include: Maria with leg and feet problems (wife of a soldier employed by Giovanni II), on f. 9v; a blinded daughter of Iacomo, a soldier, on f. 11r; and Anibal, soldier, injured in a jousting tournament, on f. 11r. 90 Arienti, Ateonia, pp. 415–438. 91 ASMN, AG 1143, Arienti to Francesco Gonzaga, 31 May 1494; and ASMN, AG 1143, Genevra Sforza to Isabella d’Este, 17 June 1494 as seen in James (2002), pp. 134–137. 92 ASMI, PER, B187, 4 January 1496 as seen in Ady (1937), p. 119.

Genevr a Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507) 

was communicated to Madonna Genevra and that her ideas were always taken into consideration; he added that he saw her as a star among women.93 More than from what chroniclers knew and more than from what Genevra’s own correspondence and other sources might reveal about her, the private ambassadorial testimonials evince that Genevra actively followed and participated in Bolognese and pan-Italian policies and politics and that she appropriately promoted her family and city following the gendered norms of her day. According to these reports, her knowledge and collaboration demonstrate that Genevra and Giovanni II functioned as a team on multiple levels—much like the rulers in Mantua and other cities. However, with no surviving correspondence shared between the couple (since they lived together—and since so many papers and other traces from their home were lost after they fled Bologna), it is hard to pinpoint details behind their power-sharing relationship or to be able to compare them to other couples, such as Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga.94 It was common knowledge that Genevra cared for so many members of her large family with the help of a nurse from Budrio named Gentile Cimiera, wife of a Bolognese notary and a practitioner of magical healing with twenty years’ experience serving the Bentivoglio. As a way of thanking Gentile for years of excellent care, Genevra paid dowries for three of her daughters.95 Gentile worked for Genevra as well as for her daughter Laura’s family in Mantua where she reportedly cured ‘everyone’s illnesses’.96 But after some Bentivoglio family health problems, accusations were levelled against Gentile. Under torture of the corda (when the accused is hanged with their arms behind their back to cause intense pain through shoulder dislocation) the nurse admitted to Dominican Inquisition authorities that she worked as a malefica (witch), making many sick in order to cure them. After a series of presumably forced confessions, on 14 July 1498 Gentile was burned at the stake, and her death went recorded in detail by numerous eyewitnesses.97 Bolognese Inquisition records once kept at San Domenico do not survive so it is unknown to what extent Genevra was involved in the trial or confession (or defence) of her nurse; we also do not know who replaced Gentile as family healer after she was killed. Another trial held three months later (23 October 1498) shows Genevra in a different vengeful light when she had Piero of Brisighella, a fur dealer, hanged in retaliation after he killed a friend of hers, a faithful servant of the Bentivoglio named 93 See Collenuccio’s letters at ASFI, MAP, filza 43, no. 64 and 26, no. 568, 10 February 1490 and 13 March 1491 as seen in Ady (1937), p. 147. 94 Sarah D. P. Cockram was able to examine their fascinating and complex relationship thanks to 3000 surviving letters exchanged between them; see Cockram. 95 Herzig, p. 1047. 96 Nadi, pp. 238–239. 97 Nadi, pp. 238–239; Anon., BUB, ms. 3841, no.1, f.12 r; Tuate, ff. 236v–237v; Ubaldini, f. 713v; Herzig.

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Ghinghan, a butcher.98 Nadi shares no clues as to why Genevra personally defended Ghinghan to the fullest extent. For centuries the Bentivoglio had been active in the butcher’s guild but Genevra’s connection to Ghinghan remains unknown; perhaps she served justice on behalf of the Bentivoglio family, or perhaps as the Bentivoglio family butcher he was considered family. The retaliation could be explained as part of Genevra’s belief in the value of partisan loyalty, i.e. ‘vero amore’, explored above. When strong earthquakes struck Bologna in 1505, it functioned as a sign to some that Bentivoglio power was on the wane. After Palazzo Bentivoglio suffered structural damage next to the family’s dangerously tall sky-scraping tower, for safe refuge Genevra returned to Corpus Domini.99 During those three months at Corpus Domini, and besides participating in the convent’s usual religious activities, we can imagine Genevra had the opportunity to spend time with her daughters, a granddaughter, and various friends who lived within its walls. She must have also reminisced about her time there with Caterina whose preserved corpse she would have viewed as it was carefully dressed and arranged seated on a throne—and that still remains on display there today.100

Genevra in Exile and Death Most of the chroniclers who wrote about Genevra Sforza during her life did not include details of her exile in late 1506 or her death in the spring of 1507. This omission can be accounted for by several reasons: Nadi died in 1504; Pugliola’s work ended years before in 1471; Mamelini passed away in the 1480s; Borselli and Varignana each wrote only until 1497; Codibò ended his chronicle in 1504; and the six double-sided folio pages that correspond to 1506–1507 have been torn out of Ubaldini’s chronicle.101 Several of the anonymous pieces also coincidentally end before 1506–1507 or they make no reference to Genevra at the end of her life.102 Tuate was one of the rare few who continued his writing into early sixteenth-century Bologna after the Bentivoglio were expelled from town. But because Genevra Sforza 98 Nadi, p. 246; Anon., Cronica, BUB, ms. 3841, no.1, f. 13r. 99 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 732r; Zili, f. 17r. 100 In relation to another convent, Santa Cristina, we know that Genevra was involved in the appointment of an abbess in the early 1500s; see Foschi. 101 Ubaldini, see missing pages corresponding to 1506–1507. 102 BUB 580, no. 3 ends in 1498; BUB 580, no. 4 ends in 1464; BUB 1410 does not discuss Genevra in the events of 1506 although it continues till 1523; BUB 2012, busta 6, no. 4 ends in 1492; BCB 3454 ends in 1471; BUB 3648, no. 23, ms. 3 continues to 1533 but with no mention of Genevra in 1506; BCB B1153, no. 7 makes only the 1454 comment about Genevra’s wedding to Sante; and the briefest chronicle of this study, B1153, no. 8, part 1, discusses other events in its five lines of historical narration.

Genevr a Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507) 

died far from Bologna, in Busseto (Parma), even Tuate received only general and second-hand stories about her last moments.103

Conclusions Like respectable early modern Italian women, Genevra spent most of her life in private family space. It was there in her and her husbands’ ongoing architectural project, the palatial Bentivoglio family home on the Strà San Donato, where she constructed her identity as a courtly matron and lived most of her life as the respected wife of two consecutive de facto rulers of an important Northern Italy city and as a mother and grandmother to many. Information uncovered in contemporary sources found in many archives, libraries and museums testifies that Genevra successfully lived her life and fashioned her public identity as a traditional female strongly supporting the Bentivoglio cause. All surviving sources extoll her as an elegant courtly woman, a devout Christian, and as an active member of a large family. When examined as a whole, the above biographical information serves to help us form an understanding of Genevra’s position in Bologna and of how she was understood by her contemporary public. While the patron-client relationship made Arienti describe Genevra in the most encomiastic of terms in his Gynevera, a large group of un-commissioned chroniclers also ‘naturally’ depicted her in the same respectable and traditional ways. Contemporary facts, descriptions and various portraits of Genevra demonstrate that she acted appropriately for her gender and condition, that she consistently upheld a positive image as she worked for the overall good of the Bentivoglio family, and that she had a positive and noteworthy impact on the Bolognese for over five decades—from the time of her arrival in Bologna as Sante’s wife at age thirteen until the day she died. The unanimous consensus reality is that fifteenth-century people recorded her good deeds and concurred in their histories by labelling her often as the magnifica and illustrissima Madonna Genevra. After examining so much positive contemporary information about this woman’s life, how does Genevra Sforza end up being known as an evil virago who destroyed her family and city? Let’s turn to investigate different kinds of surviving materials about Genevra, beginning with archival materials in Milan that yield a wealth of information about the behind-the-scenes marriage arrangements made for her as a child in Pesaro regarding her adult life in Bologna, the focus of Chapter Two. 103 See Tuate, f. 305r.

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Figure 1.1: Portrait medal (in lead) of Genevra Sforza by Antonio Marescotti, ca. 1454. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Obverse inscription reads: DIVAE GENEVRAE SFORTIA BENTIVOLLAE; reverse: flat and blank. (Genevra age ca. 13, at the time of her wedding and move to Bologna)

Figure 1.2: Diptych Portrait of Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Genevra Sforza by Ercole de’ Roberti, ca. 1475. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Genevra age ca. 34)

Genevr a Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507) 

Figure 1.3: Bentivoglio Family Donor Portrait by Lorenzo Costa, Church of San Giacomo, Bologna, 1488. Children, left to right: Camilla, Bianca, Francesca, Eleonora, Violante, Laura, Isotta, Ermes, Alessandro, AntonGaleazzo, Annibale II. (Genevra age ca. 47)

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Figure 1.4: A portion of Genevra’s biography (including individualised woodcut) in Giacomo Filippo Foresti [also Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis], De plurimis claris selectisque mulieribus (Ferrara: Laurentius de Rubeis, 1497), f. 164; image (detail) from Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis, On Famous Women, p. 345 at the Library of Congress, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_17173/?sp=345 &r=-1.351,-0.03,3.702,1.712,0 (accessed 17 September 2022). (Genevra age ca. 56)

Document 1.1 Vita of Genevra Sforza by Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti from his collection of women’s lives entitled Gynevera de le clare donne (early 1490s, held at ASBO); published by Ricci and Bacchi della Lega, eds., Gynevera de le clare donne (Bologna: Romagnoli-Dall’Acqua, 1888; Bologna: Forni, 1969), pp. 1–9.

Opera nominata Gynevera de le Clare donne Composta per me Joanne Sabadino de li Arienti ad la illustre Madonna Gynevera Sphorza di Bentivogli. Ne la mia affectionata mente, Gynevera Sphorza illustre Madonna, essendo spesso cum dolceza stimolato, per benignità del tuo magnifico aspecto et virtute, che ingrato essere non debba a la aparente estimatione, che hai per tua mansuetudine facto in me da la adolescente mia aetate fin a la gioventù presente, ho preso piacere, in dolce fatica del fructo del mio obtuso ingengo, scrivere del valore de alcune excellente donne, che, secundo ne li nostri Anali trovo et per audito de optimi ingegni de reverenda fede, quasi, molte, se può dire, a la nostra aetate cum excellentia vixe[ro]: le quale certo non sono manche degne di poema et de hystoria che de le antique et gentile da preclari scriptori, per aeterna memoria de

Genevr a Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507) 

loro facti, exaltate. Et tanto più volontieri a la presente fatica me dispono, quanto sei degna essere in supremo loco fra loro colocata per le tue optime conditioni, per le quale picoli et grandi plaudendo gridano: Gynevera, Gynevera tuo odorifero nome. Non è da maravigliare perhò de tanta tua gloria, per che prima li Cieli te hano creata de caste beleze piene de gratia singulare, prudente et costumate et figliuola già de Alexandro Sphorza clarissimo principe et de la disciplina militare Imperatore praestante, quanto al presente seculo fusse già mai, in forma che il nome latino et il Sphorzesco sangue aeternamente cum summa laude et gloria perillustrati sono. Tu sei ad contento del Bolognese populo copulata al più felice Cavaliero del mondo, Joanne Bentivoglio secundo, strenuo in arme, Gubernatore generale Ducale de le gente d’arme et Senatore perpetuo, primo de tanta illustre cità, quanto è la nostra, grato a tuti i pontentati Italici, li quali a prova l’uno de l’altro desiderano honorarlo existimando la sua virtute, auctorità et reputatione a loro de non poco fomento, come in effecto se è veduto ne la cruda guerra del nostro Inclyto Duca Hercule, che per la serenissima liga presentandose lui prima in Ferrarese, nel pore li bastioni in difesa del ducal Stato de quel Signore contro la superba invasione de le potente copie Venete, ne prese, ad terrore de li inimici, de victoria optima speranza. Poi in Mantuana, ne la aquisita Asola, oppido fortissimo et bello, e ne l’altre terre di Bressana dimostrò grandeza de animo in forma che ‘l suo nome, cum degna gratia et laude de Alphonsio de Aragonia Capitanio savio et excelso del florentissimo exercito, atinse le stelle. Hai anchora havuto de tanto marito, gloriosa Madonna, angelica sobole de sexdeci figliuoli, di quali cinque (zoè: Hannibal, Cornelio, Lodovico, Donina et Isota) lasssando, chi in fasse et chi in puerile aetate la mortal vita, andarono a la aeterna, dove, ornati de girlande de fronde de Gynepro per il materno nome, triumphando nel choro de li Angeli orano per te la Maiestà divina, et Quella in angelica voce magnificano cantando oxanna. O quanto questo a ti sia celeste et divina gratia, per che tu puoi dire havere già la dextra mano nel regno del cielo! Del residuo di viventi tuoi ornatissimi figliuoli, hai per il sexto Biancha, maritata in Nicolao Rangone nobilissimo Conte et de la nostra illustre Republica felice Capitaneo; septimo figliuolo Francesca, quale fu copulata a Galeotto Manfredo virtuoso principe de Faenza; ottavo f igliuolo Hannibal secundo mio signor Compatre, quale avanti lo illustre sepulcro del Sanctissimo Diminico fu posto ne l’ordine equestro da Christierno Re de Datia et poi, cum molta gloria et triumpho de tuta la cità nostra, matrimonialmente se congiunse cum Lucretia, savia figliuola dell’alto Duca Hercule Estense, come difusamente habiamo scripto ne l’opera de lo Hymeneo: nono figliuolo è Lionora moglie del futuro successore del paterno stato Ghiberto, de la cità nostra magnifico Duca d’arme et figlio primo de Marco Pio splendido Signor de Carpo; decimo figliuolo, Antonio Galeazo

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apostolico Prothonotario reverendo et munificiente; undecimo, Camilla egregia vergene, la quale a li servitii del celeste principe nel monastero de Sancta Clara se è renclusa, che a ti sia cumulo de divino thesauro; duodecimo figliuolo, Violante, consorte de Pandolpho Malatesta de Arimino felicissimo principe, nel quale già se iudica le glorie de’ suoi progenitori; el terzodecimo, Alesandro ornato de militare splendore da Alphonsio Duca de Calabria, sponso de Joanna figliuola già de Roberto Malatesta Principe de Arimino, quale cum diva gloria fu uno fulghure de Marte al mondo; quartodecimo, Laura, che come lauro verdegia sempre de virtute et costumi; il quintodecimo figliuolo, Hermes, che in li suoi puerili anni ostende benignitate et gratia de futura celsitudine; el sextodecimo figliuolo è Isota secundo, clarissima fanzuletta sponsa in Ottaviano già primo genito del Conte Hieronymo de Riario, Signore inclito de Imola et de Furlì citate in Flaminia de non poca importantia per li comuni stati. La natività de quisti toi figlioli, certo non è manco presso noi ioconda per loro futura alteza, et augumento del felice nome Bentivoglio, che fusse in Creta quella de Jove, il quale da le Nymphe fu in rose et viole alevato et nutrito in tante delicie, secundo è narrato da poeti, che mai fu più beato nascimento. Li homini, le donne et li fanzuli duncha iustamente, come suo simulacro, te mirano et contemplano et pensano servirti exaltando il tuo generoso nome et la beatitudine del tuo fecundo ventre, perchè oltra le narrate conditione li strenge la dolceza de le tue parole nel consigliare prudente, la gratiosità di costumi, la affabilità, la mansuetudine, la pietate, la religione et il liberale tuo servire cum la magnitudine de l’animo, et finalmente la discreta pompa de omne ornamento et reale prestantia, in modo che la cità nostra in ogni canto splende più che le geme et l’oro: onde, secundo donna, non sei in alcuna parte inferiore a le ineffabile virtù del tuo sangue et del tuo illustre consorte. Che debbo io dunque fare, essendo de tante tue excellentie infiammato, se non afaticare la mano et l’ingegno in cosa gentile, per gratificare la tua benigna mente a tua aeterna laude in exemplo de qualuncha donna vorà conseguire honore, lassando de artificiare li visi loro la continua cura del vano et lasivo spechio, molte volte inquinatore del buon nome, che così facendo, nel termine de sua vita, cum benigna fama lassarano il mortal velo et andarano fra li beati spiriti de le famose donne ad fruire quella sempiterna patria, dove è gaudio senza fine? Ad tuo diporto duncha, excelsa mia Madonna, gustarai la muliebre gloria, secundo la mia devota musa a la tua Signoria, a ciò che presso li altri tuoi piaceri, quando serai levata da le cure de la tua splendida famiglia et del tuo stato, ne possi in recordo de la mia observantia verso la tua excellentia et gloria del muliebre nome, prendere qualche dilecto. Che ‘l summo et omnipotente Principe ne guidi l’ingegno et la mano a la nostra fidele provincia, cum la gratia tua felice et cum consiglio de la mia devota musa, la presente opera Gynevera intitulando ad aeterna tua memoria nel 1483…..

A Sforza-Bentivoglio Family Tree

Sforza

Document 1.2 Bentivoglio

 Š   ‡†‡­‹ ŒŒ‚ Ž‘
‡

Legitimates born to Genevra and Sante                Legitimates     born to Genevra and Giovanni 11   
­ŒŸ›”™‚Œ“—žˆ‡ ‡  ­

 
­Œ˜Ÿ ¡‚   
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­Œ˜“‚Œ›ž£¤¥  €   
­Œ˜›”Ÿ’Œ‚Œ›ž‡ Š                            ­ ‚ An illegitimate born to Sante                     ­

  
­Œ˜™”ŸŒ’‚Œ›“ž ¦…Š ­   
­ŒŒ’”™™‚”Œ“›­¢‚ž‰­¢‚    
­Œ“’”ŸŒ’‚Œ›˜ž‰ ‚

  
­Œ“ ¡‚ ­   
­Œ“”ŸŸ‚                       ƒ 
­Œ“—”ŸŒ‚‰‘  ­   
­Œ“Œ”Ÿ——‚Œ™žœ ‡ „  
­Œ“Ÿ”¢‚Œ›Ÿž œ†‡¥    
    ƒ 
­Œ“˜”Ÿ—‚Ÿ’Œž‹¥ …  
­Œ““”Ÿ—‚Œ™Œž ‡                 
­Œ“› ¡‚ ­€‚    ƒ                
­Œ“™”¢‚‰‘ ‡

 „… †     
­Œ› ¡‚        ‡ ˆ   ‰  …  
­Œ› ¡‚

ˆ ž   

      ­ Œ““‚ 

More possible illegitimates:

 ­Œ›Ÿ”¢‚žŠ­¢‚   ­Œ™”ŸŸ’‚                    žˆ  ˆ ‡  ­”Œ“—”¢‚  ­”Œ™—”¢‚ ­”Œ™—”¢‚ ­”Ÿ’›”¢‚Ÿ—Œž 
   

­Œ˜”¢‚Œ“Ÿž  ­Œ˜›”Ÿ¡‚ ‡‡   ­Œ“Ÿ”Ÿ’›‚Œ›˜ž   ­Œ›Ÿ”¢‚žŠ

Giovanni 11’s illegitimates with unnamed domestic servants:

                                 Genevra Sforzaž                                                                    ž

 
   

 ­ŒŒ˜”“‚     ‰ ­ŒŒ“”›—‚           —’¡                                         ž‘†‡                                                                       
­Œ—”ŒŸ‚                                                                         

‰  †­Œ›”Œ“‚ž  ­Œ’™”“—‚        ­Œ’”˜˜‚             … ­ ŒŒ‚     ˆ ­ š —™’”Œ—Ÿ‚       ž‡ 

…‡­Œ’“”““‚                ‡ˆ • –‰­—˜™”ŒŒ‚š ‡­—›’”Œ˜‚             œ    ­ Œ’‚ž… ‰ ‰ 

 ‡­—›Œ”ŒŸ’‚

Document 1.2 A Sforza-Bentivoglio Family Tree

Genevr a Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507) 

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Bibliography Archives AAB ASB ASFE ASMN ASMI ASMO BCB BUB FIML PBN

Archivio Arcivescovile, Bologna (Fonti battesimali) Archivio di Stato, Bologna Archivio di Stato, Ferrara (Fondo Bentivoglio) Archivio di Stato, Mantua (Archivio Gonzaga) Archivio di Stato, Milano (Archivio Ducale Sforzesco, Potenze Estere Romagna) Archivio di Stato, Modena (Ambasciatori) Biblioteca Comunale or ‘L’Archiginnasio’, Bologna Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (Ash-Burnham) Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale

Unpublished Primary Sources Alberti, Leandro. Istoria di Bologna. BUB, ms. 97. Anelle, Antonio dalle. Diario delle cose notabili successe in Bologna dall’anno 1401 al 1513. BUB, ms. 581, no. 3. Anon. Cronichetta di Bologna. BUB, ms. 1959, no. 7. Anon. Cronica di Bologna. BUB, ms. 356, no. 1. Anon. Cronica di Bologna. BUB, ms. 356, no. 2. Anon. Cronica di Bologna or Cronica Bianchetti. BCB, ms. B3454. Anon. Cronica. BCB, ms. B1153, nos. 7, 8, 8 part II. Anon. Cronica di Bologna (called Cronica Bianchini). BCB, ms. B79. Anon. Cronica di Bologna. BUB, ms. 3841, no. 1. Anon. Frammenti di storia della città di Bologna. BCB, Malvezzi cart. 78 (F. 023), no. 5. Anon. Istoria di cose occorse nella città di Bologna. BUB, ms. 1410. Barbiere, Giacomo di Marco. Cronica di Bologna dal 1445 al 1488. BCB, ms. B 1648. Bianchetti, Alamanno. Cronaca di Bologna. BCB, ms. 3453 and ms. 2355. Carratti, Baldassare Antonio Maria. Battesimi. BCB, mss. B849, B851, B852. [Corpus Domini convent]. ASB, Corpus Domini, Filza contenuta memorie di scritture, testamenti, sepoltura de’ sori Bentivogli, ed altri uomini di detta famiglia, obblighi di messe e suffragi delle monache defunte, 121-1246-C-122-Busta BB no. 6. Ebreo, Guglielmo. De pratica seu arte tripudii. PBN, f. Ital. 973 and f. Ital. 476 (1474). Gengini, Vincenzo. Cronica, BCB, ms. B2126. Mamelini, Nicolo de Tadio. Questo libro e di mi Nicolo de Tadio de Mamelini notaro et citadino de Bologna in lo quale scrivero alcuni mie facti, BCB, ms. B 1154. Nadi, Gaspare. Diario. BCB, ms. B1157. Pillizoni, Fra Giovanni. Cronica di varie notizie,1489–1495, BUB, ms. 1184. Poeti, Sigismondo de.’ Colloquoi tra Zanevera di Bentivoglio e Sismondo poeta, circa la Comparazione delle gemme e dell’oro col vero Amore. FIML, Ash-Burnham 737. Pugliola, Fra Bartolomeo della. Cronica di Bologna [1104 al 1471]. BCB, ms. B2088. Schiassi, Giuseppe Mafia. ‘Inventario delle nozze de M. Zoane di Bentivogli del MDVII’, in BCB, Famiglia Bentivoglio, ms. B4130.

Genevr a Sforza de’ Bentivoglio (ca. 1441–1507) 

Tuate, Fileno dalle. Sustanziosa narrazione dell’origine della città di Bologna e suo vario stato dall’anno 305 sino all’anno 1521, composta da Fileno dalle Tuate, nobile bolognese. BUB, ms. 1438. Ubaldini, Friano deli. Originale della cronica di Friano deli Ubaldini bolognese, dalla creazione del mondo et arriva sino a 1513. BUB, ms. 430. Zili, Giacomo. Cronica di Bologna dall’anno 1494 sino al 1513. BUB, ms. 779.

Published Primary/Early Modern Sources Alberti, Niccolò d’Antonio degli. Descrizione del convito e delle feste fatte in Pesaro per le nozze di Costanzo Sforza e di Camilla d’Aragona nel maggio MCCCCLXXV. Florence: Barbera, 1870 (per le nozze di Florestano ed Elisa Conti de Larderel). Arienti, Giovanni Sabadino degli. Gynevera de le clare donne, Corrado Ricci and Alberto Bacchi della Lega, eds. Bologna: Romagnoli dall’Acqua, 1888; Bologna: Forni, 1969. Arienti, Giovanni Sabadino degli. Ateonia, Giovanni Gambarin, ed. Bari: Laterza, 1914. Boccaccio, Giovanni. De claris mulieribus (vol. 10) in Vittore Branca, ed., Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. Milan: Mondadori, 1965. Borselli, Fra Hieronymus. Cronica gestorum ac factorum memorabilium civitatis Bononiae in RIS, vol. 23, part 2. Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1929. Bridgeman, Jane, ed. A Renaissance Wedding: The Celebrations at Pesaro for the Marriage of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla Marzano d’Aragona 26–30 May 1475. London: Harvey Miller, 2013. Codibò, Gaspare. Diario bolognese, ed. A. Machiavelli. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1915. Fiorentino, Francesco Cieco. Torneamento […] di Giovanni Bentivoglio. Bologna: Azzoguidi, 1470. Foresti, Giacomo Filippo (or Jacobus Philippus de Bergamo). De claris mulieribus. Ferrara: Laurentius de Rubeis de Valentia, 29 April 1497; available online at Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis, On Famous Women, Library of Congress, World Digital Library: https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667031 (retrieved 17 September 2022). Ghirardacci, Cherubino. Della historia di Bologna. Parte terza (1426–1509). Albano Sorbelli, ed. in RIS, vol. 33, pt. 1. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1933. Nadi, Gaspare. Diario bolognese. Eds. Corredo Ricci and Alberto Bacchi della Lega. Bologna: Romagnoli dall’Acqua, 1886. Petrarca, Giovanni. De virtutibus mulierum. Brescia: Boninus de Boninis, 1485. Spagnuoli, Battista (called Il mantovano). Storia del sacro tempo di Loreto. Bologna: Francesco detto Platone Benedetti, ca. 1489. Stoppelli, P. ‘Due manoscritti e un incunabolo sconosciuto di Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti’ in Studi e problemi di critica testuale, vol. 25 (1982): 25–30. Tuata, Fileno dalla. Istoria di Bologna: origini–1521, 3 vols. B. Fortunato, ed. Bologna: Costa, 2005. Varignana. Corpus chronicorum bononiensium in RIS, vol. 17. Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1939.

Published Sources Ady, Cecilia. The Bentivoglio of Bologna: A Study in Despotism. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1937. Ady, Cecilia. ‘Francesco Puteolano: maestro dei figlioli di Giovanni II Bentivoglio’ in L’Archiginnasio: bollettino della Biblioteca comunale di Bologna, vol. 30 (1935): 156–159. Antonino, Biancastella, et al., Donne tipografe tra XV e XIX secolo. Bologna: Biblioteca universitaria di Bologna, 2003.

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Arthur, Kathleen Giles. Women, Art and Observant Franciscan Piety: Caterina Vigri and the Poor Clares in Early Modern Ferrara. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966. Bastia, Claudia and Maria Bolognini, eds., La memoria e la città: scritture storiche tra Medioevo ed Età moderna. Bologna: Il nove, 1995. Benson, Pamela Joseph. The Invention of the Renaissance Woman: The Challenge of Female Independence in the Literature and Thought of Italy and England. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. Bocchi, Francesca. Il patrimonio bentivolesco alla metà del Quattrocento. Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1970. Calamari, Giuseppe. Il confidente di Pio II, Cardinal Jacopo Ammannati Piccolomini (1422–1479). Rome: Augustea, 1932. Cavalli, Jennifer A. ‘The Learned Consort: Learning, Piety, and Female Political Authority in Northern Courts’ in Nicholas Scott Baker and Brian Jeffrey Maxson, eds., After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy (Toronto: CRRS, 2015), pp. 173–192. Chandler, S. B. ‘La Gynevera de le clare donne di Sabadino degli Arienti’ in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, vol. 158 (1981): 222–234. Cochrane, Eric. Historians and Historiography in The Italian Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Cockram, Sarah P. D. Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga: Power Sharing at the Italian Renaissance Court. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2013. Daye, Anne. ‘Towards A Choreographic Description of the Fifteenth-Century Italian Bassa Danza’ in Maurizio Padovan, ed., Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro e la danza nelle corti italiane del XV secolo: atti del convengo internazionale di studi (Ospedaletto, Pisa: Pacini, 1990) pp. 97–110. De Vries, Joyce. Caterina Sforza and the Art of Appearances: Gender, Art and Culture in Early Modern Italy. Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. Duranti, Tommaso. Il carteggio di Gerardo Cerruti oratore sforzesco a Bologna (1470–1474). 2 vols. Bologna: CLEUB, 2007. Felicangeli, Bernardino. ‘Notizie sulla vita e sugli scritti di Costanza Varano-Sforza (1426–1447)’ in Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, vol. 23 (1894): 1–75. Fortini Brown, Patricia. Venice And Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Foschi, Paola. ‘Prestigio e munif icenza: iscrizioni dei secoli XV-XVII in ricordo degli ampliamenti e abbellimenti del monastero offerti dalle monache’ in Paola Foschi and Jacopo Ortalli, eds., Il Monastero di Santa Cristina della Fondazza (Bologna: Deputazione di storia patria, 2003), pp. 185–212. Frati, Lodovico. La vita privata a Bologna. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1900. Fubini, Riccardo. ‘Umanesimo curiale del Quattrocento: nuovi studi su Giovannantonio Campano’ in Rivista storica italiana, vol. 88 (1976): 745–755. Grendler, Paul F. ‘The University of Bologna, the City, and the Papacy’ in Nicholas Terpstra, ed., Renaissance Studies, vol. 13, no. 4 (December 1999), pp. 479–480. Grendler, Paul F. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Gundersheimer, Werner L. ‘Women, Learning and Power: Eleonora of Aragon and the Court of Ferrara’, in Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past, Patricia H. Labalme, ed. (New York: New York University Press, 1980), pp. 46–54. Herzig, Tamir. ‘The Demons and the Friars: Illicit Magic and Mendicant Rivalry in Renaissance Bologna’ in Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Winter 2011), pp. 1025–1058.

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Ianziti, Gary. Humanistic Historiography under The Sforzas: Politics and Propaganda in Fifteenth-Century Milan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. James, Carolyn. The Letters of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti. Florence: Olschki, 2002. James, Carolyn. Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti: A Literary Career. Florence: Olschki, 1996. Kelley, Donald R. ‘Humanism and History’ in Albert Rabil, Jr., ed., Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, Vol. 3, Humanism and the Disciplines (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), pp. 236–270. Kolsky, Stephen. ‘Bending the Rules: Marriage in Renaissance Collections of Biographies of Famous Women’ in Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, 1300–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 227–249. Kolsky, Stephen. ‘Men Framing Women: Sabadino degli Arienti’s Gynevera de le clare donne Reexamined’ in Mirna Cicioni and Nicole Prunster, eds., Visions and Revisions: Women in Italian Culture (Providence and Oxford: BERG, 1992), pp. 27–40. Luciano, Eleonora. Medals of Women from the Italian Renaissance Courts: From Cecilia Gonzaga to Isabella of Aragon. Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University, 1997. McLaughlin, Mary Martin. ‘Creating and Recreating Communities of Women: The Case of Corpus Domini in Ferrara, 1406–52’, in Signs, vol. 14 (1989): 293–320. Paglia, Enrico. ‘La Casa giocosa di Vittorino da Feltre in Mantova’ in Archivio storico lombardo, vol. 1 (1884): 150–158. Pezzarossa, Fulvio, ed. et al., Censimento delle cronache bolognesi del Medioevo e del Rinascimento. Bologna: Il nove, 1989. Quaquarelli, Leonardo, ed., Memoria urbis: censimento delle cronache bolognesi del Medioevo e del Rinascimento. Bologna: Il nove, 1993. Robertson, Ian. Tyranny under the Mantle of St Peter: Pope Paul II And Bologna. Belgium: Brepols, 2002. Ryder, Alan. Alfonso the Magnanimous: King of Aragon, Naples and Sicily, 1396–1458. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Ryder, Alan. The Kingdom of Naples under Alfonso the Magnanimous: The Making of a Modern State. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Scardovi Bonora, Anna Maria. ‘Ai primordi dell’arte tipografica: gli incunaboli’ in Giancarlo Roversi, ed., L’Archiginnasio: il palazzo, l’università, la biblioteca (Bologna: Credito romagnolo, 1987), pp. 652–671. Simonetta, Giovanni. De rebus gestis Francisci Sfortiae commentarii, Giovanni Soranzo, ed., in RIS, vol. 21, no. 2, fasc. 1–6 (or Johannis Simonetae rerum gestarum Francisci Sfortiae mediolanensium ducis commentarii. Giovanni Soranzo, ed. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1932. Sorbelli, Albano. Storia della stampa in Bologna. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1929; and with Maria Gioia Tavoni, ed., Bologna: Forni, 2003. Sorbelli, Albano. Le croniche bolognesi del secolo XIV. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1900. Sparti, Barbara, ed., De pratica seu arte tripudii: On The Pratice Of The Art Of Dancing. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993. Wallace, Katherine. ‘Lorenzo Costa’s Concert: A Fresh Look at a Familiar Portrait’ in Music in Art, vol. XXXIII/1–2 (2008): 52–67. Webb, Jennifer D. ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: Varano and Sforza Women of the Marche’ in Katherine A. McIver, ed., Wives, Widows, Mistresses, and Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible through Art and Patronage (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 13–31. Williams, Allyson Burgess. ‘Rewriting Lucrezia Borgia: Property, Magnificence, and Piety in Portraits of a Renaissance Duchess’ in Katherine McIver, Wives, Widows, Mistresses, and Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible through Art and Patronage (Adlershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 77–97.

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Twice Bentivoglio Genevra Sforza on the Marriage Market (1446–1454 and 1463–1464) Abstract: Genevra played the role of a polite, diplomatic and innocuous pawn in negotiations leading to her marriage to Sante Bentivoglio (1454) and then to Giovanni II Bentivoglio (1464). Based on letters surviving in Milan exchanged between Bolognese leaders and Genevra’s uncle, Duke Francesco Sforza, we learn a tremendous amount about Genevra’s position with no dowry; the complex relationships among Milan, Bologna, Pesaro, Florence, and Rome; gender roles and patriarchy in fifteenth-century marriages; and that Genevra did not marry Giovanni II for love (as legends claim). Employing pre-Machiavellian schemes involving the manipulation of family members and city-states, Francesco Sforza arranged the alliances with Genevra for his own benef it—all while Genevra showed herself willing to serve. Keywords: Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio, Renaissance marriage, marriage alliances, Bologna history, Duke Francesco Sforza, fifteenth-century Italy

Introduction Early modern Italian ruling-class parents scrupulously organised marriages for their children as a way to create peaceful political alliances among families, cities and states. Such strategies were essential to powerful families in their quest to maintain dominant positions, status, influence and security. Available family members would be married into other carefully selected families (or within their own extended family) in search of similar advances while the individual wishes of the two involved in the arrangement did not much exist. Sexual activity for females was of course strictly tied to marriage whereas for men it was not—although it was necessary for men within marriage to guarantee the survival of their legitimate family line. The d’Este of Ferrara, the Sforza of Milan, the Gonzaga of Mantua and the Bentivoglio of Bologna were among the most powerful families of Renaissance

Bernhardt, E.L., Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726849_ch02

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Italy—and among the most successful at creating enormous extended families and extensive power bases thanks to practicing certain strategies. This chapter focuses on the marriages organised for Genevra Sforza based on information from thousands of letters once exchanged between the Bolognese government and the Sforza, now housed within the Archivio Ducale Sforzesco in Milan. From the masses of surviving correspondence, analysed here for the first time with Genevra Sforza in mind, we learn about the pre-Machiavellian methods at work in Duke Francesco Sforza’s mind regarding family planning. The intensity of negotiations regarding Genevra’s marriages, seen in a wealth of surviving correspondence about a young girl (from the time she was about five years old) who went unnamed throughout much of the bargaining, shows the extent to which she was used as a pawn. As outlined in the previous chapter, Genevra first came to Bologna to marry Sante Bentivoglio; then after his death she remained in the family by marrying Giovanni II. The unusual choice of Genevra as a partner for Giovanni II was not openly critiqued during their lifetimes but would later be explained with a story that has since been told for over 500 years: while Genevra was Sante’s bride, she and Giovanni II had been secretly in love, and their love was the basis of their eventual marriage. Instead of yet another account of Genevra’s marriages based on myth, this chapter closely examines the correspondence exchanged between Bologna and Milan at the time of Genevra’s negotiations in order to gain an understanding of the realities behind the alliances.

Genevra Sforza: Her Early Years Chapter One outlines the noteworthy observable events in the life of Genevra Sforza from the time she magnificently appeared in public in Bologna as the young teenage bride of Sante Bentivoglio (May 1454). But how did Genevra end up in this legal relationship with the de facto leader of Bologna, a city she had never seen prior to her arrival there as a bride? Genevra Sforza was probably born in or around Pesaro, a port town in the Marche region of Central Italy, sometime between 1440 and 1442. She was the daughter of an unrecognised (and still unknown) woman and condottiere Alessandro Sforza (1409–1473), later signore of Pesaro. Alessandro was a younger brother of condottiere Francesco Sforza (duke of Milan from 1450); and they were two of many illegitimates born to a concubine named Lucia Terzani da Marsciano and the famous condottiere Muzio Attendolo, nicknamed ‘Sforza’ (‘Force’), founder of the dynasty. Nine months before Genevra’s birth, it is difficult to pinpoint where Alessandro had been or with whom as he had been working as a mercenary soldier across the peninsula. Since there seem to be no surviving record of Genevra’s birth, her date of birth has been

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calculated from her age at marriage: she may have been ten to twelve at the proxy signing and twelve to fourteen upon entry into Bologna. It remains unclear why Alessandro chose to recognise Genevra while never recognising her mother who could have been anyone available to him as an elite soldier; this woman might have died in childbirth or could have been kept unknown to Genevra too. Furthermore, it remains unclear after whom Genevra had been named as nobody with her name appears in Sforza family trees. By 1444, when Genevra was around three years old, her father took his first wife, Costanza da Varano (ca. 1426–1447), famous for her poems and orations.1 She also wrote in Latin and was descended from a ruling family that had produced other famous women of culture.2 Costanza’s mother, Elisabetta Malatesta (1407–1477), was called a donna letterata (female scholar), and her better known grandmother, Battista di Montefeltro (1384–1450), wrote Petrarchan verse and presented Latin orations to Pope Martin V Colonna and Holy Roman Emperor Sigismondo of Luxembourg. Leonardo Bruni had dedicated his famed oration on female education, De studiis et litteris liber (ca. 1423–1426), to Battista.3 The marriage brought a young stepmother of culture into Genevra’s childhood home as well as two half-siblings: Battista and Costanzo. Battista (1446–1472) became famous for her literary skill and as the wife of the duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro (1422–1482). Their diptych portrait by Piero della Francesca has become an icon of Renaissance art, and it would one day serve as the model for a similar commission made by Genevra and her husband. Battista died as a result of complications related to the birth of Guidobaldo, her first boy, after having successfully delivered nine girls. 4 The birth of Costanza’s second child, Costanzo (1447–1483), led to her death in childbirth too. Costanzo would follow in his family’s footsteps as a condottiere and eventually take over his father’s position as signore of Pesaro. Genevra had other illegitimate siblings: at least three were born to Alessandro (and possibly his known concubine Pacifica Samperoli) including Antonia (m. Ottaviano Martinengo of Brescia), Carlo and

1 King and Rabil, pp. 39–44, 53–56; Parker, pp. 31–54. 2 For Costanza’s government, see PBO, ms. 455, vol. 1, document 123, ff. 129–131. Various elements of Costanza’s prodigal illustriousness are traced within the vita of Battista Sforza; see Arienti, pp. 288–290. Costanza’s Oration to the People of Camerino and letters to Isotta Nogarola and Cecilia Gonzaga are published in King and Rabil, pp. 39–44, 53–56. For more on the educated women of the family, see Webb. 3 See Bruni in Grendler, pp. 296–302; see also her Oration to the Emperor Sigismund within King and Rabil, pp. 35–39. 4 Battista gave a Latin oration at age four; see Arienti, p. 289. At Battista’s funeral (17 August 1472), out of hundreds of participants recorded, the only bolognese present was Lodovico da San Piero, oratore del magnifico Giovanni Bentivoglio seen in PBO, ms. 377, Elenco deli ambasciatori/corte/persone al funerale di Madonna Battista Sforza, ff. 29–31. Perhaps Genevra did not make the trip to Urbino due to summer heat while pregnant.

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Ercole.5 Alessandro paid Antonia’s dowry as well as that of Caterina, a daughter of Pacifica’s, and possibly his own girl too.6 Over the course of his life, Alessandro had two wives and kept two known concubines (Pacifica Samperoli and her cousin Mattea Samperoli), and had other relations with unknown women—but no woman in surviving materials can yet be identified as the mother of Genevra.7 In 1447, just six months after Costanza’s death, Alessandro married Sveva di Montefeltro (1434–1478), sister of the duke of Urbino and another young woman of refined culture. Genevra probably knew her well; they must have lived in the same palace for about seven years before Genevra left for Bologna. Sveva allegedly became increasingly upset with her husband’s absences and comportment, and some feared she worked against him. For whatever reasons, the marriage did not last, and Sveva entered the local branch of Corpus Domini (from 1457) where she served as abbess and later became Beata Serafina.8 In Pesaro, Alessandro employed grammar masters and teachers for his children including Matteo da Sassoferrato, Pietro da Tolentino, Antonio de Strullis da Coldazzo, Giacomo da Pesaro, and Tideo Acciarini da Sant’Elpidio; the mother of Pesarese poet Raniero degli Almerici (1430–1499) also helped educate the children while some young Sforza were sent away to study in Pavia under Bianca Maria Visconti’s guidance.9 According to Vespasiano da Bisticci, Alessandro amassed a large library by purchasing manuscripts and ordering others copied from libraries in Milan, Venice, Bologna, and other cities.10 For these reasons and others, it is clear that Genevra’s father, stepmothers, and their extended families highly valued education and raised the new generation to be informed participatory members of ruling-class Italian courtly society. Female members of the Sforza family were exceptionally well educated—and they had to be in order to serve responsibly as capable regents when their husbands were absent, 5 For the formal declaration of the receipt of Antonia’s dowry paid by Alessandro Sforza to Ottaviano and Giorgio Martinengo of Brescia, see PBO, mss. 376, vol. 10, Spogli d’archivio, fasc. 3, no. 10, dated 28 December 1469 (dated January in one place, December in another, both 1469). 6 Alessandro paid the 1000 ducat dowry of Pacifica’s daughter, Caterina, when she married on 25 May 1465; see PBO, mss. 376, Spogli d’archivio, vol. 1., fasc. 4, no. 108, f. 116; and fasc. 3, no. 13, ff. 149–50; and vol. 9, no. 4, f. 210; Abati Olivieri Giordani, p. 80. 7 PBO, ms. 376, Spogli d’archivio, fasc. 4, f. 108. Pacifica appears as Alesandro’s concubine in sonnets by Raniero Almerici of Pesaro (1430–1500) in PBO, ms. 195. For reference to Pacifica Samperoli of Montelevecchie as Alessandro’s seconda favorita (implying Mattea as prima favorita), see Amatori, p. 150. For mention of Pacifica and Mattea as Alessandro’s amanti, see Castelli, p. 227. 8 For the story of her life, see ‘Vita della Beata Suor Serafina Colonna’ in PBO, ms. 1997, no. 27, ff. 204–209, and PBO, ms. 318, no. 21, ff. 95–98; for her eighteenth-century canonisation trial, see PBO, ms. 261, tomo 34. 9 Eiche, p. 86; Webb, p. 19. 10 Bisticci in Gilmore, ed., pp. 114–117.

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often at war.11 Although there are no archival records that show Genevra was instructed (or not instructed) alongside her legitimate siblings, it is clear that Alessandro fully accepted Genevra as his daughter. She would have otherwise never been considered appropriate material for a high-profile alliance to the de facto leader of an important city.

Genevra and Her Uncle Francesco Sforza Genevra appears by name in surviving Pesarese records for the first time in a brief two-part entry, 1446 Alessandro Sforza having rebelled from his brother Duke Francesco was reunited with him through Federico of Urbino Alessandro Sforza gave his daughter Genevra as wife to Sante Bentivoglio Prince of Bologna 12

The above information from a seventeenth-century copy of a lost contemporary document that had been chewed away by bookworms shows that Genevra, from an early age (ca. five), was promised as bride to Sante Bentivoglio in Bologna. As indicated in the entry, the arrangement appears to have been the result of a dispute between her father and uncle, settled by Federico da Montefeltro.13 The main protagonist involved in arranging Genevra’s future would not be her father (and certainly not her unrecognised mother) but the most powerful member of her family: her uncle, Duke Francesco Sforza. As a young man he won a battle at L’Aquila that earned him an early reputation in his field. By age twenty-four he had 11 Clough, pp. 31–32, 42, 54; Webb. 12 ‘1446 Alessandro Sforza essendosi ribelluto dal Duca Franco suo fratello si riuni seco p mezzo del Co. Federigo di Urbino Alessandro Sforza diede Genebria Mutiana sua figlia p moglie a Sante Bentivogli Principe di Bologna’ See PBO, ms. number 455, Dei spogli fatti dal fù Signore Giovanni Battista Almerici nobile di Pesaro un secolo fa incirca. Tomo 1, f. 289. Almerici (1590–1650 ca.) collected materials from the old, disintegrating volumes in this Pesarese library. With the information found in manuscript documents, he compiled ca. twenty volumes with information arranged by date, and he gave his reason for making the compilations inside the front cover page: ‘sono scritti tutti [i vecchi volumi] in una carta a straccio o poco meno, con un pessimo inchiostro, di modo che riesce difficilissimo e noiosissimo il leggerli […] per la maggior parte sono da tarli cosi logori [?] e mangiati che da chi solo gli ha veduti può credersi’. 13 If, for whatever reason, a second date in the above entry once existed yet did not get transcribed into Almerici’s seventeenth-century compilations, Genevra still ended up being under the complete control of Francesco Sforza around 1446.

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worked as condottiere for Duke Filippo Maria Visconti who trusted him in battle with 1500 horses and 300 men. By 1432 Visconti again sought his military skill in an attempt to reunite his family’s large domain in Lombardy, offering him a high salary and a bride, eight-year-old Bianca Maria Visconti, who could potentially deliver him control of the entire Duchy of Milan. It was only when Milan was in extreme danger that the marriage to Bianca was actually set (26 October 1441). Beyond his plan to take over Milan, from 1433 Francesco had been working on conquering lands in the Marche region of Italy, an area technically part of the Papal State but misruled by a number of tyrants. Pope Eugenius IV had little power to control the area so Sforza captured many cities for himself. It was in the Marche where the Sforza brothers would quarrel after Alessandro deserted Francesco in a battle (as seen in the reference above). To make amends, Francesco demanded a favour: and this favour is apparently how Genevra came into the picture.14 By 1445 Francesco purchased Pesaro, a vicariate of the Papal State, with the intention of controlling it by positioning Alessandro there as signore.15 Although the sale of papal property resulted in Pope Eugenius IV excommunicating the involved parties, Alessandro was eventually nominated papal vicar by Pope Nicholas V, and he received official investiture of the town on 23 July 1447. Alessandro thus technically governed Pesaro for Rome. Francesco next had his eye set on Bologna, a city that could conveniently bridge a gap for him, located along the Via Aemilia and mid-way between Milan and the Marche. But instead of purchasing Bologna or attempting to conquer it with arms, Francesco wished to create a peaceful and lasting tie through a marriage alliance. The interwoven mix of military, political and marital strategies demonstrates the complexities behind successful leadership in fifteenth-century Italy. Much had been planned over the course of the eight years from the time the surviving above reference was made to the time of Genevra’s magnificent entry into Bologna in May 1454.16 In those years when Sante waited for his bride to come of age and arrive in the city, there remain no trace of other plans for Sante to have wed another woman—so Sante and the Bolognese awaited Genevra and what she represented.17 Background to Genevra’s and Sante’s story can be reconstructed even if the dozens of surviving letters about it represent only one side of the story: 14 The 1445–1446 falling out is described in Gozzi’s Cronologia mss. di Pesaro classified within an Estratto dell’archivio di casa Sforza at the Biblioteca del Vaticano, Rome as seen in Ratti, tomo 1, p. 45. 15 For papers relating to the sale of Pesaro for 20,000 gold florins to Francesco Sforza on 16 May 1445, see PBO, ms. 455, tomo 1, no. 351, f. 282. 16 Nadi, Pugliola, Tuate, Ubaldini, the Varignana chronicler, Agocchie, Borselli, Barbiere and several anonymous chronicles discuss Genevra’s entry and wedding festivities; see Chapter One here. 17 While Sante awaited his bride, he had some sort of relationship with Bolognese patrician Nicolosa Castellani Sanuti; see Frati. Sante also fathered at least one son, Antonio, who is mentioned in a 1463

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the version told by Bolognese in their letters to Milan. Milan’s responses once sent to the Bentivoglio were apparently lost when the Bentivoglio Palace itself was taken over by the Bolognese and the majority of its contents were dispersed (post-November 1506) and the palace itself destroyed (May 1507).

Becoming Bentivoglio: Negotiations for Genevra’s Marriage to Sante, ca. 1446–1454 Who was Sante, and why was he chosen by the duke as the best husband for Genevra? After the murder of Annibale (1445) no other Bentivoglio in Bologna was available to lead. Then Sante, an illegitimate son of Ercole Bentivoglio and the unnamed wife of Antonio Cascese in Poppi (Arezzo), came into the picture. Legend holds that Sante had been living in a small Tuscan town when he was discovered to be a Bentivoglio and consequently persuaded to take position as ruler of Bologna thanks to a convincing speech made to him by Cosimo de’ Medici.18 Ian Robertson has instead shown that Sante’s whereabouts had been known for years; and Robertson analyses how contemporary Florentine sources record difficult negotiations with the Bolognese lasting a full nine months, with Neri Capponi and Giannozzo Mannetti acting as Sante’s Florentine promoters. Sante was to become the figurehead of the Sedici and thus represent Bologna while the legitimate Bentivoglio heir, Giovanni di Annibale, would come of age. After Sante accepted the offer, on 13 November 1446 he arrived in Bologna where he was met by enormous crowds of supporters, knighted and welcomed triumphantly. The Bolognese were not bothered by the fact that Sante was young, poor, illegitimate, spoke with a foreign Tuscan accent, had worked as a manual labourer and was inexperienced in politics. Instead they jubilantly welcomed him as a Bentivoglio and as their new leader, and they formally inducted him into the Sedici from 29 November.19 If we were to consider Sante’s change in social status according to the six fixed classes (determined by Cardinal Bessarione in 1450), Sante came from the bottom—but rose into the top position within category one overnight.20 Sante was also single and would have been expected to contract marriage for the benefit of his extended document at ASFE, FB, Libro 7, number 9 entitled ‘Supplica del Sr. Antonio Bentivoglio figlio del Sig.r Sante per la donazione de’ beni de’ ribelli…’; this file, however, is missing from the archive. 18 Ghirardacci, pp. 118–119. 19 Robertson, pp. 113–137. 20 Bessarione’s legislation divided the Bolognese into six distinct social classes: 1) knights, 2) dottori (university educated men, presumably in medicine and in civil or canon law), 3) nobles, 4) artisans of certain higher trades, 5) artisans of certain lower trades, 6) countryfolk. For a discussion of who could wear what according to each of these groups, see Muzzarelli, pp. 146.

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family and the entire city; plus only a married man could be a mature and socially accepted citizen ruler.21 Francesco Sforza, nicknamed ‘signore delle novelle’ (lord of news) as he thrived on acquiring current information, had been closely watching Bologna as all of these events unfolded.22 And since the above surviving reference about Genevra’s alliance dates it to 1446, it appears that Francesco acted within one month of Sante’s arrival in Bologna to offer him a Sforza bride. In an era fraught with constant warfare among the major and minor Italian city-states, a marriage alliance was a sure way of conceiving meaningful and lasting peace between cities. The concept of arranging such an alliance (called parentado or parentela in this documentation) involving ruling families in important cities was neither a personal nor an insignificant matter: it was instead of utmost political importance and of national public knowledge and consideration. A link at mid-century between Milan and Bologna could have easily thrown the delicate balance of the major city-states into disorder. Francesco Sforza had become an expert in the making of such parentado alliances as he had been busy organising his own twenty-five children in the creation of an enormous web of relations crafted to further his various developing plans.23 At mid-century, none of the major Italian city-states (Milan, Venice, Florence and Naples) had succeeded at making a close tie to Bologna. Of these major powers, only Sforza dared to upset the political balance by attempting to do so—but due to the delicate nature of potentially influencing a papal city, he felt he could not use any of his own children to make the alliance. Our first traces of Sforza’s Bologna plan appear in correspondence beginning in December 1451, when both Sante and Francesco da Cusano, a Sforza agent in Romagna, were writing secret coded letters to Francesco Sforza—an indication that plans were well underway.24 We see in December and into early 1452 that many statesmen became openly involved in the complex plan, paving the way to Bologna: Milanese-based diplomats included Duke Francesco Sforza himself; Cecco Simonetta, his chief minister; Francesco da Cusano, his ambassador in Romagna; Nicodemo of Pontremoli, his agent in Rome; Scevo della Corte, another agent working in Bologna and Rome; and Alessandro Sforza in Pesaro. And from the Bolognese side of the story, participants included de facto leader Sante Bentivoglio, Cardinal Legate Giovanni Bessarione, Cardinal 21 Marriage marked social adulthood and allowed men entry into governing participation (a role from which celibate men were normally excluded); see Wiesner, p. 60. 22 See Senatore. 23 Lubkin recorded sixteen children (eight legitimate) before noting that Francesco sired at least seventeen illegitimates, see Lubkin, pp. 18, 24. 24 See Francesco’s letter (6 December 1451) and Sante’s (11 December 1451) at ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 155/ bobina 141, 6 and 11 December 1451. Code-breakers for those letters in cifre are no longer part of the large collection of codes in Milan conserved in the Codice of Vienna no. 2398; see Cerioni.

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Legate Angelo Capranica, the Anziani, the Sedici, and individual members of the oligarchy including Galeazzo Marescotti, Cristoforo Caccianemici, Virgilio Malvezzi, Lodovico Malvezzi, Carlo Malvezzi, Achille Malvezzi, Paolo dalla Volta, Nicoloso Poeti, Jacopo degli Ingrati, and Lodovico Bentivoglio. By mid-January Genevra had still not been told much (if anything) about the matter, as we see when her father suggests that the marriage be postponed so he could prepare his ‘putta’ (‘little girl’) for it.25 A 14 January letter by Bolognese ambassador Iacomo Ingrati mentions that Genevra’s father would soon be in Bologna, presumably to discuss details in person about how to move forward with the alliance.26 Ingrati believed Alessandro should complete and publicise this ‘thing’ as is custom. He suggested that banns should be posted in order to respect Duke Francesco and so that the pope would not prohibit Sante’s upcoming marriage. He believed that publication of the banns would cause Sante many problems and that it would be impossible to keep it a secret. Due to the match’s political implications, Ingrati suggested Francesco Sforza write an explanatory letter about the betrothal to the legate, the Sedici, the king of France, the Signoria of Venice, and the pope—and from his suggestion we understand again that secretly allying with Bologna would have been offensive to each of those governments. Francesco Sforza dealt with the situation in an entirely different fashion. And due to the sensitivity of the matter, when would have been a good time to come out with his bold betrothal plan to chip away at Roman authority in Northern Italy? Sforza knew that King Frederick III of Germany had been planning on visiting Italy to meet and marry his bride, infanta (princess) Leonor de Portugal, as well as be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope at the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome (set for 16–19 March). So by February, as Romans prepared events to impress Frederick, Sforza pretended to distance himself publicly from the plan. On the 10th, he wrote blatant lies to his agent in Rome about how the marriage took place against his knowledge and will, that it was extremely troublesome, that the pope must be notified immediately, and that Sante was being interrogated by the legate in Bologna because he had not asked for a license from the pope.27 Francesco claimed that young Sante did not believe he needed a license—that he believed himself to be free to contract marriage like any other Bolognese; Sante’s prepped stance made him appear modest, and on par with any other citizen. Sforza told his Roman agent that upon receipt of a coded letter (now missing), he was to go to 25 Rossi, p. 113 for the letter dated 18 January 1452. 26 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 155, bobina 141, 14 January 1452. 27 ASMI, PER, bobina 1 (1450–1453), Francesco Sforza to Nicodemo of Pontremoli, 10 February 1452 and transcribed in a modernised Italian version in Rossi, pp. 109–111.

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the pope to give him ‘all explanations possible’. His agent was sent to assure the pope that everything had happened without Sforza’s knowledge and against his will, and that he was terribly sorry for it; his agent surely used selected letters sent from Sforza as proof of his ignorance of the alliance. Although he had no intention of blocking the carefully planned alliance, as part of his plan Sforza next suggested that his agent send briefs to Sante and Alessandro in order to obstruct and oppose the marriage. He requested that a copy of the briefs be sent to the pope via his own messengers or otherwise Alessandro would risk excommunication and the loss of the vicariate of Pesaro. Francesco Sforza claimed that even though Sante pretended that the marriage had been concluded, that it had not been concluded, and that indeed nothing had been concluded. Francesco announced that he chose not to write to either Sante or Alessandro so as not to turn them into enemies, claiming that he did not want to cause a falling out with his brother. He stated that he hoped instead to remedy the situation with the help of the pope.28 Sforza manipulated marriage custom and law as he told multiple carefully contrived stories, anticipated attitudes, and outsmarted many during a time when the pope was fully engaged with other matters. Next Francesco had Alessandro write to him on 11 March, discussing his alleged displeasure at the Sforza-Bentivoglio marriage. So Alessandro wrote that he wished the marriage had never been mentioned, that his daughter had never been born, and that she would fall dead instantly because he did not want to disturb Francesco with any problems related to her. He wrote that he only wished, together with his entire household in Pesaro, to serve Francesco faithfully. He continued that he would be forever pained by problems he was causing his brother. He granted Francesco the right to interrupt, divide, and revoke the alliance in order to give peace to his brother’s soul while he described his own soul as desperate.29 Just as Alessandro was composing those melodramatic lines loaded with fabrications, Frederick III was visiting Siena with Leonora, travelling across Tuscany with her and approaching Rome with their enormous entourage, and Lodovico di Floriano dei Caccialupi, a Bolognese citizen, was travelling to Pesaro to contract marriage by proxy between Sante Bentivoglio and the Magnifica Zinevra.30 It is no coincidence that during the height of Frederick III’s Italian tour that Genevra’s and Sante’s marriage per verba 28 Nicodemo played the situation well to his duke’s benefit, ‘Se non sono mandati quei brevi che noi dicevamo largamente nell’altra nostra a messer Santi e ad Alessandro per impedire espressamente questo matrimonio, si mandino subito’, as if they had been forgotten to be mailed. See letter of 10 February 1452 in Rossi, pp. 109–111. 29 The 11 March 1452 letter is transcribed in Rossi, pp. 116–117. 30 For the mandate, see PBO, ms. 376, Spogli d’archivio, vol. 7, no. 49, f. 71. Rossi notes the 2 March 1452 proxy date but suggested the couple was married by procura on 8 March based on information in a letter from Alessandro Sforza to Francesco Sforza dated 11 March 1452; see Rossi, pp. 116–117.

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(with verbal consent) took place. Sforza calculated correctly that the pope and other rulers would be thoroughly engaged entertaining the emperor and following his international extravaganza in Rome instead of attacking him about a marriage plan involving his brother’s illegitimate daughter and young Sante Bentivoglio. The duke calculated his stories from many points of view, kept all of them running concurrently in his head and had his many faithful agents write all sorts of letters and tell live versions of the stories across the peninsula in order to cover his bases. But only thanks to so much calculation and manipulation could Genevra’s marriage to Sante have been successfully arranged and carried out. From the behind-the-scenes plays we can follow, thanks to the many details in the surviving correspondence, we see Francesco Sforza at work as an expert in the ‘Machiavellian’ art of Italian politics—or rather we see him serving as a potential model for Machiavelli (who had not yet been born) and whose Prince would not be published for another eighty years. What more do we know about Genevra’s husband, and what about her dowry? Why did Sante and the Bolognese government want to become involved with Milan? Why would they have agreed to forge an alliance through Sante that had to be based on so much subterfuge and dissimulation for it to materialise? In a nutshell, marrying a Sforza woman was extremely beneficial to the Bentivoglio and to Bologna. A Sforza connection would have immediately conf irmed the preeminent status of Sante as de facto ruler of Bologna and would have raised the level of all members of the Bentivoglio family, bringing them into ruling class circles on a national and international level.31 The match with Milan must have also felt beneficial for the Bolognese who continually wished to gain libertas—and if tied to Milan, Bologna would surely feel less tied to Rome—although Bologna would, from then on, be torn between the two. As a Tuscan by birth tied to a Sforza by marriage and as de facto signore of Bologna, Sante himself represented (and helped create) a triple alliance among Florence, Milan and Bologna. This parentado set up friendly terms among three cities and helped pave the way for peace among them—something that was to become official with the Treaty of Lodi (9 April 1454). According to correspondence dated February 1452, Cosimo de’ Medici learned of the Sforza-Bentivoglio marriage alliance through ambassadors who claimed that Sante was looking for peace with the alliance.32 A Sforza agent noted that although Cosimo would not attempt to 31 For a discussion of the Bolognese political position in the early 1450s (and throughout the entire Bentivoglio era), see Ady (1937), pp. 40–44; for details between 1464 and 1471, see Robertson. 32 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 155 (1450–1453), bobina 141, 24 February 1452. Rossi, pp. 115–116, mistakenly dates the letter 23 February 1452.

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disturb or revoke the alliance, had it not already taken place, he definitely would have done so; Cosimo’s ultimate advice was to delay the conclusion of the marriage. But Cosimo’s attitude and his relations with Bologna bring into question how Sante, too, was used as a pawn in the negotiations. In 1445–1446, Cosimo had served as Sante’s mentor when discussing his capacity for and interest in serving as head of the Bolognese government. Cosimo had also sought for a long time to build better relations with Milan. The fact that Cosimo allowed the alliance and offered weak excuses for why it could not be annulled suggests that he wished for peace in relations with Bologna and Milan, and that he had probably been, from the start, an active part of the making of the Sforza-Bentivoglio alliance. In addition, had he really been so upset with Sante, it would be difficult to explain why, within only a few months of the betrothal, he would offer honorary Florentine citizenship and all its benefits to both Sante and Giovanni Bentivoglio.33 Cosimo did so in a further attempt to promote friendly relations. Another significant element of early modern marriage has been left out of this discussion so far. Despite so many recorded details about the Sforza-Bentivoglio alliance, it is odd that no discussion survives about Genevra’s dowry, which should have been a major element of marriage negotiations, if not the most important part of it. At the highest levels, dowries and luxurious trousseaux were enormous and precisely calculated political investments whose values were public knowledge. The women marrying ruling-class leaders in nearby Ferrara brought the d’Este 60,000 ducats in the case of Eleonora d’Aragona (1473) and 100,000 with Lucrezia Borgia (1502); Isabella d’Este came with 25,000 ducats when she left Ferrara for the Gonzaga in Mantua (1490); and Bianca Maria Visconti was worth 100,000 florins plus many other benefits when she married Francesco Sforza (1441). A dowry for a noble bride would have been a significant part of any arrangement—but no records are extant for one for Genevra. Moreover, even the notary involved in Genevra’s marriage by proxy, Marco Donati, is a mystery. No Donati is recorded as having worked in Pesaro at any time in that century. Since the notary declared himself Bolognese, and since he could have come to Pesaro with Caccialupi to write the marriage document there, a copy eventually should have been filed in Bologna—but none exists in Bologna’s comprehensive notarial register books where copies of acts were carefully made (the Ufficio del registro degli atti notarili). No dowry was filed there in 1452, and none was filed in 1454 after the public wedding occurred in Bologna. Upon closer examination of the register, it turns out that no dowry document was transcribed for Genevra in any year. And no Marco Donati is mentioned in lists of Bolognese notaries, of any era. Furthermore, no dowry document for Genevra is included in the multiple copies of family documents in Ferrara where numerous 33 ASFE, FB, Catastro Croce, f. 21; or ASFE, FB, Catastro B, f. 70.

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Bentivoglio dowries, in both originals and copies made for both legitimate and illegitimate girls, are carefully conserved within the family’s archive. It turns out that while fathers of legitimate girls were legally obligated to provide a dowry for them, fathers of illegitimate girls were not technically obliged to do so. The duke of Milan as representative of Alessandro Sforza thus exercised his ‘right’ from customary law towards an illegitimate girl—to not have to provide her with a dowry. And since Francesco and Alessandro Sforza had pretended to know so little about the alliance also explains why they would have never signed their names on a preliminary dowry contract—a legal document that would have been composed before important male witnesses and signed by notaries. For Francesco, Genevra was the perfect candidate for the Milan-Bologna alliance since she served as a Sforza representative fully under his control (yet not his own child—so he could pretend to know little about her), an illegitimate who didn’t need a dowry (someone who literally cost him nothing) or a dowry contract (she could be married while leaving no trace in documentation). Like Genevra, Sante seems to have had little control over his own circumstances here, other than to let himself be led by Milan. One month after the proxy, letters were still being exchanged by agents across northern and central Italy in relation to the alliance. On 17 April 1452 Nicodemo wrote from Rome about how the pope had been reading Francesco’s briefs.34 By 23 April Sante wrote to Francesco thanking him for his kindness and for the love and affection he offered Bologna. Sante prayed there would be a time when he could show his gratitude; significant portions of this otherwise seemingly platitudinal letter were written in code.35 Over the course of 1452, Francesco Sforza concluded other alliances with at least two daughters so the marriage he organised through Genevra was only one piece of his project to consolidate his position. After the 1452 arrangements had been made, two years of silence about the matter followed; not one word about it appears in the surviving correspondence of Francesco Sforza, Alessandro Sforza or Sante Bentivoglio. Correspondence began again about the marriage in January 1454 when we learn that Alessandro arrived in Bologna and spent the day with Sante discussing his principal Bolognese enemies, the Pepoli.36 The two left no written traces about their thoughts concerning the upcoming public wedding. In early April, Sante wrote to Giovanni de’ Medici in Florence inviting him to attend his wedding ‘as a brother since he felt brotherly affection towards him’.37 And Sante mentioned that on 19 May he would send a group to Pesaro to retrieve his bride.38 Other letters from Bologna to Milan in that 34 35 36 37 38

His letter is transcribed in Rossi, p. 112; I was unable to find this letter at ASMI. ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 155 (1450–1453), bobina 141, 23 April 1452, Sante Bentivoglio to Francesco Sforza. ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 156, bobina 142, 27 January 1454, Alessandro Sforza to Francesco Sforza. ASFI, M.A.P., filza 9, no. 12, 3 April 1454 as cited in Ady (1937), p. 44. ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 156, bobina 142, 8 April 1454.

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month spoke about the glory of the peace contracted between Milan and Venice.39 In the letters Sante sent to Milan, he still never mentioned his wedding; and he never mentioned it over the remainder of 1454, not in any correspondence to the duke or in any of his letters to Giovanni Papuzoni, his agent in Milan. 40 Like Sante, Genevra left us with no comments on the matter in these times either—so we know nothing from her perspective about how she settled into her married life; we never hear a word from her about her wedding celebrations, what she thought of Sante, whom she missed back in Pesaro, whether she had been in contact with either of her parents, what she thought of the Bolognese accent or anything else about living in the Casa Bentivoglio with the extended Bentivoglio family. 41 Our first news of Genevra comes four years after the marriage, sometime in early 1458, when she gave birth to a daughter, Costanza, named after Costanza di Antongaleazzo Bentivoglio and perhaps also after Costanza da Varano, her stepmother. In 1459 Genevra bore a son, Ercole, certainly named after Sante’s father.42 In those years, on behalf of the Bentivoglio clan, Sante and Genevra planned to change their residence and create an enormous family palace next door to where they had been living. Florentine architect Lapo di Piero Portigiani was hired to design the place and Bolognese artisan (and chronicler) Gaspare Nadi to lead a team of workers on its construction. From 12 March 1460 the foundations were being dug, and from 24 April walls were being built. As he proudly recorded in his journal, the first stone was placed by Nadi himself. Sante and Genevra thus began the new Palazzo Bentivoglio, which soon became the symbol of the status and strength of the Bentivoglio and of the beauty and prosperity of the couple’s adoptive city. 43 Sante succeeded at significantly enlarging the power and material patrimony of the Bentivoglio; and as an important member of the Sedici, he would help keep peace in Bologna, something the Bolognese had rarely enjoyed. 44 Although young and initially inexperienced, Sante learned fast and worked well in conjunction with the 39 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 156, bobina 142, 11 April 1454 from the Anziani and the Sedici; see ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 156, bobina 142, 17 April 1454 from Cardinal Legate Bessarione referring to the Peace of Lodi. 40 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 156, bobina 142, 3 May, 8 May, 10 May, 23 June, 19 September. Not a word was spoken about Genevra Sforza; instead Sante spoke about forwarding mail, defending Florence, politics in Mirandola and other issues. See his letters sent to Papuzoni at ASFE, FB, dated 1454–1457. 41 At least no trace remains in archives or libraries in Pesaro, Milan, Ferrara, Bologna, Modena, Florence, Mantua, Mirandola, Carpi, Sassuolo or Rimini. 42 Bolognese records of children’s baptisms begin on 1 January 1459; for Ercole, see AAB, Fonti battesimale, vol. 1, f. 23v. He was reported to be the son of d. Sancti and d. Genefere of the Santa Cecilia parish, born 25 May and baptised 26 June. His godfathers were recorded as Virgilio Malvezzi, Cardinal Riario and Nicolo de Meleto. 43 For more details of Nadi’s involvement with the palace, see Nadi, p. 50. 44 For inventories on what Sante accumulated during his rule, see Bocchi (1970); see also Robertson, pp. 130–133.

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oligarchy. By 1447 his government obtained the famous Capitoli contract from Pope Nicholas V that granted Bologna some independence from Rome. 45 Sante worked hard to maintain good relations with Milan, and by February 1458 he was searching, with Duke Francesco’s approval, for potential brides for his fifteen-year-old cousin Giovanni. 46 Sante described Giovanni as his nephew and proposed that he wed a daughter of Galeazzo Pio of Carpi. That match would have been important within the nearby territory of Modena but relatively insignificant beyond it. Sante also suggested an alliance with a daughter of Thadeo of Imola; again, it might have been slightly more prestigious, yet still relatively provincial. Sante’s wording in the letter suggests it was the first time that the Bolognese were beginning to seek a bride for Giovanni. Sante noted the obvious as well, that Giovanni was still young and would not need a wife for a few more years. Sante had discretely wished to inform the duke of Giovanni’s coming of age and availability on the political-marital scene, and the suggestions for modest marriages for his nephew could have been meant to test the duke’s reaction. Although Sante did not openly suggest he was interested in a Milanese tie for Giovanni, the idea of another Sforza bride may well have been the idea that Sante and the Sedici were trying to plant since the political factors that made his own marriage alliance in Milan advisable were all the more critical with Giovanni, the more legitimate heir to Bentivoglio power in Bologna. Let’s return for a moment to reconsider Genevra’s formal portrait medal (Figure. 1.1, struck by Antonio Marescotti, 1454). Portrait medals were often created to commemorate one’s likeness at the time of a significant event, i.e. marriage for women (the subject of the obverse side); they were exchanged with friends and family, and they usually included an artistic representation of the sitter’s inner attributes (also possibly on the obverse side but usually in more elaborated form and often including allegorical motifs and a motto on the reverse side). The obverse side of Genevra’s medal represents her at the time of her marriage to Sante while the reverse side of her medal was left blank, unlike most other medals of the times. Maybe a reverse message was not included because neither Genevra nor Sante nor the artist (nor the Bolognese) were sure what her message was—or what it should be—after such a complicated ordeal. Perhaps imagery and a motto could not be agreed upon since Genevra’s position as a foreign illegitimate Sforza bride with no dowry who had been craftily forced by the duke of Milan onto Bologna and specifically onto a foreign illegitimate de facto ruler of a contested city in the Papal States was simply too unclear. Had Francesco Sforza himself suggested an allegorical message for the reverse side of this portrait medal, perhaps we could have anticipated something about his upcoming moves regarding Genevra and Bologna. 45 Bologna has accordingly been described as a ‘republic by contract’; see De Benedictis. 46 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 1039, bobina 183, 13 February 1458, Sante Bentivoglio to Francesco Sforza.

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Remaining Bentivoglio: The Negotiations for Genevra’s Second Marriage to Giovanni II, 1463–1464 From early 1463, Sante began to complain about poor health. He reported to Francesco Sforza that he could not understand what made him sick and that he had done everything to get well.47 The duke had sent his family’s renowned medical doctor, Benedetto Reguardati of Norcia, to spend time with Sante in Bologna over the course of the year. 48 But by autumn, Sante was in even worse shape. Virgilio Malvezzi and other Bolognese sent word in code to the duke, and Sante wrote often as well. 49 On 29 September the Sedici reported Sante was in danger of death. After suffering for months with a fever and ulcers due to tuberculosis, Sante, not yet forty years old, passed away on 1 October.50 Cardinal Legate Angelo Capranica and Giovanni Bentivoglio both wrote to Duke Francesco with news of Sante’s death. The legate declared that the duke had lost a perfect servant while Giovanni talked about the bitterness in his heart due to the loss.51 The fact that young Giovanni wrote directly to the duke on the day of Sante’s death was a bold statement of his own assumption of his inherited supremacy in the city—and so from this point, he will be referred to as Giovanni II. The new ruler also mentioned the cordial faith that both he and Sante (whom he affectionately called ‘mio barba’—meaning uncle, friendly relative, or close friend) had felt towards the duke; and he described the long sickness that consumed the health of Sante. Giovanni II declared that the hope and faith he felt in the duke gave him comfort and that he never intended to deviate from the duke’s advice and orders.52 As we shall see, these statements regarding his unconditional loyalty toward Milan would soon be put to the test. 47 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 13 January 1463, Sante Bentivoglio to Francesco Sforza. 48 For more on Sforza’s famous medical doctor from a city of famous surgeons (and famous butchers), see Deffenu. Reguardati served the Sforza in Milan and Pesaro, the Medici in Florence, Pope Pius II in Rome, Sante Bentivoglio in Bologna and the Gonzaga in Mantua; and he taught in Pavia, Florence and Perugia. 49 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 23 September 1463, Virgilio Malvezzi to Francesco Sforza; ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 23 September 1463, from unnamed person in Bologna to Francesco Sforza; ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 28 September 1463. 50 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 29 September 1463, Sedici to Francesco Sforza. Sante had been suffering over the course of many months from tuberculosis (tubercolosi ossea) and letters sent directly from Reguardati to the duke of Milan describe details of Sante’s ailment. His doctor divided Sante’s condition into what he saw as three major problems: a phlegmatic fever accompanied by continual sweating every night and dry tongue; pain in his joints and weakness in his feet, legs and knees; and two ulcers, one on his left hand, and a more profound one on his right foot described as eating into bone matter. Sante was further recorded as having suffered from dyspepsia and from sweating on his forehead. See Nannini. 51 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 1 October 1463, Cardinal Legate Angelo Capranica to Francesco Sforza, and 1 October 1463, Giovanni Bentivoglio to Francesco Sforza. 52 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 1 October 1463, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Sforza.

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Upon the death of a husband, a widowed wife’s family would usually appear at a husband’s funeral to claim their daughter and her dowry.53 Young patrician widows were targets for others who wished to control their bodies and their fortunes.54 At Sante’s death, however, there was no sign of Alessandro or Francesco Sforza demonstrating any interest in Genevra. Genevra’s father had then recently become an important ally of the king of Naples and was busy in the South; and her uncle had more important matters to attend in the North. We have no surviving evidence of how Genevra, a twenty-two-year-old widow with two young children, reacted. We do not know what she felt about the loss of her husband, its consequences, or her change in position. Sante, although sick for months, had never once mentioned Genevra’s fate or that of their children when writing to Milan during the final year of his life. Did Sante even prepare a will? There remains no trace of one. Sante apparently had no say in the destiny of his family or his home. He had existed in the hands of others. Twenty-year-old Giovanni II was immediately accepted as leader of his clan and within the Sedici as more than a figurehead representative. Despite his youth, he had been an active part of the local government for years. From the age of fifteen, he had been present in the Sedici when Sante had been absent; and from that year Sante had begun pressing the duke for a potential bride for him. By May 1459, sixteen-year-old Giovanni II became a full member of the Sedici, several years before Sante began to complain of bad health. Led by Virgilio Malvezzi, the Sedici were content to have been successful in their creation of Giovanni II as their next figurehead—although his position was never limited to that role.55 One week after Sante’s death, Nicoloso de’ Poeti wrote to Duke Francesco describing how it pleased God to end Sante’s life but how his death caused great bitterness and loss among the people. De’ Poeti referred to Giovanni II as Sante’s ‘nevode’ (nephew), and a few lines later he abruptly asked for a wife for Giovanni II.56 The fact that a leading member of the Sedici asked the duke how their own ruler should marry yet again demonstrates their submission to Milan. Although he was so young, Giovanni already needed a wife by his side to perfect his position and become fully accepted as a mature man and de facto leader. Members of the government in Bologna were searching for and aspiring to another Sforza bride for their ruler, and the idea of a second Sforza bride would have been examined with great care by the duke who had already had to play lengthy and embarrassing games to manoeuvre a Sforza connection for Sante. 53 Klapish-Zuber, pp. 123–124; Cavallo and Warner; McIver. 54 For more discussion on what widows’ options were, see Klapisch-Zuber, pp. 117–131. 55 Robertson, pp. 42, 134–135; and thanks to Sarah Blanshei for additional clarifications regarding his position. 56 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 8 October 1463, Nicoloso de’ Poeti to Francesco Sforza.

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Meanwhile Genevra had become a widow, and her position had become precarious. Although her father was still alive, she instead composed a letter to the duke on 13 October, the same day that Virgilio Malvezzi wrote to express his concerns about a Sforza bride for Giovanni II.57 This letter is the first one we see from Genevra. The fact that she wrote to the duke reveals she was well aware of what was happening around her, how limited her options were, and that she knew her uncle would be in charge of her future. She wrote to announce the arrival in Milan of Bolognese agent Ser Cola, sent on behalf of ‘nostri magnifici regimenti’ (i.e. the Sedici). She added that beyond his usual public commissions, Cola was being sent to discuss some things in her name. She asked Francesco to grant Cola full and undoubted faith and to speak with him as if she herself were there; she then entrusted herself to him. The next day Giovanni II also wrote to the duke about the arrival of Cola and worded his letter in nearly identical fashion. He noted that Cola was being sent to Milan to speak not only about public commissions but also about issues beyond them, especially about himself.58 These two similarly composed letters suggest that Genevra and Giovanni II were communicating closely. They trusted the ambassador who was speaking on behalf of Bologna to speak on behalf of both of them individually. From the identical penmanship of their messages, it is clear they had even employed the same scribe to compose the two similar missives. They worked together in their approach to the duke and showed respect and subservience in the negotiations they each needed to arrange their futures. It is significant that Genevra sent her letter before Giovanni II. It suggests she was on closer terms with her uncle and that she had greater needs—for herself and for her very young children—while Giovanni II did not yet have familial responsibilities. On 19 October, the cardinal legate wrote to the duke to inform him that Ambassador Angelo di Atti had arrived in Bologna to discuss the situation of Giovanni II as well as the family of Sante, i.e. Genevra Sforza and their two young children over whom she had recently been granted custody.59 The option to enter a convent and live free from social conflict was something many widows took advantage of. Convents gave widows opportunities to act in the public realm while offering them the possibility of living respectably with no pressure to remarry or to be criticised for living in an unmarried state.60 Genevra 57 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 13 October 1463, Genevra Bentivoglio to Francesco Sforza. 58 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 14 October 1463, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Sforza. 59 ASMI, PER, reg. cart, 163, bobina 149, 19 October 1463, Cardinal Legate Angelo Capranica to Francesco Sforza. For the custody issue, see ASB, Ufficio del registro, copie degli atti notarili, bobina 302, under entry for 1463: ‘1463 Tutella adepta per D. Zinepra olim uxorem Mag.ci D. Santis d bentivolis filior per heredu puplo etc. L 119 f 432’. Although copied into the notarial register, the libro and foglio number at ASB do not correspond in the books to the tutela. 60 See Cavallo and Warner, pp. 20–21.

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had close ties at Corpus Domini, the most aristocratic convent in Bologna, and papal briefs dated 22 October 1463 and 9 November 1463 granted Genevra license to enter it freely.61 One of Genevra’s options could have been to retire there permanently, perhaps aspiring to become abbess, as many aristocratic women did after the deaths of their husbands. Genevra would have had to find homes for her children; and she would have had to recover her dowry in order to pass it to the convent for her maintenance. Another respected option would have been to remain in Sante’s home and dedicate her life to raising their children and living the rest of her life as a widow commemorating Sante. Remarriage was a possibility, although in order to move on, she would have had to abandon their (i.e. his) children to her deceased husband’s extended family to whom they legally belonged as part of his kinship group. Genevra also could have opted for a more independent lifestyle as a widow, living alone without her two children. Whatever life Genevra would have chosen, dowry recovery would have been essential as it would have covered her living expenses for the remainder of her life. Yet as we have seen, there had been no mention of any dowry for Genevra in the extended 1452 negotiations among Milan, Bologna, Pesaro and Florence. No dowry was ever registered in any of these cities, and no one came to Bologna to claim Genevra or her dowry upon her husband’s death. No one in Bologna or Milan corresponded about what would have been a normally frightening concern upon Sante’s death: that Genevra might have demanded an immediate repayment of her dowry. There is no sign that either her father or her uncle ever attempted to reclaim the dowry, either after Sante’s death or at any future point. Later on, the will of her father Alessandro (d. 1473) made no mention of granting a dowry to Genevra, as was custom in the wills of early modern fathers.62 Giovanni II’s own lengthy will never mentioned Genevra as proprietor of any dowry that he would be obliged to return to her—and Giovanni II was certainly aware of the importance of the return of dowries to women upon husbands’ deaths because he felt obliged to draft a lengthy codicil to his own will that dealt specifically with his sons’ obligations related to eventual dowry restitutions.63 Unusual as it was, Genevra had been married without a dowry. And without a dowry, it would have been difficult for 61 ASFE, FB, Libro 7, no. 28 (22 October 1463) and Libro 7, no. 29 (9 November 1463). Caterina died in March 1463, and because Genevra’s first papal dispensation dates from October 1463, Arienti may have invented the story that Genevra had been a friend of Caterina. It is possible that the two had been friends informally without Genevra having to obtain papal dispensations to meet or enter the convent, or perhaps Genevra obtained earlier dispensations that no longer survive. Although a papal bull was not usually necessary to enter a convent, sometimes a special permission was issued to enter an aristocratic convent as a kind of credential; or perhaps a potentially long-term stay required a brief. 62 See Alessandro’s will in Olivieri Giordani, p. 85. 63 The codicil is at ASFE, FB, Libro 21, no. 48; for a transcription, see Pellegrini.

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her to make even basic decisions on her own, to do any of the standard things a patrician widow could do. With no fortune (or any sum) under her control, she did not have the problem of other men desiring her for it, or the problem of upsetting the economic equilibrium of Sante’s casa and that of the children if she were to demand its repayment. She had a more basic problem: survival. Meanwhile, according to law, after Sante’s death a domestic inventory of his household items was prepared. The inventory recorded nearly three hundred objects including numerous entries for examples of bedding, furniture, clothing, devotional objects, books and jewellery. Many of the items were personalised with the Bentivoglio and Sforza coats of arms.64 Francesca Bocchi notes that many items are too generically described and cannot be classified as having belonged to either a man or a woman. Items, however, that surely belonged to a female include five dresses (nn. 196–198, 227, 228), a luxurious belt (n. 225), and a piece of jewellery in the form of a dove with three pearls and a reddish gemstone (n. 182). Bocchi does not conclude that those pieces necessarily belonged to Genevra but she does note that Genevra was the owner of a garland of pearls worn on the head (n. 187), a necklace (n. 221) and hundreds more pearls (n. 224).65 Those could be some of the pearls we see her wearing around her neck and sewn onto her gown in her portrait by Ercole de’ Roberti (Figure 1.2). It is possible that Genevra brought the items to Bologna as part of a trousseau. The items could have been purchased for Genevra, commissioned by her with Bentivoglio family money, or they might have been wedding gifts. Maybe they comprised the counter-trousseau, sometimes granted to a bride by her husband, a symbolic return gift in face of dowry money; the existence of these items does raise the question of whether Sante would have granted a dowerless bride anything, even symbolically. Time was of the essence for the future of both Genevra and Giovanni II, and Duke Sforza replied to them by the end of October with a possible solution for each of their needs: he suggested that Giovanni II marry Genevra. Giovanni quickly replied to the duke. He thanked him for the offer and declared himself the most faithful servant in this world, someone who could never do enough to obey the duke—but he made no direct remarks about the seemingly absurd suggestion to marry his aunt.66 Playing a modest position and flattering the duke was Giovanni II’s strategy to obtain the ‘right’ kind of bride. Ambassador Nardini reported his version of the situation to the duke on the same day: Giovanni II was grateful for the duke’s offer and greatly desired to make parentela with the Sforza.67 64 65 66 67

See the list transcribed in Bocchi (1970), pp. 123–135. Bocchi (1970), pp. 101–105. ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 28 October 1463, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Sforza. ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 28 October 1463, Stefano di Nardini to Francesco Sforza.

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The months of November, December and January were spent discussing what would happen to Giovanni II and Genevra and her two children. By then, not only Francesco Sforza, Giovanni II, Genevra Sforza, Virgilio Malvezzi, Stefano da Nardini, the Sedici and the papal legate were actively involved in discussions but also a handful of other politically active patrician Bolognese including Prospero Camillo, Lodovico Bentivoglio, Giacomo Grati, Ser Cola de Esculo, Tommaso Thebaldino, Michele Pizano, Leonardo Botte, Sante Hemedes, Galeazzo Marescotti de’ Calvi Malvezzi and Paolo dalla Volta. Each was busy writing letters to Milan or visiting Milan on behalf of Bologna to discuss the situation. So many involved in these plans is proof of how politically important a marriage alliance was for even a de facto ruler of an Italian city. Francesco Sforza’s secretary, Prospero Camillo, had been sent to Bologna in October to promote the offer of Genevra as bride; and he reported to his duke on Bentivoglio matters at least seven times during the month. Though his letters were often obscure, it is clear that on 2 November he was talking about the ‘disegno’ (plan) for the Magnifica Madonna Genebra; on the 9th he wrote about concluding the issue of Madonna Ginebra; and on the 15th he made it clear that the situation of Madona Genebra had become public and that the honour of her father Alessandro must be taken into account.68 There are no traces of Genevra’s reaction to the proposal that she marry her young nephew—nor was Genevra’s own honour discussed. Even though her father had not played much of an honourable role in Genevra’s 1446–1454 marriage negotiations, and although he again remained extraneous to his daughter’s 1463–1464 negotiations, Alessandro’s honour was considered here, as any maltreatment of her would have reflected onto him. By mid-November Prospero reported good hope that Giovanni II would accept the marriage—but by 25 November it was said that he had become less willing.69 Giovanni II swayed back and forth with how to react to the unusual idea of marrying Sante’s widow, his aunt from his own household and someone considered part of his close family. As legitimate Bentivoglio heir to the city’s de facto signoria, Giovanni II knew full well what a man in his position should demand. He desired and expected another kind of bride, perhaps a daughter of Francesco Sforza, or a legitimate daughter of another branch of the Sforza family. An acceptable bride for him would also have been significantly younger than him, maybe twelve to fourteen in age like Genevra had been with Sante, and certainly a virgin, the basic definition of an honourable bride at the time.70 68 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 2 November, 9 November and 15 November 1463 all from Prospero Camillo to Francesco Sforza. 69 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 16 November 1463, Prospero Camillo to Francesco Sforza; ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 25 November 1463, Prospero Camillo to Francesco Sforza. 70 For a discussion of men’s honour (based on physical bravery and loyalty) and women’s honour (based on chastity and honesty) see Wiesner, p. 34.

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Giovanni II was being pressured to accept something that was highly unusual, scandalous and humiliating—and he did not know how to react. How would marriage to his aunt be interpreted by his family, his fellow citizens, and ruling families throughout the peninsula? He and his patrician friends knew full well that even the suggestion of Genevra was shocking as she was slightly older, widowed, and the sexually experienced mother of two children, one of whom could legally compete as a Bentivoglio for Giovanni II’s titles and position. Giovanni II repeatedly wrote that he was willing to serve the duke in any way and that he wanted to continue a close relationship. But would Giovanni II allow Francesco Sforza to corner him? Baptismal records bring us one step closer to understanding Giovanni II’s humiliation; they teach us about the consensus reality behind how the Bolognese considered Sante and Giovanni II in political terms—as representatives of the Bentivoglio. For example, while Sante was de facto signore, head of the Sedici and married with children, he was asked to serve as godfather to only one Bolognese family. Meanwhile, Giovanni was asked to serve as godfather fifteen times—as an unwed teenager under Sante’s wing.71 Bolognese looking for spiritual/political sponsorship from Bologna’s leading family had apparently looked to Giovanni as head of the ‘true’ Bentivoglio line all along—and this unspoken but clear hierarchy helps us understand why Giovanni could not willingly agree to lower his condition and marry Genevra. Giovanni was being asked to take on a ‘used’ wife from a relatively lowly locum tenens, an illegitimate ‘stand-in’ Bentivoglio, and apparently everyone knew how degrading the match seemed. Looking at Bologna from the duke’s perspective however, this match was not necessarily forged to humiliate anyone—it was made mostly for the sake of practicality and convenience. It was one (or perhaps two) pieces of an enormous, active political puzzle that needed to be resolved; and it solved a problem for two ruling-class people in Bologna who both needed a partner in marriage. Less than one week after Giovanni II had last claimed that he was willing to serve the duke in any way, three eminent members of the Sedici wrote to Milan: they reported that they had spoken with Camillo about the marriage proposed between Zohane de Bentivoglio and the Mag.ca Ma. Zenevra and had entertained the idea with due reverence and respect. They continued that they had been thinking about the matter all together and were writing together to show the firmness of their collective opinion. They saw the idea of the match to be simply horrible (‘questa materia peggio disposta che mai’), and they would not and could not say more about the topic (‘et in somma non li volemo ne possemo dire altro’). They warned the duke 71 Both Sante and Giovanni could have served more families but no baptismal records are extant prior to 1459; from the five years that do exist, a 1:15 ratio is significant. For more on Bentivoglio baptisms, see my Chapter Three here.

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from their hearts that the situation was of that nature (‘doleci insino al core che questa cosa sia di tal natura’), and they declared again that Giovanni II was a most devout servant and good young man (‘Messer Zohanne e devotissimo servitore e bon figliolo’). Because he and they had been so true to Milan, they could not understand why the duke wanted to degrade them all. They wished to conclude the matter of a spouse for Giovanni II by erasing the idea of a marriage to Genevra from the duke’s thoughts (‘voglia impore silentio a questa praticha e levarsi dela mente questo pensiero’). They declared that they were always and completely ready and willing to follow all of the duke’s other orders, as they put it, but in this case they could not accept his wishes (‘sempre ne trovarea prontissimi a tutti gli altri soi comandi benche in questo no se li sia ossuto demostrare’) due to reasons already mentioned, which they claimed Francesco Sforza knew better than they (‘per li rispetti che li havemo detti e che lei molto meglio di noi conosce’).72 Virgilio Malvezzi wrote another letter on the same day.73 He addressed his personal concerns about his own son Giulio who was soon to marry an honourable daughter of Marco Sforza.74 Malvezzi also explained that he did everything he could to promote the marriage between Giovanni II and Genevra but that in the end, it did not work. He declared his desire to obey the duke in every affair and that he was perhaps his most faithful servant in the entire city of Bologna. Such a declaration offers a sample of Malvezzi’s latent desire to surpass the Bentivoglio—which can be seen in the enormous wedding celebration he offered Giulio and his honourable Sforza bride. Perhaps from that time onward, Francesco Sforza could have begun trusting and relying on the Malvezzi as much as (or more than) the Bentivoglio. In December, Ser Cola who was sent to Bologna to comfort Giovanni II and convince him to marry Genevra, reported that he had been working hard in his attempt but did not find Giovanni II willing to marry Genevra for certain reasons related to his own magnificence and because of the objections of his most important relatives and friends.75 Giovanni II now refused to consent to the match because there were simply too many negative aspects involved in it. It is significant that Camillo reported to his duke again in a very long letter, emphasising the fact that despite the negative reasons behind the idea of the match, that Genevra herself was highly praised by everyone.76 Giovanni II was told to discuss the matter with 72 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 1 December 1463, Lodovico Bentivoglio, Giacomo Grati, and Virgilio Malvezzi to Francesco Sforza. 73 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 1 December 1463, Virgilio Malvezzi to Francesco Sforza. 74 It is interesting to note that a Sforza-Malvezzi alliance did not raise political problems with other Italian powers presumably because Malvezzi was a private citizen—and not a private citizen who also happened to serve as de facto signore or figurehead agent for the local government. 75 ASMI, PER, reg. cart 163, bobina 149, 1 December 1463, Ser Cola de Esculo to Francesco Sforza. 76 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 3 December 1463, Prospero Camillo to Francesco Sforza.

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the Sedici again, demonstrating that the match was being publicly addressed in meetings, although Prospero did not approve of having it brought to the Sedici. The concept that an unacceptable choice of Sforza bride became a question of Bolognese policy demonstrated how unusual the proposed match was and how much honour was at stake for the city. Lodovico Bentivoglio again reminded Giovanni II that he must remain absolutely obedient to the duke of Milan, but from that time onward declared that no one any longer wanted to attempt to persuade Giovanni II on the matter.77 Although he was merely twenty years of age, Giovanni II knew where he stood. He was being publicly humiliated and had every reason to want to assert himself. Giovanni II’s behaviour in relation to refusing his aunt Genevra could also be interpreted as respectful toward her and to the memory of Sante. On the other hand, Giovanni II’s desire not to have anything to do with Genevra must have been humiliating to her on a personal level during those months as she lived more and more precariously at Corpus Domini—although her thoughts would not have been a consideration in the arrangement. Antonio di Franco Luna reported that people began to murmur about Giovanni II: he was too pushy, he wanted everything to work as he wished, and the nobles began to become resentful and hate him.78 Camillo reminded Giovanni II that political matters should be conducted as an art and that the will and interests of Francesco Sforza must come first. Initially, Camillo had sworn that he had never spoken directly to Genevra about the matter because he had been waiting for Giovanni II to change his mind; but then he reported to Milan that Genevra was waiting modestly to see what the future would bring her and her children. He now admitted that he had seen her, that she was greatly pained and in tears, that he had discussed Ser Cola’s meeting with her, and that he had been having extended discussions with Giacomo Grati, Virgilio Malvezzi and Cardinal Legate Angelo Capranica. A few days later another Milanese servant wrote with news that he had spoken with and comforted the M.ca Mad.a Zenevera who was troubled with afflictions.79 At this point, Genevra decided to compose another letter to her uncle: on 20 December, she thanked him for having sent Camillo for advice and comfort.80 She thanked the duke infinitely for his benevolence and kindness. To buttress her desires and to gain sympathy from her uncle, she gifted him eight of Sante’s finest horses.81 She entrusted herself and her children to him with her entire heart. She 77 ASMI, PER, reg. cart 163, bobina 149, 3 December 1463, Prospero Camillo to Francesco Sforza. 78 Luna, f. 196r. 79 ASMI, PER, reg. cart 163, bobina 149, 8 December 1463, Tommaso Thebaldino to Francesco Sforza. 80 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 20 December 1463, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Sforza. 81 Camillo reported that eight of Sante’s twelve beautiful and strong horses were still available; see ASMI, PER, reg. cart 163, bobina 149, 14 December 1463, Prospero Camillo to Francesco Sforza; ASMI, PER, reg. cart 163, bobina 149, 6 January 1464, Francesco Sforza to Genevra Sforza.

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composed formal niceties as a conventional noblewoman might. She then sent Camillo back to him with a message that she hoped he would receive in full faith as if she were speaking herself—but details of what she wished Camillo would discuss live beyond the written formalities remain unknown. Genevra was well aware of her status as a pawn in the Milan-Bologna relations and that the Bentivoglio and the city of Bologna were subservient to her uncle. Her behaviour was being tested, and her reactions here showed the duke that she understood current politics and was willing to play the game with him. Whatever her feelings or opinions were, Genevra chose to avoid conflict and wait patiently to see what would happen. As one of so many Sforza pawns under the duke’s control, and as an illegitimate with no dowry, she did what she could with her letter, through her significant gift of horses and through the voice of her messenger. Genevra chose to act nothing like other unhappy widowers such as Felice della Rovere who openly worked against her father’s plans for her second marriage or her cousin Ippolita Sforza in Naples who openly struggled against her husband.82 The duke wrote right back to Genevra in response to her worries and missives. He began by thanking her for the horses sent from Sante’s stable. More importantly, he let her know he heard about the good government practiced in Bologna and that such news made him extremely happy. He promised Genevra that she and her children would always be cared for and that when she and they were well, he felt good too.83 Although Francesco did not mention details of the proposed match, and although his wording was borrowed from epistolary commonplace, he reinforced the idea that she and her children would be cared for. The letter must have been reassuring for Genevra. The same day Sforza wrote to other Bolognese about Genevra, assuring them that she and her children would be well cared for.84 On 16 January, after the holidays had passed, Michele Pizano and Leonardo Botta wrote to Francesco Sforza with breaking news: Giovanni II was now willing to obey the duke and consider marriage with Genevra.85 Galeazzo Marescotti wrote from the camera di Zohanne with the same news.86 Marescotti, a local hero who had freed Giovanni II’s father from prison, explained that, now with his soul, and with the advice of his friends, Giovanni II would consent to marrying her. To show some 82 Felice complained that Roberto da Sanseverino kept a mistress and had little money; see Murphy, pp. 57–60. For Ippolita, see Welch. 83 ASMI, PER, reg. cart.163, bobina 149, 6 January 1464, Francesco Sforza to Genevra Sforza. 84 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 6 January 1464, Francesco Sforza to Michele Pizano and Leonardo Botta. 85 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 16 January 1464, Michele Pisauro and Leonardo Botta to Francesco Sforza. 86 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 16 January 1464, Galeazzo Marescotti de’ Calvi Malvezzi to Francesco Sforza.

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of Giovanni II’s resentment, Marescotti did not go as far as naming Genevra but instead referred to her as the woman whom Prospero Camillo was here to represent. Marescotti continued that Giovanni II had been initially opposed to the marriage because of his own honour, which had been what was making it difficult for him to apologise for his most recent behaviour. Consent, the underlying prerequisite of pre-Trent marriages, had now been technically given.87 A few days later Marescotti wrote again about how Giovanni II intended to marry Gianevera and that he would do so happily and voluntarily.88 And he again explained Giovanni II’s change of heart: he had been literally ‘alienated from any other hope’ after having heard the ultimate response from Francesco Sforza, i.e. that Genevra was the only available Sforza bride. Marescotti continued that Giovanni II was willing to follow faithfully all future orders from Milan, together with all of his friends and the Bentivoglio. Lodovico Bentivoglio, Giacomo Grati and Virgilio Malvezzi composed another joint letter to the duke, repeating the same outcome of the negotiations: Giovanni would be happy to follow the duke’s wishes, and he would literally put himself under the duke’s wings and will.89 Again, not one word was mentioned about Genevra’s dowry. There remains nothing about its payment, transferral or mere existence. It was not part of the Sforza offer. Giovanni II could not have fared worse in his marriage negotiations. Not only did he have to marry his illegitimate sexually experienced aunt who had been the bride of his illegitimate fill-in cousin, but he also had to accept the dishonourable situation without any dowry. The duke of Milan ultimately protected Genevra and some of her honour by finding her a husband. Yet for months, he abandoned her in the midst of familial and civic disputes, considering her merely useful toward his own political goals. Not granting her a dowry had been clever insurance against her being able to leave Bologna or make decisions on her own—but it had left her in a desperate and embarrassing situation. In that condition, the duke knew he could manipulate her into becoming the wife of whomever he chose. The duke must have paid for her sojourn at Corpus Domini during those months—because she could not have covered that expense on her own with no dowry. Regardless of these details, Genevra was important to the duke because she continued to serve him as his primary link to better relations with Bologna and his extended interests across Emilia Romagna and the northern and central block of the Papal States. 87 For more on consent as the basis of marriage, see Brandileone. Also no reported mattinate or chiavari or other forms of popular practices against mismatched couples were recorded as having taken place. 88 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 20 January 1464, Galeazzo Marescotti to Francesco Sforza. 89 ASMI, PER, reg. cart. 163, bobina 149, 20 January 1464, Lodovico Bentivoglio, Giacomo Grati and Virgilio Malvezzi to Francesco Sforza.

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Trevor Dean and Katherine J. P. Lowe hypothesised that it could have been the Sforza’s ‘unusual and precarious position—as not altogether legitimate successors to the Visconti dukes [which] led them into greater than usual utilitarian harshness when it came to arranging marriages’.90 They outline three particular Sforza cases representative of the utilitarian harshness: the age difference between thirteen-year-old Elisabetta Sforza and the elderly sixty-five-year-old condottiere Guglielmo Paleologo of Monferrato; the annulment of Dorotea Gonzaga’s marriage contract to Galeazzo Maria Sforza based on a false assumption that she was becoming a hunchback; and that of Genevra Sforza and Sante when Alessandro Sforza wished Genevra had never existed and that she would drop dead so as not to be a burden on his brother Francesco (as examined above; and as we can see now with contextual hindsight, the harshness behind it went well beyond Alessandro’s individual misogynistic letter that served as merely one element within a much larger Milanese deceptive strategy).91 Certainly Genevra’s first marriage negotiations were far from ideal, and based on remarks about her in that one letter alone, the case deserves to be in this category. But set in fuller context her first marriage was more respectful and made more sense, and as wife of a de facto signore of an important city that treated her as a prize, Genevra’s first marriage was successful on multiple levels. After having analysed the context behind her second match, it would be the arrangements to wed Giovanni II that seem particularly unusual and abusive, certainly also worthy of inclusion in this category of discomforting Sforza arrangements. Through February and March, nothing was exchanged about the marriage between the governments of Bologna and Milan. In that quiet moment, at least one other man showed interest in Genevra’s hand. A controversial Neapolitan aristocrat and grand admiral named Marino Marzano (1420–1494), who had been bestowed with various titles including prince of Rossano and duke of Sessa Aurunca, had learned about Genevra’s availability and inquired in Pesaro about her; and if she were unavailable, he was interested in Antonia, one of Genevra’s sisters.92 Intent on an alliance with Pesaro, a few years later Marzano succeeded in making a match for his daughter Camilla (also called Covella) who would marry Genevra’s brother Costanzo; and Genevra would play an important role in their wedding.93 Had 90 Dean and Lowe, p. 15. 91 Dean and Lowe, p. 15. 92 Four years later in 1468 or early 1469, Antonia would marry Ottaviano Martinengo of Brescia; see PBO, ms. 376, vol. 10, no. 10, f. 148r–v. There are no records of any Sforza reply to Marzano’s wishes for making parentela. For the proposal of Duke Marino Marzano, see Abati Olivieri Giordani, p. 74. No other information seems to have survived about other interested suitors or about how Francesco could have otherwise imagined placing Genevra, that is, if he ever considered options beyond Bologna. 93 See Bridgeman.

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Francesco Sforza not cornered her into staying with the Bentivoglio for his own desires, and had she had a dowry, Genevra might have led a completely different life as a Neapolitan princess consort. Meanwhile by April Giovanni II was able to write to Milan about other concerns and signed his letter, ‘vostro filius’, a clue that some of his anger had subsided. By 25 April the papal dispensation had been granted by Pope Pius II so their public wedding could be held.94 Chroniclers knew one thing about it: it cost 320 ducats, 300 for the dispensation and 20 for related bureaucratic expenses.95 So Genevra’s second Bentivoglio wedding took place on 2 May, ten years after her first one. This time it was a private affair and seems to have been ‘celebrated’ completely within the Bentivoglio palace or elsewhere behind closed doors. When was she released from Corpus Domini? How many days before the wedding did Genevra stop wearing her somber widow’s weeds and widow’s veil? For how much longer would she be allowed to continue mourning Sante? Pope Paul II had attacked the oligarchy in Bologna for their use of public money for private weddings such as Sante’s—but Ian Robertson notes no trace of communal funds having been allocated for Giovanni II’s wedding.96 And chroniclers recorded literally no details of festivities. Some did not record the marriage, and others made only simple mention of it.97 The Varignana chronicler, who had spent nineteen pages describing Genevra’s marriage to Sante, gave only eight lines of text to this one.98 Ubaldini, after dedicating sixteen pages to Genevra’s 1454 wedding, offered a few lines, recounting the same basic facts.99 Ghirardacci, who compiled his enormous Historia di Bologna from a variety of works, devoted five lines to the 1464 wedding (versus 222 lines to the 1454 wedding).100 The Madonna of San Luca did not descend into the city either, as she usually did, to enhance important civic events. No artist created a portrait medal message to commemorate Genevra’s second marriage—if 94 ASFE, FB, Catastro Croce, f. 27r, dated 25 April 1464. The concept of parentela covered an area well beyond blood relations as seen here with Giovanni II and Genevra. Another papal dispensation was granted Annibale II Bentivoglio, due to his cognazione spirituale to the duke of Ferrara who had served as godfather at his baptism, before he could marry the duke’s illegitimate daughter; see ASFE, FB, Libro 11, no. 17, 20 February 1478. 95 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 620r. 96 Robertson, pp. 65–111. 97 Tuate, f. 191r. Other chroniclers noted that the marriage took place but add no further details; see Borselli, p. 111; Barbiere, f. 15r; Nadi, p. 55; Pugliola, f. 755r; Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 620r; Varignana, p. 323; Anonymous, Sommario, BUB 580, no. 4, see entry at 2 May 1454. 98 Varignana reported all known facts, ‘Messer Zohanne d’Aniballe di Bentivoglio spoxò madona Zanevera figliola del signore Alisandro da Chudignola, adì ii de mazo, la quale fo mogliere de meser Santo di Bentivogli, et fo dispensata per papa Pio segondo, et chostò le bolle duchati 300, e ducati xx per molte spexe che li occorse’; see Varignana, p. 323. 99 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 578r (1454) and f. 620r (1464). 100 Ghirardacci, pp. 147–151, 183.

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nobody could come up with an appropriate motif and motto when she married Sante, nobody dared suggest one now. In an era when rulers spent fortunes on their images, created with the help of their entire entourages as they thoroughly depended on spectacular theatrical display to promote themselves and their regimes, how could doing literally nothing be interpreted? Chroniclers focused instead on the 21–29 May 1464 wedding event of Giulio Malvezzi and Camilla Sforza, daughter of Count Marco Sforza of Cotignola. Camilla was paraded through town, from Via San Felice to the Cathedral of San Pietro then to Porta Ravegnana and eventually to her new home also in Strà San Donato: Palazzo di San Sigismondo, Malvezzi headquarters. Extensive celebrations were held in Bologna that included a dinner, dancing, street decorations, jousting, as well as extensive recorded gifts and a lengthy list of guests—attending guests, however, did not include Giovanni II Bentivoglio or Genevra Sforza.101 Twentyone-year-old Giovanni II had nothing to celebrate in his state of mind. Had he chosen to do so, he would not have dared compete with festivities that had been planned for many months (or years) by his competitive Malvezzi cousins who lived across the street. He did not celebrate his own wedding and refused to attend one given by a cousin who happened to be marrying an honourable, legitimate, virgin Sforza girl. Disgust, fury, humiliation and envy were likely the sentiments he must have felt.102 Klapisch-Zuber summaries her extensive work on women, marriages and dowries, A marriage without a dowry seemed more blameworthy than a union unblessed by the Church. The dowry penetrated to the very heart of the social ideology of the time. It was what guaranteed honor and the share of respect due each individual: it ensured the nubile girl and the widow a marriage that respected the taboos concerning feminine purity; it conferred and proclaimed before all the social rank of the marrying couple and of their families. It was therefore a regulating force in society.103

101 Ubaldini, vol. 2, ff. 620v–623v. 102 1464 would prove even more diff icult for Giovanni II. Upon election of Pope Paul II, Bolognese ambassadors sent to Rome to pay homage were unable to return with the confirmation of the Capitoli set under Nicholas V that gave Bologna the independence it enjoyed. For a critical discussion of Paul II’s concerns with Bologna and his reasons behind refusing to sign the governing contract, see Robertson, pp. 139–202. Also, by 1465, Giovanni II brought himself to attending a Sforza wedding, that of one of the duke’s daughters who married the Prince of Taranto; see Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 626r. Since the bride lodged in Palazzo Bentivoglio on her way to Milan, it would have been difficult for Giovanni II to have avoided the festivities. 103 Klapisch Zuber, p. 214.

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It was indeed unusual and uncustomary for a woman to be married without a dowry. Gene Brucker has shown that after a lengthy judicial process, Roman courts would not consider Giovanni della Casa officially married to his concubine of twelve years, Lusanna Nucci; reasons behind the decision were grounded in unequal social status but included the fact that Lusanna never brought Giovanni a dowry.104 When a woman of greatly superior rank married ‘down’, they sometimes brought no dowry: Barbara of Brandenburg, niece of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismondo, married Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga in this fashion;105 and Bona of Savoy, French King Louis XI’s sister-in-law, also married without a dowry since her royal condition made her marriage to a mere duke (Galeazzo Sforza of Milan) seem more than acceptable.106 The Bentivoglio family would be again forced to accept an unusual dowerless bride in 1501 when, as part of a peace treaty with Cesare Borgia, Giacoma Orsini was delivered to Ermes; but after the death of Pope Alexander VI, the Bentivoglio did receive a 3000-ducat dowry from her family in Rome.107 Genevra’s dowerless state also explains in part why Giovanni II would eventually grant her usufruct status and income from so many Bentivoglio properties in his will (since otherwise she would have had nothing to her name); in that way, were Giovanni II to die before her, Genevra would be guaranteed individual income for herself and her staff on which to survive.108 Since Genevra’s second husband was part of the agnatic kinship group of her first husband living under the same roof, she was in a unique situation because upon her remarriage she did not have to change homes. According to custom, her children from her first marriage should have remained in the household of the deceased Sante, but since that remained her present house, what should become of them? Because of the unusual ‘same house’ situation, Genevra never technically became what Klapisch-Zuber termed a ‘cruel mother’ who ‘abandoned’ her children upon remarriage.109 Along these lines, after Genevra’s remarriage, her children 104 Brucker, pp. 18–19. 105 Antenhofer, p. 72. 106 Galeazzo Sforza did not travel to France to escort Bona to Milan because it would have been humiliating for him to have done so due to his inferior rank, as explained in Lubkin, pp. 47–48; see also Ady (1907), p. 96. 107 For more about the marriage of Giacoma Orsini and Ermes Bentivoglio, see my Chapter Three. 108 For the many incomes from various properties granted to Genevra Sforza in Giovanni II’s will, see Pellegrini, pp. 309–317. Genevra was to receive not only the wool, linen and silk clothes and jewellery she wore at the time of Giovanni II’s eventual death but she would also receive rental incomes from: houses and buildings where silk was spun, where arms were made, where wood was cut, where paper was made, where shoemakers and blacksmiths worked, where bricks were fired, where cereals were ground, from inns at Osteria del Bentivoglio and Bonconvento, from various fields and pastures, and from a tower at Riccardina. Her benefits were to include all of Giovanni II’s income from the cresimonie, from the Monte del Sale, and Giovanni II’s vote within the Consiglio di Quattromila. The will notes that all of the above information could be found in Giovanni II’s personal account books (apparently lost somewhere in Milan). 109 Klapisch-Zuber, pp. 117–131.

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were removed as quickly as possible. As soon as she came of age, a local match for twelve-year-old Costanza had been considered with a son of Galeazzo Marescotti but Giovanni II and Genevra would not agree to it—either because they did not want Costanza in Bologna or because they did not want to set a precedent for their family by allowing a legitimate Bentivoglio to marry a ‘mere’ fellow Bolognese citizen.110 So Costanza remained in Bologna for a bit longer but left home in 1473 to marry Count AntonMaria Pico della Mirandola, brother of that town’s signore.111 Genevra’s son Ercole fared worse as he represented a more substantial problem as a legitimate Bentivoglio heir and claimant to all that was Giovanni II’s. To solve what could have become a disastrous complication for Giovanni II and his future male heirs, at the tender age of four Ercole was sent away to grow up within the Medici household in Florence: Ercole was thus returned to Tuscany where his father Sante originated.112 Francesco Sforza’s promises made to Genevra about taking special care of her children had apparently been fulfilled. In additional ways, Giovanni II continued to negate his cousin/stepson Ercole’s existence. Attempting to ensure a full inheritance and to be paid back for what Sante and Ercole had ‘used’ of ‘his’ family’s, Giovanni II laid formal charges against the boy in a lawsuit that lasted from 1475 to 1485. He wished to rid Bologna of Ercole’s presence and rights and to eliminate a potential rival for local power that he wished to claim entirely for himself. In 1477 Giovanni II had Sante’s chapel within San Giacomo remodelled (i.e. destroyed) when he began to build another one to his own liking. In its reconstruction, Giovanni II would leave no trace of Sante’s tomb.113 Ercole was erased from literature too: of Genevra’s children, Ercole was the only son excluded from Arienti’s account of Genevra within Gynevera, presumably no accidental omission.114 Sante’s legacy was uncomfortable precisely because it was so critical to Giovanni II’s future. In the end, Ercole was not annihilated from Bentivoglio memory but instead was legally granted family status, properties and possessions.115 Moreover, he did not forget how he was treated by Giovanni II and other Bentivoglio. Ercole spent his adolescent and adult life working as a condottiere for the Medici and later the pope. Ironically, he worked for Pope Alexander VI when his son Cesare fought against Bologna in his quest to conquer Romagna. Ercole also invaded his mother’s hometown, Pesaro, on 20 October 1500. And in 1501 he was present when Giovanni 110 Duranti (2007): letter 61 (27 October 1470), pp. 93–94. 111 Ubaldini, vol. 2, c. 659r. It is unclear how soon before 1473 that the marriage had been arranged. 112 It is unknown what sort of relationship Ercole might have had with his extended biological family in nearby Poppi. 113 Billings Licciardello, pp. iii, v, 69–82. 114 Arienti, pp. 1–9. 115 Bocchi; her book is constructed around documents pertaining to the 1475 controversy and its 1485 resolution.

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II was forced into the humiliating position of accepting for his legitimate son the dowerless Borgia relation, Giacoma Orsini. Perhaps most tellingly, Ercole worked for Pope Julius II in 1506, resulting in the ousting of the Bentivoglio from Bologna.116 Although his own dowerless marriage to Genevra had been unwelcome by Giovanni II, he would soon put his wife to the biological test. Less than one year later a daughter was born, the first of the sixteen children the couple would bear in seventeen years. Giovanni II’s unwanted bride did not interfere much with his private life. Like other fifteenth-century ruling-class Italian males, Giovanni II fathered additional children with other women, and a dozen or more of his illegitimates born in these years survived into adulthood.117 After the wedding, Giovanni II made no sign of homage to Genevra’s father. Instead, two months later, Giovanni II paid a formal visit to the duke, his new uncle-in-law in Milan, along with one hundred fifteen horses, thirteen carriages and twenty-five men covered in the finest gold, silver and silks. The duke greeted the large group at the city gate, took Giovanni II into his palace and indeed treated him as a family member: he and his Bolognese crew stayed in Milan for the month of July.118 Seven years after the initial humiliation from Duke Sforza, Giovanni II would begin to benefit economically from the Milanese alliance when he was made Captain of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza’s military forces with an annual salary of 7000 ducats. Francesca Bocchi notes that he was paid less than other condottiere of his times, but that he enjoyed other sorts of advantages in his contracts with Milan.119

Conclusions The complex devious strategies employed by Francesco Sforza to arrange Genevra’s first match demonstrate how important the link to Bologna was for him, and it could have only been made through Genevra: an illegitimate Sforza who didn’t need a dowry and who fully represented his interests but who wasn’t his own daughter. Genevra was considered a prize for Sante Bentivoglio and Bologna and her lack of a dowry was offset by her membership in the powerful Sforza clan: Genevra brought a tie to major ruling-class families of Italy, something that reflected extremely well on the Bentivoglio at mid-century. The Sforza certainly helped the Bentivoglio maintain political supremacy in Bologna, and the link became the solid basis of peace in the city for the remainder of the century. Genevra’s ‘dowry’ 116 117 118 119

For his military conquests, see De Caro. See my Chapter Three for more details on legitimate and illegitimate Bentivoglio. Ghirardacci, pp. 188–189, based on uncited contemporary sources. Bocchi (1969); many of his military contracts are conserved within ASFE, FB.

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in her marriage to Sante was thus her status and connections plus the promise of peace and prosperity for Bologna—all successfully delivered. For Sante’s cousin Giovanni II, Genevra continued to represent some of the same positive family connections and promises. Yet Genevra brought significantly less ‘dowry’ as this marriage was considered dishonourable. Putting his own interests first, Francesco Sforza humiliated and manipulated Giovanni II by forcing him to marry Genevra against his will and against that of the Bolognese government. The marriage proved that Bologna functioned in complete submission to Milan, and the image of Giovanni II and his city were tarnished. Proof of the pope’s indifference (or acceptance) of the match can be seen in the quickly issued dispensation that he granted to the couple. In both of her marriage negotiations, Genevra was considered a token of Milan. Her uncle, father, husbands and cities considered her a useful instrument available to reach each of their own aspirations. And Genevra played her role accordingly: she acted modestly and respectfully, she did not voice her opinions during the negotiations behind her marriages, and she left no record of her true thoughts or opinions in relation to either arrangement. Her adult life story would unfold within this initial context, of her politely accepting what others who had power over her planned for her. In that manner, Genevra is similar to her own niece, the idealised Duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga of Urbino, who became famous as the hostess of the dialogues spoken in Baldassare Castiglione’s Il cortigiano. Like Genevra, Elisabetta never held official political power, repeatedly appeased the men of her family who made plans for her, allegedly met gender-related misfortune with patience, and never opposed her more resigned female role within what she accepted as normal social order. Although Genevra’s personal interests and honour were not much considered, her political role was quite important. Her marriages served to create peace not only on the small-scale between Francesco and Alessandro Sforza but also on the larger scene among the cities of Milan, Bologna and Florence—which helped pave the way for peaceful relations across the peninsula. Although Giovanni II and his city saw marriage to Genevra as an initial degrading embarrassment, his new wife would soon become a most active participant in the strategy of building up Bentivoglio family power, notably through the many children she bore to Giovanni II, the focus of the next chapter.

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Nannini, Marco Cesare. ‘Un consulente medico ed un chirurgo al capezzale di Santi Bentivoglio’ in Strenna storica bolognese, anno 13 (1963): 203–207. Parker, Holt N. ‘Costanza Varano (1426–1447): Latin as an Instrument of State’ in Laurie J. Churchill et al. (eds.), Women Writing Latin: From Early Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe: Early Modern Women Writing Latin, vol. 3 (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 31–54. Pellegrini, Flaminio. ‘Due atti testamentari di Giovanni II Bentivoglio Signore di Bologna’ in AMR, vol. 11 (1892–1893): 303–359. Robertson, Ian. Tyranny Under the Mantle of St Peter: Pope Paul II and Bologna. Belgium: Brepols, 2002. Rossi, Luigi. ‘Matrimonio di Sante Bentivoglio con Ginevra Sforza’ in Bollettino della società pavese di storia patria, vol. 6 (1906): 104–119. Senatore, Francesco. Uno mundo de carta: forme e strutture della diplomazia sforzesca. Naples: Liguori Editore, 1998. Webb, Jennifer D. ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: Varano and Sforza Women of the Marche’ in Katherine A. McIver, ed., Wives, Widows, Mistresses and Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible through Art and Patronage (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 13–31. Welch, Evelyn. ‘Between Milan and Naples: Ippolita Maria Sforza, Duchess of Calabria’ in David Abulafia, ed., The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–95: Antecedents and Effects (Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, Vt: Ashgate, 1995), pp. 123–136. Wiesner, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

3.

Genevra Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Strategies Creating and Extending Kinship on a Massive Scale

Abstract: This chapter reveals dynastic strategies practiced by Genevra and Giovanni II in the creation and promotion of their children whom they used in an attempt to stabilise their position as rulers of Bologna. Genevra had two children with Sante; but then with Giovanni II she had sixteen more in seventeen years while he fathered a near equal number of illegitimates. All children were carefully placed in marriage alliances or ecclesiastical positions according to gender, rank and status—for the collective good of the family. Serving hundreds of Bolognese, the Bentivoglio were also active godparents, further strengthening their partisan base. This family building project in Bologna shows Genevra acting as a small-scale contributor to larger-scale Sforza projects across the peninsula. Keywords: Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio, family history, Bologna history, fifteenth-century Italy, marriage alliances, Renaissance Italy

Introduction Genevra Sforza participated to the fullest extent in the creation and development of the Bentivoglio family dynasty—f irst with Sante and then especially with Giovanni II. Contemporary writers of women’s lives recorded many of Genevra’s characteristic traits including her fertility: one recorded her as fecundissima, another noted she had a fecundo ventre.1 In 1503 after visiting the Bentivoglio, Marchese Francesco Gonzaga reported to his wife Marchesana Isabella d’Este that the many children of the Bentivoglio clan were a sight worth seeing.2 Genevra had 1 Foresti, f. 164; Arienti, p. 7. 2 ASMN, AG 2115 bis, f. 230r–v, 29 August 1503, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. Also, in lieu of the ‘English’ word ‘marquis’ lifted from French, Italian terminology will be used directly, i.e. ‘marchese’ for Francesco Gonzaga and ‘marchesa’ or ‘marchesana’ (instead of ‘marquess’, ‘marquisess’, ‘consort of the marquis’ or ‘marchioness’) for Isabella.

Bernhardt, E.L., Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726849_ch03

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Table 3.1  GENEVRA SFORZA’S EIGHTEEN PREGNANCIES, ca. 1457–ca. 1482 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

M1 1454

1455

1456

C? C? C? C? C? C? C? C? 1457

C? C? C? C? C? E E E E 1458

E E E E E 1459

1460

1461

1462

1463

M2 A? A? A? A? A? A? A? 1464

A? A? A? A? A? A? A? A? A? A? A? A? 1465

A? A? A? B B B B B B 1466

Key: M1 = marriage to Sante Bentivoglio, May 1454 to October 1463 (upon Sante’s death): 2 pregnancies M2 = marriage to Giovanni II, May 1464 to May 1507 (upon Genevra’s death): 16 pregnancies Bold letters = definitive dates of pregnancy (while non-bolded letters with a ‘?’ s refer to approximate months of pregnancy) – = time when Genevra was probably not pregnant (or if she had been pregnant, the pregnancy did not lead to a recorded birth) Names of the legitimate children, in chronological order, as seen in above chart: MI  C? = COSTANZA (born sometime in 1458; exact months of pregnancy unknown hence ‘C?’ E = ERCOLE M2  A? = ANNIBALE II (died young) (born sometime between Feb. 1465 and Mar. 1466) B = BIANCA F = FRANCESCA A = ANNIBALE III, later referred to as Annibale II E = ELEONORA D = DONNINA (died young) Ag = ANTONGALEAZZO C = CAMILLA Al? = ALESSANDRO V = VIOLANTE Er? = ERMES L = LAURA Ii? = ISOTTA (died young) (If Ermes had been born in 1478, Isotta would have come after Ermes in ca. 1479) Iii? = ISOTTA (she could have been born in 1479 as suggested above or possibly even after Lodovico, ca. 1483) Co = CORNELIO (died young) Lo = LODOVICO (died young)

been groomed from childhood for her role in life as a courtly consort—and after her arrival in Bologna, on many levels she unconditionally dedicated herself to the development of the house into which she was placed. A wife’s main duty was to produce and raise children, and from her eighteen successful pregnancies and with

B B B F F F F F F F 1467

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F F A A A A A A A 1468

A A E E E E E 1469

E E E E D D 1470

D D D D D D D 1471

Ag Ag Ag Ag Ag Ag Ag Ag Ag 1472

C C C C C C C C C 1473

Al? Al? Al? Al? Al? Al? Al? Al? Al? Al? 1474

V V V V V V V V V 1475

Er? Er? Er? Er? Er? Er? Er? Er? Er? 1476

L L L L L L L L L 1477

Ii? Ii? Ii? Ii? Ii? Ii? Ii? Ii? Ii? 1478

Iii? Iii? Iii? Iii? Iii? Iii? Iii? Iii? Iii? 1479

Co Co Co Co Co Co Co 1480

Co Co Lo Lo Lo Lo 1481

Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo 1482

no sign of miscarriage, it is clear Genevra was an extremely fertile and physically strong woman;3 she also had great luck in that she did not die of accouchement or its many complications. Table 3.1 (above) charts her pregnancies and underscores how much of her life was spent bearing children who would serve as active participants in a family strategy—the focus of this chapter. In a decade of marriage with Sante, Genevra had two children but after her second child, a male, was born, Genevra stopped having children. It seems odd that the she and Sante did not try to create a large family—although they (and/or their relatively small extended family) were interested in creating an absolutely magnificent palace, the largest private home in Bologna, for a family that someone must have imagined as correspondingly enormous and powerful. The couple might have been discouraged from creating contenders to the ‘true’ Bentivoglio family: Giovanni and his line. After Genevra married Giovanni II, she remained steadily pregnant over the course of nearly two decades. After Bianca was born, Genevra was pregnant just two months later with Francesca; and after her birth she was pregnant three months later with Annibale. Over the course of sixteen pregnancies in seventeen years with Giovanni II, she successfully turned herself into a biological machine; the average lapse of rest taken between each pregnancy was four months. Her fertility cycle lasted so long that some of her children began having children before she had finished having babies; so some of her grandchildren were born before some of 3 I found reference to one other early modern Italian woman who bore more children (thirty-six): Checca Masi in Florence; but only nine survived at the time of her death in 1459; see ASFI, Manoscritti, vol. 89, fol. 18r as seen in Strocchia, p. 173.

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her children. 4 Genevra lost only two of her first fourteen, but she lost three of her four final babies; they may have been weaker and died young as a result of their mother’s exhausted body. Genevra’s frequent pregnancies and the customs of patrician women demonstrate she never breastfed her children. Had she done so, her body would have produced the hormone we call prolactin, impeding fecundity. Despite the evident use of presumably in-house wet nurses for Bentivoglio babies, no information survives about them.5 Meticulous records were surely kept regarding these activities and their related expenses—but much was lost when the family dispersed in 1506. We know Genevra employed Gentile of Budrio who has been described as her nurse and a talented laywoman practicing magical healing.6 Gentile might have worked with Genevra in various capacities at the times of her births. We know nothing about the related objects of material culture popular in Renaissance Italy that must have accompanied Genevra’s births including painted birth trays, maiolica wares, special clothing, sheets, pillows and birthing chairs; we also know nothing about her connection to saints invoked at the time of her births nor do we know about her preferred use of charms (lapis aetite), philtres, various magical amulets and mandrake (a popular narcotic painkiller).7 As a wealthy courtly lady, Genevra would have had access to the finest quality and latest versions of all of those objects and practices. Genevra and the women who served her annually in the confinement room and the intense experiences they lived through as a team are part of a female world about which we have only a glimpse—yet those experiences were something Genevra probably considered as some of the most significant moments of her life. Although Genevra held no official political position other than wife of two successive de facto rulers, she had influence and power in many ways related to her children. Although she was from a ducal family herself, she ‘earned’ additional power through the creation of the children who legitimised and continually strengthened her own position while bolstering the strength of the Bentivoglio. Furthermore, she influenced the naming of the children, the choice of godparents for each one, and she and Giovanni II were guided by Milanese policy when arranging marriages for their issue. Christina Antenhofer explains the power bases of early modern Italian noblewomen. According to her categories of analysis for females, she outlines their 4 Genevra apparently went into menopause around 1482, around age 41; see medical comments at ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 90r–91v, 25 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Antonio Ferreri of San Vitale, and ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 91v–92r, 25 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 5 Fifteenth-century Florentine children were weaned on average at 17–21 months; for weaning and wet nurses, see Klapisch-Zuber, pp. 154–158. 6 See Chapter One here for more on Gentile. 7 Musacchio; Gélis, pp. 115–118.

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

successes according to strength of family of origin, success at creating children, capacity to create social networks, understanding of familial obligations/honour, and capacity to maintain ongoing communications between courts. If we were to apply these concepts to the life of Genevra, we could see that in each of these categories Genevra would be considered highly successful.8 Contemporary painters featured Genevra as a mother or together with her large family. In 1475 Ercole de’ Roberti painted a formal diptych portrait noteworthy for the couple’s solemn compostezza (self-composure) with every minute detail taken into consideration, including the choice of jewels sewn onto the sleeves of Genevra’s camora (red rubies and green emeralds symbolising marriage) set against sumptuous dark theatrically-sized curtains (Figure 1.2). He painted Genevra and Giovanni II literally eye to eye, in perfect symmetrical accord after roughly one decade of marriage and as parents to ten already by then—reflecting one another’s matching outlook as we see here in relation to family planning. Furthermore, the couple face one another from a luxurious imaginary location above and beyond the city, with the Apennines in the distance, and from beyond what appears to be Porta San Donato on Giovanni’s side (near today’s Fiera District). From that location they themselves tower over Bologna, ‘lording’ over it and dominating it—their concrete goal back on the ground.9 In 1488 Lorenzo Costa painted a brilliant and conspicuous life-size Bentivoglio portrait for their family chapel within the Church of San Giacomo (Figure 1.3).10 The portrait was given as an ex-voto to honour the Madonna for having protected Francesca Bentivoglio, her son Astorre, and Giovanni II from danger in Faenza after the assassination of Francesca’s husband, Galeotto Manfredi (May 1488). Despite the official reason for its existence, the painting communicates much more about the Bentivoglio family and their outlook: in perfectly symmetrical hierarchy, below the Madonna and baby Jesus are the images of Genevra, Giovanni II and 8 See Antenhofer. 9 Genevra wears a precious Bolognese silk veil carefully arranged over a garzeta di tela (a stronger, longer-lasting white-coloured veil made out of fabric imported from Barcelona). Milanese ambassador Gerardo Cerruti consulted Genevra about fashionable veiling practices and from her learned how Bolognese women wore veils high or low, long or short, thick or thin according to their age, skin tone, and body type; Cerruti also received tips from her on how to wash and dry such delicate veils (if at all)—as reported in a detailed letter addressed to Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza who had asked for Bolognese veil tips (and for veils themselves) on behalf of his wife, Bona of Savoy; see Gerardo Cerruti to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, 19 and 20 May 1474, as seen in Duranti (2007), tomo II, pp. 416–418, and his report about ruined veils (28 June 1474), p. 461. 10 N.B. Because Giovanni II’s face in the portrait was later ‘fortemente ritoccato’ with oil paint (over tempera) presumably as a result of its once defaced nature, his characterisation as an unshaven brute is not contemporary. Ottavio Nonfarmale, who restored the painting, mentioned this point in his discussion of his 1981 restoration of the portrait at the conference celebrating the restoration of another portrait of Giovanni II, at BUB, July 2003.

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then eleven of their children, carefully lined up according to gender, birth order and height. Even the Western Anatolian carpet under the Madonna’s feet reflects the same highly controlled, methodical design of the family’s plan.11 The portrait differs from other donor portraits in the sheer number of family members present, suggesting once again that the family’s size was a matter of special pride. The portrait makes its point clear even without including the spouses of the depicted Bentivoglio ‘children’—several of whom were married by mid-1488 (six of the eleven) with their own children—making Genevra and Giovanni II grandparents many times over. The portrait also omits Genevra’s children with Sante (and their mates and children), the five legitimates who died young, Sante’s illegitimate son (and his wife and children), and Giovanni II’s many illegitimates (and their mates and children). Had Costa included all of these omitted close family members it would have roughly quadrupled the already strikingly large family core present. The painting was packed with so much family that there was no room allotted for saints or a sacred conversation as the core of the Bentivoglio family focused on itself in the present. Why did the Bentivoglio want so many children? Giovanni II’s impetus to expand his own family and dominate Bologna was stimulated by Bentivoglio history. From the age of two when his father was killed, Giovanni II was the eldest and the only legitimate surviving male member of his clan.12 And, as we have seen, the family had little luck before him. In 1402 his great-grandfather Giovanni had been massacred in Piazza Maggiore. In 1424 his great-uncle Ercole died in a duel. In 1435 his grandfather Antongaleazzo was decapitated by the legate and podestà. In 1445 his father Annibale was slain after being tricked into serving as godfather to nemeses. Of his male relations, only his illegitimate cousin Sante would die of natural causes. In the second half of the fifteenth century, first Sante then Giovanni II Bentivoglio governed Bologna in an ambiguous fashion, not as de jure signori with legitimate imperial investitures or papal vicariates, but merely as de facto rulers nominated by the local oligarchy that in turn shared power with the pope in Rome as his northernmost stronghold of the Papal States. Strength in numbers of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and godchildren would greatly enhance Bentivoglio survival and possibly lead to greater civic libertas. But due to their ongoing unofficial status and to so many premature family killings, together Giovanni II and 11 Thanks to Jasmin Cyril for her help identifying this carpet as a Lotto pattern from Western Anatolia. 12 Giovanni had one older sister, Antonia, who married Milanese general Sigismondo Brandolini in 1458; her 1000 ducat dowry is at ASFE, Libro 5, no. 32.

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

Genevra deliberately adopted a plan to establish the family once and for all with the help of as many children and allies as possible. Although there are no surviving letters, diaries or other straightforward testimonies that prove their intents, it is from their actions that many patterns emerge to explain their behaviour. Closely following the example of Genevra’s extended agnatic family in Milan, the strategy adopted by the Bentivoglio to create such a large family may have come from her. As a part of Francesco Sforza’s plan herself, Genevra understood early how ruling-class alliances and relationships came about. She would have learned much from how her uncle used his own ca. thirty children (and herself) in such strategies. Donnina Visconti (ca.1420–?), Giovanni II’s Milanese mother who was related to Francesco Sforza’s wife, also descended from an enormous family of thirty-four children, one also known for its carefully calculated alliance plans.13 Following the example of (and working for) Milan could help explain Genevra’s and Giovanni II’s efforts for the Bentivoglio cause. Was Giovanni II a satyr? Unlike some contemporaries including Ippolita Maria Sforza, Beatrice d’Este and Felice della Rovere who opposed their husbands’ extra-marital relations or like some who left their husbands to live in a convent (e.g. Genevra’s second stepmother, Sveva di Montefeltro), there is no evidence Genevra objected to Giovanni II’s behaviour with other women, nor did she seem to hold anything against the numerous illegitimate children he fathered through them.14 As Table 3.2 below demonstrates, beyond his legitimates with Genevra, Giovanni II fathered between ten and sixteen more who lived into adulthood—not even considering those who died young.15 His purely political intentions may not at first be thoroughly convincing to some readers, but it was not by chance or due to an excessive libido that Giovanni II fathered so many children. Giovanni II’s idea of parenthood stemmed from his desire to recreate his own family that had literally been massacred—added to his ‘making up’ for having 13 For more on Francesco Sforza, see my Chapter Two here; see also Lubkin, pp. 50, 132, 225; Ady (1907), p. 163; see Litta, ‘Visconti di Milano’, tav. 5. In nearby Ferrara Niccolò III d’Este is another example of a father to about thirty children; see Gundersheimer, p. 77. For a discussion of the ‘invisible’ women who bore children to rulers especially in the cases of Milan, Ferrara and Rimini, see Ettlinger. For a multiperspective view of illegitimacy, including domestic servants who bore children to ruling-class men, see Kuehn. 14 Welch (1995), pp. 128–129, 133; Ady (1907), p. 163; Murphy, pp. 56–60. 15 If five of his sixteen legitimates died young (31%), we could assume that at least the same percentage of his illegitimates met the same fate. For example, if Giovanni II had sixteen surviving illegitimates, he could have fathered approximately twenty-three illegitimates; if he had fathered ten surviving illegitimates, he could have had at least five more who did not survive childhood.

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been humiliated into his own marriage when he had been forced into submission. When we see him twenty-four years into his marriage when posing for the San Giacomo portrait, he proudly presided over a lavishly dressed enormous family; he relished the political power and divine favour that it all implied—and it was thanks to Genevra’s capacity to have quickly delivered him so many legitimates that created this attitude. He turned the chip that he must have carried around on his shoulder into action, demonstrating that he was the ‘maker of his destiny’ as expressed in the popular Renaissance concept homo faber suae quisque fortunae; his proud pro-active mentality was further distilled in his motto, nunc mihi (now is my time). As Giovanni II operated in the moment, he actively recalled his family’s past. After close examination of the roles that each of the members of his large family played it becomes even more clear that having many children was part of a strategy to revive the Bentivoglio family and, ultimately, to dominate Bologna. If indeed Giovanni II had been motivated merely as a satyr, he could have found sexual gratification elsewhere—after all he ruled over a city comprising hundreds of male university students served by many brothels. And although he patronised Bologna’s foundling hospital, San Procolo, he never abandoned his own there. Instead he spent his efforts organising important marriage and career strategies for both his legitimates and illegitimates at a high cost to himself in terms of time, energy, organisation, reputation, monetary dowry payments, etc. He thrived on his dominating political role, which he earned through his sexual role—but only in that sense did his political plan have anything to do with his sexuality. In addition, the state of contraceptive knowledge was such that Genevra (and perhaps even the family’s domestics) could have practiced intercourse without always running the extremely dangerous risk of pregnancy. Running that risk so often points to a deliberate intent to increase the number of Bentivoglio children. The fact that Genevra, Giovanni II’s wife and the sole bearer of his legitimates, constantly ran that high risk to deliver the family legitimates available for the most prestigious alliances demonstrates that a strategy was being followed, a strategy to produce as many children as possible for political considerations. Where is there information about the Bentivoglio children? Much information about the children can be uncovered in contemporary Bolognese chronicles, and traces from their lives are scattered in various documents throughout the city’s public archives and libraries. Their 1506 exile led to the uprooting and relocation of all of them and their belongings—which also means that many more of their traces can be found in each of the locations where they fled including Mirandola, Florence, Spilimberto, Modena, Faenza, Ferrara, Carpi, Rimini, Milan, Mantua, Sassuolo, Venice, Parma, Busseto, and Rome—and research was conducted

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

in each of these cities for this book.16 Ferrara is of particular interest because it is where the bulk of the family’s private archive is now located (and still owned by descendants of Giovanni II and Genevra). After 1506, it was moved there with primogenito Annibale II, who relocated to the hometown of his d’Este wife. The extensive Fondo Bentivoglio there contains information about most of the members of the fifteenth-century family covered in this book; it also holds abundant materials on Bentivoglio into the twentieth century. Other relevant Bentivoglio material can be found in public and private archival collections and museums across Europe and North America. In addition, Giovanni II’s last will (1501), his private donation to his illegitimate boys (1503), and the codicil to his last will (1506) each serve as rich sources about the lives of his children and about his many ideas regarding his family and material world.17 Despite so much contemporary archival documentation, no critical monograph or article has been published focusing on any of the children individually or as a group.18 This chapter thus attempts to introduce the young Bentivoglio who strengthened their family and served as part of their parents’ strategies. The chapter is ultimately a portrait of an ambitious ruling-class family of Renaissance Italy.

The Creation of the Bentivoglio Family Quantity was an essential part of the couple’s grandiose strategies. The sheer number of children born to the family makes for the strongest evidence that Genevra and Giovanni II desired to create a lasting dynasty. From local baptismal records and other sources outlined in Table 3.2, we see that from the time of each child’s birth, thanks to his/her parents’ calculated choices of godparents and namesakes, the couple desired to link themselves and their progeny with well-established, politically powerful families of Northern Italy, and especially with Milan. The Bentivoglio grew tremendously in less than thirty years with the birth of approximately thirty children, legitimate and illegitimate. Genevra and Giovanni II existed in a state of 16 For their exile and dispersal across Italy, see my Chapter Five here. 17 See a transcribed version of Giovanni II’s will and codicil in Pelligrini (1892), pp. 303–359. The will does not exist in notarial papers at ASB (written by notaries Francesco Salimbeni and Alessandro Bottrigari) but the codicil is at ASB in filza 9 of the works of notary Tommaso Grengoli. Pellegrini does not mention the copy of Giovanni II’s will at ASFE, FB, Libro 20, no. 19, or the codicil at ASFE, FB, Libro 21, no. 48, or the specific donation redacted (as a kind of will) for five of his illegitimate sons at ASFE, FB, Libro 20, no. 47/A. 18 For a chapter about Bentivoglio family life, see Ady, ‘Family History’ (1937), pp. 134–149. The ongoing Dizionario biografico degli italiani (DBI), vol. 8, offers biographies of five legitimates: four sons (Ercole, Annibale II, AntonGaleazzo, Ermes), one daughter (Francesca), and one grandchild (Ercole di Annibale II, chosen over about 100 others). DBI excludes most legitimates and all illegitimates.

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constant and tremendous building—of actual family members and social alliances through them—and alongside a palace that could appropriately represent them all. Back in the 1880s Jacob Burckhardt individuates the state as a work of art, and in the 2000s Guido Ruggiero analyses the individual as a work of art—but with the Bentivoglio we see something in between: the family unit as that work of art and also housed within a work of art.19 Despite the incongruous situation leading up to the marriage of Genevra and Giovanni II (as explored in Chapter Two here), the couple agreed on basic family matters as Genevra steadily produced children. Although early modern Italian court women and upper class females tended to have slightly more children than their less politically important or affluent counterparts, so many children born to one woman was rare; studies show that women had four to six on average, and women with over ten were unusual.20 Genevra’s social counterparts produced many heirs but were notably less fecund: Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza bore eight, Giovanna I d’Anjou two, Costanza da Varano two (before dying in childbirth), Ippolita Maria Sforza two, Battista Sforza ten (before dying in childbirth), Caterina Sforza seven, Lucrezia Borgia seven (before dying in childbirth), Eleonora d’Aragona six, and Isabella d’Este six.21 Gaspare Nadi’s wife Chatelina also died in childbirth—but only after having first lost eleven of their twelve children soon after their births.22 In Bologna, citizens maintaining twelve or more children were exempt from taxes—but such children could have been born presumably to more than one woman.23 Of the eighteen children born to Genevra, thirteen (72.2%) lived to adulthood, a high survival rate for the time.24 Of those, ten were female (55.5%), eight male (44.4%), and three of the five who died young were male (60%). Of the illegitimates recognised by Giovanni II (and for whom we have multiple examples from contemporary sources), six (60%) were male and four (40%) female; additional illegitimates must still be documented while those who died young remain completely unknown. Following statistics based on mortality rates of the legitimates, five to seven more illegitimates probably died young; following these same birth statistics it is possible that one or more of the mothers of illegitimates died as a result of childbirth. To 19 Burckhardt, pp. 1–128; Ruggiero, pp. 326–386. 20 Gélis, p. xiii; Viazzo. 21 For Eleonora d’Aragona, see Tuohy, p. 16; for Isabella d’Este, see Coniglio, Tav. 2, after page 516; for Ippolita Maria Sforza, see Welch (1995), p. 127; for Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza, see Lubkin, pp. 18, 31; for Caterina Sforza, see De Vries, p. 28. 22 For common delivery problems and dangerous births, see Gélis, pp. 251–254, 226–232; see also the many tragedies reported in Nadi. 23 ASB, SVEB, 4, Liber novarum provisionum, fol. 241r, 15 October 1456 as seen in Robertson, p. 79. 24 Half of all children died before the age of fifteen in early modern England and before age twenty in early modern France; see Stone, pp. 50–52; Gélis, p. xiii.

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create this family, Sante contributed three, Genevra eighteen, Giovanni II twenty-six (or up to thirty-two or more pending further documentation), and more than five unknown unwed unnamed females bore another ten to sixteen.

Birthdates and Baptisms Available baptismal sources yield the exact birthdates for ten of the legitimates and the baptismal dates for twelve. From this evidence we see Bentivoglio children baptised on days throughout the week and any time from their actual date of birth (e.g. Francesca) to forty-five days after it (e.g. Bianca). In the cases for which we have data, a child was baptised on average 25.6 days after birth. These days allowed time for organising the baptismal ceremony and celebrations and for notifying and awaiting the arrival of godparents. The illegitimate children were not recognised as Bentivoglio offspring in local baptismal records. But not even all of the legitimate Bentivoglio children were recorded in such records: no entries were made for Annibale II or Isotta I, who both died young, but Alessandro, Ermes and Isotta II were not recorded either. Those children might have been born and baptised at one of the family’s country estates where records were not kept or have been lost. What can we learn from their choices of godparents? Serving as a godparent reinforced or formalised a friendship, and it served as a form of patronage that helped the Bentivoglio strengthen their patron-client relationships.25 The family chose important godparents for their own children, and they too served Bolognese infants as often as possible. One, two or three godfathers served Bentivoglio babies but no godmothers were asked to serve them.26 Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza (r. 1466–76) served young Bentivoglio five times and was their most popular choice (serving Eleonora, Donnina, Violante, AntonGaleazzo, and Ippolita Bargellini—a grandchild). Since Francesco Sforza died in 1466, these baptisms may represent a Bentivoglio effort to pay homage to his son, the new duke, and to rekindle ties with Genevra’s family in Milan. Various officials also served the family including four cardinals, the archbishop of Milan, one bishop, one mansionario (a beneficed clergyman of San Petronio and Genevra’s chaplain) and several ruling-class men (ambassadors, members of the Sedici, etc.). However, many 25 For reasons behind the choice of godparents, see Bossy, pp. 444–447. 26 For bibliographical references related to the importance of friendships and godparenting in Renaissance Italy, see Klapisch-Zuber, pp. 68–93; Kent; Eckstein; and the many references as noted in Tomas, p. 71, footnote 3.

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of the selected godfathers did not present themselves in Bologna at the font inside San Pietro: the duke of Milan, various cardinals, Ercole d’Este, Federico Gonzaga and Pino Ordelaffi of Forlì sent representatives to Bologna or chose Bolognese to represent them. Although important men technically agreed to serve as godfathers to Bentivoglio children, their representation by proxy suggests that the Bentivoglio were not on par with them or that they may have served reluctantly. How were the children named? With so many children, an analysis of their given names yields fascinating information about how the Bentivoglio parents viewed their world. No explicit statements explain how Sante, Giovanni II or Genevra chose their children’s names but most of the names are obvious repeats of the names of important relatives and ancestors.27 Patrilineal influences usually dominated early modern Italian naming practices, and some patterns have been rigorously enforced in many Italian families even through today. But because Genevra was from one of the great Italian ruling families, and because she served as an important nexus to many courts, it is significant that many Bentivoglio names originated from the matrilineal pool. Seven traditional Bentivoglio family names and seven traditional Sforza family names are among the names clearly recognisable for young Bentivoglio.28 Giovanni II and Genevra remained most faithful to male Bentivoglio ancestors but also greatly honoured living men and women of the Sforza family upon whom they depended. Ercole, the first-born son of Sante and Genevra, was named after his paternal grandfather, following common practice in the same way that Sante’s first son Antonio had been named after Sante’s earlier father figure and guardian, Antonio Cascese.29 But the first daughter of Sante and Genevra (Costanza) was given a name common to both sides of her family; in similar fashion, a daughter of Giovanni II and Genevra was named Donnina to honour two women, one bentivolesca, one sforzesca. With his first-born legitimate son, Annibale II, Giovanni II honoured his own father Annibale, his family’s most illustrious ancestor. After Annibale II died young, the next legitimate male was again called Annibale III (and later Annibale II). Just after his birth, the bell of San Giacomo was heard throughout the Bentivoglio neighbourhood, and Giovanni II offered alegreze e gran feste (festivities and parties).30 The importance of his birth can be seen in his baptismal record, 27 For naming, see Klapisch-Zuber, pp. 283–309; Herlihy. 28 For patrilineal influence in the choice of children’s given names, see Klapisch-Zuber, pp. 288–289. 29 Naming children alternatively after one’s paternal then maternal grandparents (and other close relations in a prescribed order) has been the custom practiced for centuries. Some Italians continue to name their children following this pattern. 30 Nadi, p. 59.

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made enormous and with extra detail; the entry takes up a good portion of a page in a civic register that usually allowed only a thin line or two per child.31 About one hundred local children served by Bentivoglio godparents were also named Annibale; so the tie to the most illustrious Bentivoglio ancestor would live on throughout the Bolognese population. It should be noted that Giovanni II’s own name was given to him contrary to custom, not from his paternal grandfather but instead he was named after his great-grandfather, Giovanni I, the man of arms who founded the Bentivoglio dynasty and served as the first Bentivoglio signore of Bologna. By choosing the name ‘Giovanni’ for his son, Annibale I’s political intention was clear: he chose to memorialise a condottiere and an official ruler instead of his own father Antongaleazzo, predominantly known as a maestro di legge (a law professor). After memorialising Annibale I, Giovanni II chose the name ‘AntonGaleazzo’ for his second-born son, in honour of his grandfather. But after the paternal grandfather and the paternal great-grandfather had been memorialised, Giovanni II and Genevra turned to names from the Sforza family. The change seems significant as four successive boys and one girl would honour Genevra’s closest relations. One boy ‘Alessandro’ memorialised Genevra’s father Alessandro Sforza; another ‘Lodovico’ memorialised her first cousin Lodovico ‘il Moro’ Sforza of Milan. Genevra and Giovanni II’s second daughter was named Bianca, presumably after Bianca Maria Visconti, wife of Duke Francesco Sforza. Giovanni II looked to Milan even when choosing names for his illegitimates. One son was named ‘Ascanio’ after Genevra’s first cousin and one of her most important relations for the survival and well-being of the Bentivoglio: Cardinal Legate Ascanio Sforza. Another of Giovanni II’s illegitimates was ‘Carlo’ honouring Carlo Sforza, one of Genevra’s closest and most important cousins. Only Giovanni II’s third legitimate daughter was given a purely bentivolesco name (Francesca) after Francesca Gozzadini, Giovanni II’s grandmother. Tracing a few other names is more ambiguous, but at least a couple may have been chosen for their literary significance. Laura may have come from Petrarch’s famous Canzoniere; and Griselda, a rare name epitomising female humility and chastity from the final novella of Boccaccio’s Decameron—a story with ties to Bologna.32 The couple also named three girls Isotta; the consistent use of that name could come from the renowned humanist Isotta Nogarola of Verona (whose biography appears in Arienti’s Gynevera) or the name could have been taken directly from the popular twelfth-century Anglo-Norman chivalric legend of Tristan and Isolt. Either way the name testifies to the family’s literary tastes.33 31 AAB, Fonti battesimali, vol. 1, f. 102v.; Ubaldini, f. 643. 32 For Laura Bentivoglio portrayed as Petrarch’s beloved by Lorenzo Costa in his Trionfo della morte made for the Capella Bentivoglio of San Giacomo; see Nieuwenhuizen, pp. 197–198; Drogin (2004), (2010). 33 See ‘De Isota vergene da Nugarola’ in Arienti, pp. 173–179. The name Isotta was popular in Bologna: Guido Pepoli was betrothed to a woman named Bernardina but hated her given name and forced her

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Giovanni II and Genevra passed over some conventions. They never named children in honour of the child’s godparents or of saints’ feast days corresponding to either the date of birth or the chosen baptismal day. None of the saints to whom Giovanni II had been particularly devoted (i.e., San Giorgio or San Girolamo, both featured in his Book of Hours) were honoured;34 nor were the patron saints of childbirth, Anne and Margaret, saints whom the parents might well have extensively venerated. None were named after legendary Bentivoglio ancestors: Federico (Barbarosso), (King) Enzo, or Lucia (Viadagola). The couple also never chose to honour Duke Francesco Sforza, the man who had brought them together; we can only speculate about what this absence could have meant. Finally, Genevra’s own mother, whose name we do not know, may or may not have been honoured in the naming schemes.

The Illegitimates It is problematic to create an accurate birth chart for the illegitimate children since their birthdates can be only roughly estimated.35 We do know that Giovanni II started parenting young because he fathered a girl named Isabetta who married in 1475, implying she had been born in the early 1460s, when Giovanni would have been a teenager living under the roof of Sante and Genevra along with the family’s domestic servants available to him.36 Although Giovanni II eventually recognised his paternity in the cases of his illegitimates, he did not recognise them at the time of their baptisms.37 The initial anonymity of the illegitimates is perhaps the only evidence that we have about the possibility that Giovanni II was drawn by libido. Giovanni II’s women never appear in official Bentivoglio documents, were never mentioned in letters, were never painted in portraits, and were never publicly known or recorded by chroniclers or other local writers. It is unclear how many women bore his additional children, how the women were treated, or whether Giovanni II granted them special favours or eventually offered them a dowry or to change it to a more popular, acceptable name (Isotta) before he would marry her; see Tuate, f. 197r (17 January 1475 entry). 34 See Pagliarolo, ff. 1v, 6v, 16v, 127v, et al.; special thanks to Maria Isabel Molestina at The Morgan for providing images of the illuminations. 35 Ascanio is the only illegitimate child whose year of birth (1468) is currently known; see AAB, Dignitates et canonici capituli, f. 41, which records Ascanio as having become a canonico in 1479 at age eleven. 36 Isabetta’s dowry is at ASFE, FB, Catastro A, ff. 50–52v (16 September 1475) and confirmed at Catastro Croce, f. 150, and copied into Bolognese records at ASB, Uffico del registro, copia degli atti notarili, Libro 103, f. 303. 37 Identifying them by their first names alone within the city’s massive baptismal volumes would be impossible because the volumes are packed with illegitimate children listed by their given names alone.

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the arrangement of a marriage or other social or economic benefits. From a 1503 private donation made to five of his illegitimate boys, we see one lonely clue about these women. The document describes them as ‘certain women without marital ties’.38 No information survives about the identity of the mothers of his illegitimate girls; they had no place in their daughters’ dowry contracts or elsewhere in family documentation—much like Genevra’s own mother. But what sort of unmarried women would have been available to bear Giovanni II children? Because Giovanni II was de facto signore, he might have attracted women from his ruling-class entourage or aspirants to court life of slightly lower social status. But the nature of the Bolognese republican régime within the Papal State and Giovanni II’s mere de facto status within it disallowed him a publicly known concubine. Unlike official rulers of Italian courts, marquisates, duchies and kingdoms who often kept public mistresses, Giovanni II could not keep one because he lacked constitutional authority; with such a woman, he would have crossed the line by flaunting a dominant public role that he never officially held. And had Giovanni II’s women ever appeared in public with him, chroniclers would have certainly seen them and recorded them as the Bolognese thrived on details about the life of their ruler. Giovanni II’s discretion with women, like that of the Medici de facto rulers in Florence, was necessary in that he and they had to act within accepted limits for citizens. Since Giovanni II’s women are completely anonymous, they were very likely of his bassa famiglia, i.e. some of the girls of his domestic staff. Numerous female servants were hired young by the Bentivoglio, and these women would have been easily available to him and to his sons and their friends. The family always kept many domestics (at least 120), and at least thirty-five of them were recorded as female.39 Giovanni II was not looking for easy sexual relationships with these girls—but he was extremely interested in the end product of the relationships: children with no strings attached. And several of these girls 38 See the original donation at ASFE, FB, Libro 20, no. 47 A, f. 1r and f. 1v (and an eighteenth-century copy filled with transcriptional errors at ASFE, FB, Lib. 20, no. 47 B). The phrase is ‘quinquos filios difectus natalium parentes ex ipso coniugato et ceteris mulieribus solutes genitos’; later in the document the women were referred to as ‘certis mulieribus no) conugatis’. 39 For a list of the Bentivoglio staff, divided by family member and his/her related apartment within the palace, see ‘Nota delle bocche che teneva il casa il Sig. Giovanni II’ at ASFE, FB, Libro 16, no. 33; the document is actually four copies of a similar document, one of which is dated 1502 and could be further compared with a 1495 document at ASFE, FB, Catastro B, f. 37. Around 1500 the family seems to have kept a staff of about 175 bocche. Giovanni II and his sons’ staffs were composed almost exclusively of male servants while Genevra, Lucrezia and Ippolita kept staffs with slightly more females than males. Due to discrepancies in the four copies of the above-mentioned document, of servants total, Genevra kept ca. 20–25, Lucrezia ca. 19–21, and Ippolita ca. 13–14. Giovanni II kept ca. 30–59, Annibale II ca. 20–28, AntonGaleazzo ca. 8–13, Alessandro ca. 15–25, and Ermes ca. 9–13. All four documents concord that there were at least thirty-five female servants.

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delivered him a series of healthy Bentivoglio babies born in-house for his family’s political strategies. Some of these young mothers could have also conveniently served as wet nurses to legitimate Bentivoglio infants.

The Bentivoglio as Godparents From even a brief glance at baptismal records, it becomes clear that the Bentivoglio were the most popular godparents in Bologna as their names (and sometimes a sketch of their sega emblem) appear on nearly every page of the city’s massive baptismal volumes. 40 Giovanni II and Genevra involved themselves and their children in this parentela spirituale as part of their plan to acquire and retain friends and allies, to establish their family’s primacy and to dominate Bologna. 41 Their net was thrown wide as they served at least 350 local children from over 200 families from the time when baptisms began being recorded in Bologna (1459) to the time of their exile (1506); and these enormous numbers are actually lower than the actual numbers served since some baptismal records have been lost. Their frequent role as godparents positioned family members as spiritual-political patrons to a considerable sector of the Bolognese ruling class; and godparenting helped the family gain much power and prestige throughout the city. Although the chart below (Table 3.3) includes hundreds of godparentage ties, it does not include information about Bentivoglio who served children in other cities. Ten Bolognese families were served by the Bentivoglio many times over: the Griffoni (7 baptisms), Volta (7 baptisms), Bianchi (5 baptisms), Campanazzi (5 baptisms), Fantuzzi (5 baptisms), Fava (5 baptisms), Marescotti (5 baptisms), Ercolani (4 baptisms), Ingrati (4 baptisms), Morandi (4 baptisms), and Rossi (4 baptisms). These families’ names appear throughout the pages of chronicles when they report the political affairs of Giovanni II, and they were among the Bentivoglio’s strongest allies. In some instances, marriages further consolidated spiritual ties among these Bolognese: Giovanni II married several of his illegitimates (Isabetta, Lucia, Leone) into these top Bolognese families tied to the Bentivoglio through godparenting. Pairing only his illegitimates with the offspring from the leading families of his city is proof of his political superiority in Bologna. Although mothers usually had a lot to do with the arrangements of the betrothals of their children, surely young unwed servant mothers did not arrange for their children to marry Bolognese magnates. Because Genevra Sforza served the Fantuzzi as godmother, for example, 40 Another popular Bolognese godfather was notary Cesare Nappi who served as santolo (godfather) to ca. thirty children; see Nappi, pp. 130–135. I am grateful to Georgia Clarke for this reference. 41 For more on the institution of godparenting, see Bossy.

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could yield a clue that it was predominantly she who had negotiated the match between Giulia Fantuzzi and illegitimate Leone Bentivoglio. Ninety per cent of the Bentivoglio family members who served Bolognese were male. Giovanni II was godfather to at least 72 children before primogenito Annibale II began serving Bolognese though still a child himself, from age 6 ½, and he would serve at least 68 children. 42 His younger brothers served less often and from later ages (AntonGaleazzo 44 times from age 12; Alessandro 34 times from 14; Ermes 11 times from 14). Giovanni II’s illegitimate boys rarely godparented, and his illegitimate girls were never recorded as having served. In sum, all of their godparenting predictably followed perfectly calculated hierarchical rules—according to gender, birth-order and birth status. Although baptism is a sacrament and godparenting implies a life-long spiritual link between individuals and families, the institution was clearly used by the Bentivoglio and the Bolognese as a political one. Each act of Bentivoglio godparenting played a part in the family’s efforts to earn a respected and dominant role in Bologna. Some Bentivoglio chose members of their own extended family as godparents: Annibale II was asked to stand godfather to the son of his illegitimate sister Griselda who named her baby Annibale. 43 Antonio (Sante’s illegitimate son) was asked to stand for the son of Giovanni II’s legitimate daughter Bianca. 44 And Ercole Bentivoglio asked Ippolita Sforza and Laura Bentivoglio to godparent his daughter.45 These examples show goodwill among many of the Bentivoglio. The fact that two or more Bentivoglio sometimes godparented together (and with spouses of their siblings) demonstrates that the Bentivoglio worked as a team on many levels. 46 In Bolognese baptismal records as a whole, it appears that the majority of women who served as godmothers were predominantly associated with hospitals or with illegitimate infants whose parents went unrecorded; most likely they served in precarious situations attempting to save infants’ souls. But among the Bentivoglio females who served, it is not surprising that Genevra Sforza served most often: to nine boys and one girl. 47 The Volta family chose her for their daughter, honouring 42 All numbers cited here are less than the true totals due to baptismal records missing from 1497, 1498 and 1499 and lack of baptismal information collected from other cities. 43 In February 1495, an Annibale was baptised as the son of Salustio Guidotti and Griselda Bentivoglio (AAB, Fonti battesimali, vol. 4, f. 359). 44 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 94 [1491]. 45 Carrati, Battesimi, B851, f. 112. 46 Many sons-in-law of Giovanni II and Genevra served local children alongside other Bentivoglio. Of the seventeen baptisms in which Niccolò Rangoni participated, at nine he served alongside other Bentivoglio; Giberto Pio did the same: he served eleven times, and in five cases alongside another Bentivoglio. Twice Rangoni and Pio formed a trio with Annibale II at the font (both 1485). Other sons-in-law served once alongside a Bentivoglio (AntonMaria Pico in 1479, Lattanzio Bargellini in 1496). See Table 3.3 for details. 47 See specifics in Table 3.3 below.

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her directly by naming their baby ‘Ginevra’. Other families who chose Genevra for their sons honoured her by choosing names for their babies connected to her: ‘Sante’ Ranuzzi was baptised in October 1463, just days after Sante Bentivoglio died;48 and ‘Ercole’ Malatonchi received the name of their first-born son. 49 ‘Carlo’ Fantuzzi’s name was chosen a couple of months before Genevra’s cousin Carlo Sforza lavishly celebrated his daughter’s marriage in Bologna.50 A few other Bentivoglio females (Francesca, Bianca, Eleonora, Laura) each served once as godmothers to Bolognese. Genevra’s daughters-in-law were more active, with Ippolita Sforza serving at eight baptisms and Lucrezia d’Este at three—but most of the Bentivoglio females never godparented. The fact that Genevra Sforza, Ippolita Sforza and Lucrezia d’Este, all of politically significant families from outside the city, served more often in Bologna than the Bolognese Bentivoglio females further demonstrates the political nature of godparenting, even for women. Although it would be impossible to examine quantitatively, many local families presumably asked a Bentivoglio to serve their children as a result of political pressure. The political nature of Bolognese godparentage stands out when we encounter Annibale II’s primogenito son at work: Ferrante Bentivoglio began godfathering at age 5, demonstrating that the Bolognese knew he was next in line to rule.51 Pressure was placed on names too: of more than 300 infants served by the Bentivoglio, approximately 30% of them were named directly after members of the Bentivoglio family rather than after members of their own families. The reciprocity of godparenting ties between major Italian court families (i.e. Sforza, Este, Gonzaga) and the Bentivoglio (who had chosen godparents from those circles for their own children) must still be investigated in Milan, Ferrara, Mantua and other cities. The results of such a study could yield further evidence to the theory of the political basis of godparentage across Northern Italy.

Political Destinies of the Bentivoglio Children Carefully planned marriage alliances and career placements helped the Bentivoglio forge important political ties into the next generation—and these such arrangements were some of the most important political decisions rulers made. From the time of birth, each Bentivoglio’s political future would be in the making for the good of the family at large. The hierarchies of the times dictated possibilities, and futures 48 Carrati, Battesimi, ms. B849, f. 79. 49 Carrati, Battesimi, ms. B849, f. 90. 50 Carrati, Battesimi, ms. B851, f. 95. 51 Carrati, Battesimi, ms. B852, f. 2.

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were determined according to a child’s gender, birth order and status set at birth (legitimate or illegitimate). Giovanni II and Genevra worked hard at organising the fates of so many young pawns (see Table 3.4 below). We know they successfully worked as a team on many levels but since they resided together, there never existed a correspondence or other form of written explanations between them that would allow us to recreate their individual roles regarding alliance formation. We have nothing like the correspondence between Francesco Gonzaga and Isabella d’Este that proves how closely they worked together as a team dedicated to the house of Gonzaga.52 Giovanni II’s libri di famiglia (family record books) were also apparently lost as he escaped to Milan. Based on Arienti’s Gynevera, Steven Kolsky suggests that although Arienti downplays Genevra’s political role (describing her mainly as wife and mother), he places her at the centre of many influential women in his collection because in reality she served as a political nexus among them, active in many ways including the formation of alliances for the many Bentivoglio children.53 Although her position can be imagined or assumed from her placement in that text, we still have few direct sources that ‘prove’ her participation in alliance-making strategies.54 It is extremely important to note that there remain no sources that prove (or disprove) the participation of Giovanni II in the details behind the thirty matches either. Because there are so few written traces behind their schemes, it is impossible to separate individual efforts behind them; we can only assume that they worked together as a team, like many other couples of the times did, couples with whom the Bentivoglio were close and to whom they were related, including Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga.55 Carolyn James explains Arienti’s ‘fortunate princely state’ outlined in his Gynevera as ‘one where a husband and wife rule cooperatively; the prince, recognising the talents and administrative contribution of his wife, regularly consults her while she, in turn, an obedient facilitator, ably assumes the reins of power when required’.56 Again, and although we hear no details of specific roles played by either Genevra or Giovanni II from Arienti about the house of his patron, Genevra Sforza, we see ideally how the house was run. In addition, very little surviving information could be used to describe the childhoods of these many children growing up under one roof. We can imagine that having so many kids together must have been stimulating and engaging for all involved—and raising so many certainly required a lot of organisation to bring food 52 Cockram, pp. 135, 157. 53 Kolsky, pp. 231–236. 54 She tried to have two granddaughters marry after their mother/her daughter Costanza passed away; she also worked on marriage alliances when in Busseto; see Seletti, p. 217; Boschetti, fasc. 27, ‘Rangoni di Modena’. 55 See Cockram. 56 James (2005), p. 378.

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to the table, clothe everyone appropriately, and hire many to help with socialisation processes. Regarding details, we know they were tutored by distinguished university professors including Francesco Puteolano.57 We know the Bentivoglio employed musicians for the children who have been depicted with instruments and while singing in family groups—most notably by Lorenzo Costa—as music and dance helped create a noble identity for children.58 We know that their parents groomed them young for their futures—and they learned fast. They were adequately indoctrinated into courtly tradition early if we consider the statistics: based on the fourteen cases for which exact dates are known, Bentivoglio children were betrothed or pledged to a religious life at the average age of 12. If we consider gender, we see that girls’ destinies were set at the average age of 9 and boys at 13. The time between betrothal and marriage varied greatly, from ten weeks to nine years but on average the children were wed after having been engaged for just over three years.59 Marriage (for those who would marry) came later. Bentivoglio girls on average left their home for their husbands’ families at the average age of 13 ½, while the three legitimate boys who married brought their wives into their personal palace apartments at the ages of 18, 17 and 27 respectively. Although they married later than their sisters, they were still quite young for early modern Italian patrician males.60 Legitimate boys were marked from birth to carry on the official family line and would soon make the family’s most important alliances with women of major Italian courts; with this strategy we see that Genevra and Giovanni II wanted to expand their influence with the primary political players of their day, develop them as allies, and consequently gain power beyond Bologna’s city limits. Two Bentivoglio boys (Annibale II and Alessandro) succeeded towards that end, albeit by accepting somewhat ‘flawed’ brides from the d’Este and Sforza ducal families while the family lost control of the future of one of the legitimates (Ermes) who was spared to finalise a military accord with Cesare Borgia. Secondogenito AntonGaleazzo followed an ecclesiastical career in keeping with the customary placement of second sons in most fifteenth-century ruling-class families—although in Rome and in some parts of the Papal States, where becoming a cardinal (and ultimately pope) appeared more realistically on a family’s horizon, it was the firstborn who was placed in the position.61 57 Ady (1935), p. 156. 58 Wallace, p. 63; Twice Costa painted them singing: A Concert (ca. 1490; National Gallery, London) and Concert with the Children of Giovanni II Bentivoglio (1493; Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Madrid). 59 For a chronological inventory of the family’s dowries, marriage contracts and related papers, and divorces, see ASFE, FB, Repertorio de’ contratti, divorzi, doti, matrimoni, restituzioni e sponsali vol. 4, ff. 357r–362v. 60 From the entire 1427 Florentine catasto, only seven boys married before age 16, and only 14.8% were married by age 20; the average age for men to marry was 30; see Klapisch-Zuber, pp. 19, 110–111. 61 See Fosi and Visceglia.

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Legitimate girls also played pre-eminent roles for Bentivoglio strategies. Giovanni II and Genevra believed in defence and calculated matches on the military potential of future sons-in-law. As an indicator of their military interests and needs, in 1481 the couple forged a triple betrothal for three young daughters (Bianca, Francesca, Eleonora), to three prominent condottieri.62 And six of their legitimate girls ended up marrying men from ruling class families who worked as condottieri: AntonMaria Pico of Mirandola, Galeotto Manfredi of Faenza, Pandolfo Malatesta of Rimini, Giovanni Gonzaga of Mantua), Guido Torelli of Montechiarugolo, Niccolò Rangoni of Spilamberto and Giberto Pio of Carpi. As a condottiere himself, Giovanni II stored his own arsenal within the walls of his family palace, and he owned a nearby building hosting an armoury where arms were also sharpened. In a nutshell, Giovanni II felt he needed trustworthy military forces and supplies that could help promote and defend his delicate régime. Furthermore, these important marriages reinforced ties to cities located close to Bologna. If we consider how Genevra and Giovanni II looked at geography in relation to marriage calculations, we notice that four legitimate Bentivoglio children were betrothed to citizens of Faenza, Rimini, Imola and Forlì, all cities southeast of Bologna located along the Via Emilia. The next city along that Roman road was Genevra hometown, Pesaro, a Sforza base, also very near Urbino, where Genevra’s sister Battista Sforza ruled alongside Federico of Montefeltro. Cotignola, the city in Romagna where the Sforza originated and maintained their first base of power, also lies southeast of Bologna. All of those cities secured Bologna’s major transportation and trade artery for tens of miles, and because all were located in the northernmost tip of the Papal State, the alliances contracted by the Bentivoglio in that direction seem to have been made as if they were pressing their influence as far south as possible. Following geographical considerations in the opposite direction, eight legitimates were to marry citizens from places north and northwest of Bologna, on both sides of the Via Emilia and in the direction of Milan. The alliances were made with families of Ferrara, Spilamberto, Mirandola, Carpi, Sassuolo, Montechiarugolo (twice), Mantua and Milan. The Bentivoglio had close connections with families in other cities in the same direction, including the Gonzaga of Vescovato and the Pallavicino of Parma and Busseto. These alliances aimed in the northwest direction appear to have been made as if the Bentivoglio were stabilising their position over a significant 62 That date could have coincided with Niccolò Rangoni’s appointment as Captain of the Bolognese forces (sometime in 1481). Ubaldini reports the triple festa at which Bianca was promised to Rangoni in person, Francesca by proxy to Manfredi of Faenza, and Eleonora by proxy to Pio of Carpi—see Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 676. It is also interesting that Giovanni II had opened accounts in the Florentine Monte delle doti for those three girls at the same time, November 1470, when they were ages three, two and seven-months respectively; for the opening of their accounts, see references in Molho, pp. 123–124.

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portion of the Po plain and along both sides of the Via Emilia in the direction of Milan—and culminating in Milan (see Map 3.1 at the end of this chapter). Although Giovanni II and Genevra contracted marriage alliances far and wide across northern and central Italy, in one way or another they kept their children at hand as their enormous and continuously growing family often lived in Bologna, strongly representing the Bentivoglio cause. After marriage legitimate sons lived in their own individual apartments within Palazzo Bentivoglio along with their wives and children. Married legitimate daughters moved to Bologna due to their husbands’ occupations, or they were present as visitors for extended periods of time: Bianca and her husband lived in properties confiscated from exiled Bolognese; Eleonora and her husband owned their own properties; and Violante and her husband rented housing. Of the legitimate religious, both the male and female lived in Bologna. Illegitimate boys and girls married ruling-class Bolognese or became local religious—and they too all lived in Bologna. Even though all Bentivoglio offspring lived in Bologna during their childhoods, as adults only the legitimate boys (Giovanni II’s true heirs) made permanent residence within the family palace. Giovanni II did make special provisions in his last will for his daughters to return home if they were to become widows or be needy. If non-contemporary floor plans (the only ones surviving) can be relied on, the men and boys kept apartments on the ground floor while wives and children lived upstairs.63 Contemporary sources confirm gendered division of space: Giovanni II, Genevra, and the three legitimate sons and their wives each kept a separate apartment served by an independent staff. Genevra, for example, kept ca. 20–25 domestics.64 And by the turn of the sixteenth century, about 175 people inhabited Palazzo Bentivoglio.65 Theirs was the largest family living under the largest roof in Bologna and could be compared in size to the all-male households of significant cardinals in Rome. Although large for Bologna, the Bentivoglio palace cannot be compared to the greatest of the Italian court households at Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, Urbino, Naples and Rome—that each employed hundreds or even thousands.66 63 One of those plans is at ASB, Archivio Bentivoglio-Manzoli, 7/9, serie 5, number 3. For comparative purposes, see the floorplan of the Sforza household at the Castello Sforzesco in Lubkin, pp. 60–61. 64 Genevra’s staff was equivalent on the lower end to the staff kept by Paola Malatesta Gonzaga in Mantua (before she would expand her household upon becoming marchesa); see Welch (2002), p. 313. 65 Giovanni II, Annibale II, AntonGaleazzo, Alessandro, Ermese, Genevra, Lucrezia and Ippolita each kept an independent household within the palace. Note delle bocche che teneva in casa il Sr. Giovanni II shows these divisions and the names of each servant working from each divided living space, see ASFE, FB, Libro 16, no. 33; of the four slightly different versions of the document in this file, only one is dated (1502). 66 The Este court in Ferrara had nearly 500 domestics on their 1476 payroll, see Tuohy, p. 34; the Este had 290 servants on their 1488 payroll, but due to preparation of the French invasion they were paying 530 people in 1494, see Dean (1995). The Sforza court in Milan employed ‘thousands’, see Lubkin, pp. 30–32.

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After so much work creating the children, baptising them ambitiously, raising them and organising their lives for the good of the family, were the alliances successful? Giovanni II and Genevra invested most in their first-born son Annibale II. Even before he was born, he was granted special privileges from Pope Innocent VIII as primogenito. He was to receive the income collected from the onerous Dazio delle carteselle, a tax paid on all contracted notarial acts. By 1473 the four-year-old had received a privilege from Pope Sixtus IV to succeed his father as ‘principe’ of Bologna, i.e., to preside over the Sedici. He was knighted at five by King Christian of Denmark;67 and from six he began serving as godfather to Bolognese. Although Annibale II was the son of a citizen whose powers were merely de facto, various honours made him an attractive young man, even in the eyes of Duke Ercole d’Este. In 1478 at the age of nine, Annibale II was betrothed to Lucrezia, a young illegitimate daughter of Ercole’s born to his mistress Lodovica Condulmero.68 Papal dispensation was needed due to the spiritual affinity between Annibale II and his godfather, the duke; it would be the only time a Bentivoglio child would marry into the family of a godparent.69 Even though Lucrezia was illegitimate (and the only illegitimate to marry any of Genevra and Giovanni II’s legitimate or illegitimate children), she was born into an established family of ancient and prestigious lineage at the height of their power. Such a close link to the d’Este significantly raised the image and status of the Bentivoglio. The couple’s extravagant 1487 wedding festivities in and around the recently-finished Palazzo Bentivoglio demonstrated to rulers of the major Italian states (or at least to their representatives who attended the wedding in many cases) that the best of the Bentivoglio were on par with them—or at least on par with their illegitimates.70 A close link to the d’Este was crucial for the safety of the Bentivoglio, as Giovanni II at one point openly admitted.71 For the ideal running of a large early modern courtly Italian household, see Eiche. For Roman Cardinal households, see Nussdorfer; Fosi and Visceglia. 67 See ASFE, FB, Libro 5, no. 10 for his 1455 privilege for the Dazio delle carteselle; and Catastro Croce, f. 47, for its 20 April 1485 confirmation. See ASFE, FB, Libro 9 no. 65, or Catasto Croce, f. 14 for his right to succeed his father in the Bolognese government. See ASFE, FB, Libro 15, no. 7, or Catasto Croce, f. 46 and f. 53 for his place in the Sedici granted by Pope Alexander VI on 2 October 1492. For his being knighted, see Varignana, 1474 entry. On 31 March 1507 the Libri delle carteselle, the account books of the collected notarial taxes of the Bentivoglio era, were burned; see Anon., Cronica, BCB, ms. 356, no. 1, 31 March 1507 entry. 68 The alliance was contracted after the end of a border dispute between Ferrara and Bologna, after an official declaration of Ercole d’Este’s desire of good will towards Giovanni II had been made. The letter describing this amore durabile is at ASFE, FB, Libro 11, no. 12; see also Ady, (1937), p. 68. 69 The papal dispensation to marry Lucrezia nonostante la cognizione spirituale was granted by Sixtus IV on 20 February 1478; see ASFE, FB, Libro 11, no. 17. 70 For a discussion of Arienti’s description of the wedding, see James (1997). 71 Giovanni II admitted that he had Annibale II marry Lucrezia not for her or her dowry but for d’Este protection; see ASMN, AG 2913, Lib. 188, f. 47v, 20 October 1505.

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The other marriage the Bentivoglio contracted with a ducal family was for their third-born son Alessandro who married Ippolita di Carlo Sforza in 1492. Alessandro’s brief engagement to a Malatesta girl (1487–1488) was broken off so he could marry a Sforza (a second cousin of his mother’s).72 As we examined in the previous generation with the case of Genevra, the Bentivoglio greatly desired to continue their close relationship with the wealthy and independent duchy of Milan. Like Genevra, Ippolita closely tied the two families together. Ippolita was a great-granddaughter of Duke Francesco Sforza; and her mother was the Calabrian heiress Bianca Simonetti, daughter of Cicco Simonetti, chief advisor to Duke Sforza.73 Ippolita was also a cousin of Bologna’s Papal Legate, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, a first cousin of Genevra’s. Additional links to Ascanio could have proved beneficial for the Bentivoglio.74 And Ippolita brought not only Sforza status and protection but also her family’s great wealth. The amount of Ippolita’s dowry was not known to the Bolognese public but many speculated about her inherited fortune, allegedly a sum of 70,000–80,000 ducats.75 She must have brought a considerable dowry to Alessandro because Giovanni II countered it with an enormous wedding gift to her of 4000 ducats (such bridal gifts are referred to as ‘sopradote’ (‘ultra-dotal counter gifts’ or ‘counterdowry’) in this documentation)—and in this case it was greater than what he had granted as the entire dowry to several of his legitimate daughters. The alliance proved beneficial to both families: from the Bolognese side, it renewed protection from Milan into the next generation and led to Bentivoglio sons being hired as condottieri serving the duchy. The alliance also allowed the duke to expect specific political favours from the Bentivoglio: Francesca Bentivoglio had to agree 72 Giovanni II’s codicil to his will (1506) states that Ippolita had previously married; see Pellegrini (1892), p. 339; she might have been a promessa sposa to her father’s cousin Duke Francesco II Sforza rather than a wife. Alessandro had already been ‘married’ too: in 1487 Alessandro had been promised to Giovanna, a young sister of Pandolfo Malatesta signore of Rimini and one of his brothers-in-law through his sister Violante, wife of Pandolfaccio; see Nadi, p. 127; Arienti, p. 6. 73 See Varignana, 1488 entry. Francesco ‘Cicco’ Simonetti has left many traces within ASMI; see Simonetti; Senatore. 74 Ascanio Sforza served as cardinal legate from 1485–1488; he could have helped the Bentivoglio get away with murder on two occasions in 1488: when Galeotto Manfredi was killed in Faenza (organised by Duke Lodovico Sforza, Ascanio’s brother) and when the Bentivoglio backlashed against the Malvezzi conspirators attempting to kill anyone having a link to the conspiracy; see Pellegrini (2002). 75 For Ippolita’s dowry composed of a castle, cash and jewels worth 70,000 ducats, see Tuate, 1492 entry; he refers to the bride as Ippolita Simonetti since her mother’s family was well known as the source of her wealth. For her dowry divided between mobilium et immobilium and for its total value estimated at 12,000 ducats, see ASB, Comune-Governo, Riformatori dello stato di libertà, Libri Partitorum (ann.1490–1506), (Reg. 11) 389, 81r–v; I am grateful to Georgia Clarke for this reference. See also Anon., BCB, ms. 356, no. 2, 1492 entry; Varignana, p. 529; Nadi, pp. 165–66; Anon., BUB, ms. 3841, c. 10. Lodovico Sforza granted Alessandro property worth about 75,000 ducats, one year after he married Ippolita, which could have been interpreted as her dowry; see Ady (1937), p. 146.

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to the murder of her husband, and the Sforza arranged and then cancelled Isotta Bentivoglio’s engagement to Ottaviano Riario.76 These examples are proof of how the Bentivoglio continued to serve as Romagnol puppets subject to Milan’s wishes.77 Apart from the two most successful alliances discussed above, the marriages arranged for the remaining legitimates of Giovanni II and Genevra were made to members of more minor or precarious regimes. Despite their twelfth child Laura’s politically stable new home with the Gonzaga in Mantua and Vescovato, the other seven arrangements made for her legitimate sisters were with men from unstable régimes that make the de facto signoria of Bentivoglio Bologna seem idyllic. The most disastrous was the marriage alliance with Francesca to Galeotto Manfredi in Faenza. In 1488 she was involved with the murder of her husband on orders from Giovanni II who followed dictates from Milan. The couple’s three-year-old son Astorre was immediately proclaimed signore but needed a regent until he came of age. Francesca was imprisoned and eventually fled to Bologna but with only her life; she lost her dowry and trousseau and had to take refuge within the convent of Corpus Domini. A few years later, she was married to Guido Torelli of Montechiarugolo, a known assassin and traitor in the war between Ferrara and Venice. Back in Milan, Lodovico Sforza could not believe the Bentivoglio would marry a daughter to him.78 Meanwhile in Carpi, Eleonora Bentivoglio and her husband Giberto III Pio suffered problems at the hands of greedy and ambitious relatives. With the help of 300 men, cousin Alberto III Pio stormed their palace, and only Duke Ercole d’Este was able to stop the feuding. He forced Giberto to sell his share of Carpi to Alberto in exchange for minor fiefs including Sassuolo, which Eleonora governed (after her husband’s death) as regent for her young son and grandson so the family fell in status from signori of Carpi to vassals of the d’Este. Violante’s position was one of the most pathetic: Giovanni II helped young Pandolfo Malatesta gain control of Rimini but after the arrangement to marry Violante, Pandolfo became ‘Pandolfaccio’ for various crimes committed including the murder of two uncles who organised a conspiracy against him. As a result the couple and their children were sent into exile. They reclaimed and re-lost Rimini three times before being permanently expelled in 1528. They lived out their lives as fugitives, moving back and forth among Rimini, Bologna, Venice, Cittadella del Padovano, Ferrara, Modena

76 After the cancellation of her alliance, she entered Corpus Domini but later moved to San Mattia; see Ubaldini, f. 712; Tuate, f. 288. 77 The first promises are in a provvisione at ASFE, FB, Libro 23, no. 19 and ASFE, FB, Catastro Croce, f. 52. The Bolognese public knew of the engagement to Riario, that it had been broken off sometime before 1497, and that Isotta became a nun at Corpus Domini; see Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 712. 78 Dallari, pp. 264–265.

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and Rome.79 Ermes fared badly too. He was coerced into a marriage with Giacoma Orsini, a relative of Ambassador Paolo Orsini who served Pope Alessandro VI Borgia. Borgia forced the marriage before having Paolo murdered. Ermes had been forced to take Giacoma without a dowry, which cast even greater shame on the union. In sum, when legitimate Bentivoglio children married the signori of towns (Bianca, Francesca, Eleonora, Violante), the family context into which they married was disastrous in three of four cases, and only somewhat problematic in one case. Those children who married a relation of a signore, a duke or a marchese (Costanza, Annibale II, Alessandro, Laura, Francesca in her second marriage, Ermes) had fewer problems, manifest in only two of six cases. Ironically, it was the illegitimate Bentivoglio children who enjoyed more stable arrangements. They married into important Bolognese families that were politically and socially active alongside the Bentivoglio: Bargellini (twice), Guidotti, Manzoli and Fantuzzi. The families lived throughout the city (i.e. they were not tied to one particular gonfalone or quartiere) so the Bentivoglio grounded themselves across Bologna.80 All together the enormous extended family attended weddings, went on pilgrimages, jousted, paid homage to dukes, served as godparents and acted as ambassadors. The Bentivoglio asserted their superiority over their fellow citizens, however, by marrying only their illegitimates to them. And in at least two cases, the Bentivoglio did not pay a dowry for several years after a marriage had been consummated and children born to the union.81 Some of the Bentivoglio strategies were similar to those practiced by the Medici in Florence but Lorenzo de’ Medici had many fewer children (seven versus about thirty) and successfully adopted a certain balance of power that worked well. Through the use of his legitimates, he formed respectable alliances with fellow Florentines. It cost Lorenzo 2000 ducats each for daughters Lucrezia and Contessina to conclude peaceful ties with local magnates from the Salviati and Ridolfi families. And in 1488 Lorenzo 79 See Jones. 80 In Florence Giovanni Morelli’s strategy for marriage alliances was to recruit spouses from one’s closest geographical area (gonfalone) and only if need be to look beyond that (to the quartiere); see his Ricordi as discussed in Klapisch-Zuber, pp. 123–134. 81 Salustio Guidotti and Griselda Bentivoglio were engaged in 1485 and had children from at least June 1491; see AAB, Fonti battesimali, vol. 4, f. 104. Griselda’s dowry papers, however, were not dated until 1495; see ASFE, FB, Catastro Croce, f. 212 and Catastro B, f. 195 (8 July 1495). The discrepancy implies that Griselda’s dowry was paid several years after her wedding. Isotta (perhaps Giovanni II’s last illegitimate child) was married to Galeazzo Bargellini and her dowry, too, was paid late. Chronicles report Isotta as wife of Galeazzo in 1485 but her sponsali papers were not dated until 1534; see ASFE, FB, Lib. 31, no. 13 (30 September 1534). Ghirardacci recorded a case of an illegitimate Bentivoglio girl forced onto the Felicini family but no traces of that story appear in contemporary sources; Ady, apparently basing her argument on Ghirardacci’s example, claimed that Giovanni II forced his bastard daughters onto local families that did not want them; see Ghirardacci, pp. 331–332; and Ady (1937), p. 145.

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spent 4000 ducats to conclude an alliance with Rome by marrying his daughter Maddalena to Francesco Cibo, son of Pope Innocent VIII.82 Lorenzo thus paid three dowries (a total of 8000 ducats) vs. Giovanni II who paid ten dowries, two sopradote gifts, and two convent dowries for a total of 41,200 ducats (plus at least 20 libbre bolognesi per year for maintenance of nuns). Instead of looking for so much support, especially from Milan, perhaps the Bentivoglio should have more closely considered the fundamental importance of their relationship with fellow Bolognese and with Rome?

Wedding Celebrations of Bentivoglio Children In Bologna the Bentivoglio family celebrated with grand festivities that offered an effective means of enhancing their image—their size, strength, wealth, culture, magnanimity and solidarity (see Table 3.5 below for details). Festivities could involve spectacular entries and processions throughout the city, masses, jousting tournaments, elaborate meals, dancing, and various spectacles. Hundreds of welldressed guests added to the theatricality and helped prove to onlookers that the Bentivoglio had cultivated substantial allies. Genevra would be present in these festivities as consort and mother, supporting new couples and promoting new political friendships before many guests and citizen witnesses. Patrician wedding celebrations normally took place at the home of the groom’s family—the bride would travel there with her family and guests, and the couple would reside and procreate there as part of his family. Bentivoglio boys would have normally celebrated their weddings at home in Bologna but despite at least twelve male Bentivoglio children (five legitimates and at least seven illegitimates), Genevra and Giovanni II threw only two major celebrations: for Lucrezia d’Este and Annibale II (January 1487) and for Ippolita Sforza and Alessandro (June 1492).83 What happened to everyone else? Ercole had been sent away as a toddler well before his wedding to Barbara Torelli. Ermes’ wedding was only celebrated on a small scale because of its embarrassing political circumstances (and the news of the death of his sister Francesca announced on the day of his bride’s arrival). AntonGaleazzo became a cleric and did not marry. The illegitimate Bentivoglio boys’ weddings were minor even in comparison with that of Ermes; chroniclers report nothing about them, and no information exists about them within the family’s archive in Ferrara. The wedding of Annibale II and Lucrezia was the most spectacular; narrative details survive about it on a massive scale. Giovanni II and Genevra also used the 82 Tomas, pp. 7, 20. 83 For a chronological index of related Bentivoglio documents, see ASFE, FB, Repertorio de’contratti, vol. 4, Divorzi, doti, matrimoni, restituzioni e sponsali, ff. 357r–362v.

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occasion to dress up the city beforehand by planning various urban beautification projects.84 Then, after a procession that moved around town and passed through seven specially constructed gates, the Bentivoglio offered a dinner lasting seven hours served by 150 waiters. Recalling something from her own wedding in 1454, the next day Genevra led 120 women to mass at San Petronio, and twelve-year-old Violante Bentivoglio led a group of fifty couples of elaborately dressed young ladies within the larger procession. Those events were well documented by contemporaries including Arienti, Beroaldo, Salimbeni, Naldi, Fosco, Rossi and Magnani; one of the documents is a fifty-page manuscript text yielding detailed information about the preparations.85 Five years later Ippolita Sforza came to Bologna as bride of Alessandro. The dowry she brought was counterbalanced by Giovanni II’s major sopradote gift granted to her, a gift twice that which he had offered to Lucrezia d’Este.86 Chroniclers’ accounts noted Ippolita’s spectacular triumphant entry into the city and her procession across Bologna. They remarked on her beautiful white clothing and white horse. They described the sacre rappresentazioni (religious dramas or mystery plays) offered by the confraternity of Santa Maria del Baraccano, that were shown along the route to honour her and her 200 friends and relatives who accompanied her from Milan.87 84 Ubaldini’s lengthy description of the wedding begins with the urban renewal projects completed by Giovanni II before the wedding: he had wooden benches and shop fronts removed from the square and from the Via Clavatura and other places; he had many houses removed from the square in front of his home and did other good works in the city (‘fe butare zoxe molte chaxe p fare una piaza denanzo a chaxa soa et anchora feze fare molte altre bele quose p bologna chome si puo vedere al presente’); see Ubaldini, ff. 695–700. See also Drogin (2004), (2010). 85 A study in the preparation and celebration of this marriage could become a large project in itself. Primary sources include their 29 March 1478 Sponsali document guaranteeing 10,000 scudi for Lucrezia’s dowry at ASFE, FB, Libro 11, no. 20. A matrimonio per verba contract survives at ASMO, Archivio Segrete Estense: Sezione Casa e Stato, Casa busta 402, no. 2052/2; a document described as a Strumento della promissione del matrimonio di donna Lucrezia…con Annibale is also within that f ile. The ca. f ifty-page Memoria degli preparamenti for the nozze is at ASFE, FB, Libro 12, no. 51. For a donation of 2500 ducats from the creditors and presidents of the Bolognese Monte del Sale to Giovanni II for the occasion of Annibale and Lucrezia’s wedding, see ASFE, FB, Catastro Croce, f. 476, and ASFE, FB, Catastro B, f. 217. Arienti wrote an Istoria […] delle nozze e funzioni festive si fecero in Bologna, once at ASFE, FB, Libro 13, no. 3 (but now missing). An anonymous 38ff. account of the wedding festivities is at ASFE, FB, Misc. F, no. 8. For secondary literature, see Ady (1937), pp. 173–174; James (1997) based on Arienti’s description of the wedding from his Hymeneo Bentivoglio. See also reference to Naldi’s Carmen nuptiale, Fosco of Rimini’s libretto for the masque performed that symbolised the triumph of Matrimony over Chastity, Lorenzo Rossi’s octives spoken from the triumphal arches under which Lucrezia passed, and Andrea Magnani’s verses as seen in Ady (1937), p. 174; see also Basile and Scioli (2014). 86 For the discussion of the sopradote in Giovanni II’s codicil to his will, see Pellegrini (1892), pp. 339–344. 87 Terpstra, p. 191. Ippolita entered Bologna on 20 June 1492 at ore 15 as calculated as the opportune time for her entry by a local astrologer; see Varignana, p. 529. For more on the astrologer who worked

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The Bentivoglio daughters celebrated their departures from Palazzo Bentivoglio on the way to their husbands’ homes. Departure ceremonies for their girls allowed the Bentivoglio occasion to show a glimpse of their magnanimity to fellow citizens. Most daughters would eventually leave in a cortège of family and friends onto more major festivities. In the cases of Niccolò Rangoni and Giberto Pio (and although they both lived and worked in Bologna at the time of their weddings to Bentivoglio girls), celebrations of their marriages were held at Palazzo Bentivoglio and then at their family’s homes in Spilamberto and Carpi, respectively, before everyone returned to Bologna again. The most extravagant was offered to their seventh daughter, Violante, when 4000 people from Rimini came to Bologna to claim her. They were given a tour of Palazzo Bentivoglio before attending mass at San Petronio, reportedly packed to capacity. Two members of the Sedici offered Violante a formal dinner held in her palace, followed by two days of corte bandita (continuous festivities) held within her home followed by a week of other organised festivities. The Bentivoglio did their best to attract and impress the Malatesta because they were the most influential long-standing patrician family of Rimini, a rich and significant trading port of ancient origin strategically located along the southeastern border of their sphere of influence. Violante’s dowry of 10,000 gold ducats was the largest of any paid by Giovanni II. She was then escorted to Rimini for even greater celebrations offered by the Malatesta.88 Eleonora and Laura also enjoyed noteworthy festivities before leaving Bologna to join their husbands in Carpi and Mantua. Eleonora’s new carpigiani relatives and friends came to her home in Bologna to marry her in Giberto’s name. A jousting match, a feast, and an evening of dancing were offered before she departed for Carpi.89 Those important events demonstrate the significance of the alliance forged with Giberto Pio, who served Giovanni II as Captain General of Bolognese forces from the time of his betrothal to Eleonora. Her large dowry also clearly reflects the importance of the need to secure the city’s safety and allegiances through a stable bond with this condottiere.90 The Mantuans who came to Bologna to claim Laura, including the marchese himself, heard mass in San Petronio and enjoyed a series of tableaux of the life of Saint Augustine organised by AntonGaleazzo before everyone reportedly dined together at Palazzo Bentivoglio.91 Laura and her from the osteria of Francesco Ghisilieri, see Nadi, pp. 165–166. Perhaps additional festivity records exist somewhere in Milan, but at ASMI I did not find references to any. 88 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 690r; and Varignana, p. 481. 89 Nadi, p. 118; Varignana, p. 486; Ubaldini, f. 694r. 90 In 1506 when Giovanni II needed help from Francesco Gonzaga, he pardoned a 3000 ducat loan, claiming he wished to add it to Laura’s dowry; see ASMN, AG, 1146, f. 319r, 23 March 1506. 91 Tuate, f. 213r; Nadi, pp. 176–177. These daughters’ celebrations in their new places of residence could be investigated. Laura’s friends and relatives who accompanied her to Mantua reportedly stayed there

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cortège then sailed to Mantua on a fancy barge (bucintoro) along the recentlyopened canal that first passed by the immense Bentivoglio summer palace at Ponte Poledrano.92 These significant events, including Laura’s dowry size, show the Bentivoglio eager to impress the Gonzaga on multiple levels. Although preliminary festive events in Bologna went unrecorded for the weddings of Bianca and Francesca, they too were prized brides. Bianca’s marriage brought a condottiere from the Modena area into much closer contact with the family, and Francesca linked the Bentivoglio to the signore of the most important family of Faenza, a leading centre of commerce also along the Via Emilia. At her wedding Bianca reportedly wore golden clothes. She was accompanied by 100 of Rangoni’s horses as she rode to Spilamberto (Modena) beside her Bolognese relatives and friends. Twenty-f ive mules carried her enormous trousseau.93 Francesca, too, was sent for by 100 Faentine horses and returned to Faenza wearing a gold brocade dress that matched her horse’s gold brocade cover. She too left with twenty-f ive mules carrying her equally large trousseau.94 Although the Bentivoglio parents made these arrangements for the best interests of the family, it is diff icult to imagine how these young girls coped alone and ‘abroad’ from such young ages; they remind us of Genevra when she came to Bologna and of hundreds of other early modern ruling-class girls who were married into distant families far from where they lived their childhood lives. New work is being done on the history of early modern emotions, and hopefully scholars can help better explain what these girls experienced in the hands of adult strangers and entirely new families.

The Ecclesiastical Vocations of the Bentivoglio Offspring Giovanni II and Genevra understood that positions in the Church were valuable for family survival and advancement. Five Bentivoglio children and at least seven grandchildren were placed ecclesiastical vocations (see Table 3.6 below for details). The couple’s second son AntonGaleazzo served as apostolic protonotary and held various ecclesiastical positions in Bologna from which he earned prestige and benefices. Other Bentivoglio served the Church too: two daughters and three granddaughters became Poor Clares at Corpus Domini in Bologna, and one granddaughter

for two weeks of festivities; see Tuate, f. 213 (January 1494 entry). 92 Ady (1937), p. 172. 93 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 676r. 94 Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 676r; Varignana, p. 471.

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

professed at the order’s convent in Mantua.95 Two illegitimate sons (Ascanio and Sigismondo) served as canons at the Cathedral of San Pietro while Ascanio became prior of Santa Maria Maggiore, all in Bologna. (And one of Genevra’s great-great grandsons finally became a cardinal: Guido Bentivoglio, but not until 1621.) Most cardinals had degrees in law, came from urban centres in Northern or Central Italy, and had been born into the ruling class—something like AntonGaleazzo.96 His parents’ hope was to see him become cardinal, a position that would have enhanced their image and helped stabilise their rule. The post of cardinal would have granted him an annual benefice of at least 6000 ducats for life, a livelihood greater than that earned by any of his brothers as condottieri—and in a luxurious and much safer environment. His position could have potentially led to the papacy, considered the greatest achievement of any ruling family of the time.97 But even though Genevra and Giovanni II’s work never gained a galero rosso (a cardinal’s hat) for their son, they were successful at inserting him, from age eleven, in the position of Bologna’s apostolic protonotary. The job granted him great prestige, the title monsignore, and some power. He presided as primary notary over ecclesiastical acts and earned handsome sums of money for each of them.98 He was said to have received as many benefices and properties as he desired.99 The career of illegitimate Ascanio is noteworthy. Unlike at least five other illegitimate brothers who led more precarious lifestyles, Ascanio held important positions in Bologna that granted him economic and social status. He began his career as a canon at San Pietro and, like AntonGaleazzo, he may have been registered in the Collegio dei dottori.100 He became a member of the prominent confraternity of Santa Maria degli Angeli alongside his legitimate brothers AntonGaleazzo, Alessandro and Ermes.101 Ascanio’s most important position was that of prior at one of the most ancient and prestigious Bolognese places of worship, Santa Maria Maggiore in Via Galliera.102 He was also on close terms with members of the d’Este 95 The Mantuan house had been founded in 1416 by Paola Malatesta Gonzaga; and Cecilia Gonzaga retired there in 1445; see Welch (2002), pp. 316–317. 96 See the portrait of a typical Italian prelate in Hallman, p. 15. Despite his successes, AntonGaleazzo lacked a degree and was heartily criticised by Bologna’s Gonzaga partisan Floriano Dolfo; see Dolfo. 97 From the time of Julius II, cardinals who earned 6000 ducats or less were entitled to a special pension; see Hallman, p. 16. 98 Giovanni II did not grant AntonGaleazzo a share of taxes collected in Bologna (as he granted to Annibale II, Alessandro and Ermes) because of these immense benefices; see Pellegrini (1892), pp. 347–348. 99 Fantuzzi, pp. 74–77. 100 For his position at San Pietro, see AAB, Dignitates et canonici capituli Ecclesie S. Petri Apostolorum, ff. 41, 47–48. 101 Fondo Gozzadini, BCB, 203, no. 5 as seen in Terpstra, p. 185. 102 Ascanio’s title priore appears in a 1487 rental act located at ASB, Ufficio del registro, copia degli atti notarili, Libro 87, f. 62; but he could well have been prior before the time of the redaction of that notarial

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court in Ferrara, and his letters to them survive in their family archive in Modena.103 He fathered several children who would eventually go into exile under the care of their step-grandmother, Genevra Sforza. Unlike other illegitimates, Ascanio also appears throughout local notarial registers in connection with property sales and rents from the 1480s until the family exile in 1506. Because of his position at Santa Maria Maggiore, his confraternity membership, and his personal contacts, he seems to have enjoyed, despite his birth, a standing nearly on par with his legitimate brothers. Ecclesiastical careers for the Bentivoglio daughters involved the convent of Corpus Domini. As a very young girl, Camilla professed and spent her life there behind convent walls; she eventually gained the highest honour in the house serving twice as abbess. In 1497 Isotta also entered that convent (after her betrothal to Ottaviano Riario was cancelled) on the same day as Ginevra di Ercole Bentivoglio, a granddaughter of Genevra and Sante.104 Although Ercole had been removed from Bologna as a toddler and his rights legally contested by Giovanni II, it is significant that Ercole named his first daughter ‘Ginevra’ and that he had the girl profess at his mother’s convent of choice. It suggests that although Ercole had been treated unfairly by his stepfather/cousin Giovanni II, he continued to honour his mother and identify himself with her. After another of Genevra’s granddaughters was baptised ‘Ginevra’ (di Annibale II), the baby was taken on a procession around Bologna to spiritual and secular places of significance beginning with a visit to Corpus Domini.105 And three of Genevra’s granddaughters eventually reached the leadership position of abbess: Ippolita Pio and Eleonora Pio served in Bologna and Ginevra Gonzaga at Corpus Domini in Mantua.106 Why Corpus Domini? Although based on Saint Chiara Offreduccio of Assisi (ca. 1194–1253) and her vow of perfect poverty, by the late fifteenth century the order had become the most aristocratic of its day, attracting the wealthiest and most

act. He appears in other notarial acts at ASB, Ufficio del registro, copia degli atti notarili: see Libro E, f. illegible; Libro K, ff. 71 and 100; Libro N, ff. 61 and 119; Libro P, f. 63; Libro R, f. 105; Libro 56, f. 226; Libro 79, f. 247; Libro 80, f. 219; Libro 82, f. 356; Libro 87, f. 62; Libro 89, f. 108; Libro 92, f. 224; Libro 98, f. 237; Libro 99, f. 322, and Libro 102, ff. 354 and 376. 103 See his correspondence at ASMO, Carteggio di Principi Esteri, busta 1134. 104 For the report of their entry, see Tuate, f. 220. 105 The procession proceeded to the Collegio di Spagna and the Palazzo de’ Signori; see Tuate, 13 August 1496 entry. 106 Camilla lived there until her death at age sixty-eight, two of Genevra’s granddaughters lived there into their sixties, and Ginevra (di Ercole) died there in her thirties. Isotta left Corpus Domini for San Mattia (for unknown reasons). For Camilla, see Carrati, Defunti, ms. B914, ff. 206–207; for Isotta, Ubaldini, f. 712; Tuate, f. 288. For Ginevra di Ercole, see Carrati, Defunti, f. 208; Tuate, f. 288. For Ippolita and Eleonora Pio, see Carrati, Defunti, f. 208. See also Table 3.6 below.

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

powerful families in Italy.107 The convent dedicated to the order was founded on Bolognese soil in 1456, when part of the Ferrarese branch was transferred there led by Abbess Caterina de’ Vigri (beatified 1592, canonised 1712). The Bolognese branch gained special prestige due to a miraculous event occurring after de’ Vigri’s death when her cadaver was exhumed to find a sweet-smelling uncorrupted body. It was taken inside the convent church where hundreds flocked to see it—and where it remains a significant Bolognese tourist attraction, popular since 1463. Many of Genevra’s relations had been long involved with the Poor Clares. From her Pesaro-based upbringing, Genevra’s great-step-grandmother, Battista di Montefeltro, spent her last years in the order’s house at Santa Lucia in Foligno, and Genevra’s step-grandmother Elisabetta Varano Malatesta served as abbess of the Urbino house. Sveva di Montefeltro, Genevra’s second stepmother, professed there (and became abbess, then beata) after leaving her secular life as the second wife of Alessandro Sforza; Sveva entered the convent with a large trousseau, apparently the same one she had brought to her lay marriage with Genevra’s father. Other prominent families tied to the Sforza and the Bentivoglio actively patronised the order. Eleonora d’Aragona and Lucrezia Borgia were known to have patronised the order in Ferrara, and Lucrezia was buried wearing a Clarissan habit within their church.108 In 1490 Camilla Pio founded the convent for Poor Clares in Carpi before becoming abbess (and later beata), and by 1528 at least four Pio girls were nuns there as Verde Pio was active in the governance of the Ferrarese house.109 Laura Bentivoglio also had her daughter Ginevra profess within Mantua’s house.110 In the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, the Bentivoglio used the convent of Corpus Domini when it was convenient for them as a kind of home away from home. In 1488 Francesca took refuge there when her life was in danger after the assassination of her husband. She was the first of the Bentivoglio daughters to live inside Corpus Domini without professing. Spiritual and symbolic purification, repentance, and mental relaxation were the reasons Francesca entered; she reportedly wore widow’s clothing when there, and at one point she became so sick that 107 For the history of the order, see Wood. For the story of the Ferrarese convent before its partial transferral to Bologna, see McLaughlin; Arthur. Bolognese chronicles record specifics about the group’s entry into Bologna including the names of each nun and her family’s origin. 108 Williams, p. 89. 109 Camilla Pio (Giberto’s aunt) founded the convent of Santa Chiara (Corpus Domini) in Carpi; the papal bull from Innocence VIII is in CAS, Archivio Pio di Savoia, filza II, no. 59 (6 September 1490). For privileges granted to Camilla from Duke Ercole d’Este see MIBA, Archivio Falcò Pio di Savoia, box 306 (busta 5); her will is at CAS, Archivio Pio di Savoia, filza 2 bis, no. 102 (2 July 1500). Verde Pio was also active in the Corpus Domini convent in Ferrara, see MIBA, Archivio Falcò Pio di Savoia, box 527 (busta 4). Eleonora d’Aragona rebuilt Ferrara’s branch of the order and used it as a retreat, see Tuohy, p. 17. 110 See documentation at ASMN, AG, Vescovato papers.

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Genevra attended her recovery.111 After the Bentivoglio exile, Bianca Bentivoglio and some of her Rangoni children lodged in the house when they visited from Modena (documented in 1510); Bianca visited her sisters and nieces there, and she and her family stayed in the convent while visiting relations and friends in Bologna.112 Genevra Sforza also used the convent often. After patronising the institution for years, she must have felt at home there. Arienti records that Genevra spent time there in the company of Abbess Caterina (so between the convent’s founding in 1456 and Caterina’s death in 1463).113 In other documentation Genevra appears to have taken refuge there during disputes over Francesco Sforza’s suggestion that Giovanni II marry her, between 1463 and 1464.114 In 1475 Genevra played the role of liaison between the convent and the secular ruling-class world when she led a procession of forty women, the Anziani and many citizens honouring the entry into the convent of two young girls.115 In 1478 Genevra was granted papal dispensation from Sixtus IV to enter Corpus Domini and to eat, drink, sleep and confess there. The dispensation is illuminated, folded small, and is well worn suggesting that Genevra carried it around in her pocket regularly.116 After the tumultuous political events of mid-1488, Genevra received a renewal of her dispensation: Pope Innocent VIII issued her a pass to enter any Bolognese convent, especially Corpus Domini. It was granted so she could take shelter along with her servants, daughters, and daughters-in-law; and it gave them the right to dine and to confess.117 Although there is no record that Genevra and her entourage took refuge in Corpus Domini or elsewhere after the events of 1488, it must have been reassuring to know that she and her family could find sanctuary there, if they needed it. Years later in 1505, for several months, Genevra found shelter with Camilla, Isotta and Ginevra di Ercole inside Corpus Domini walls after major earthquakes damaged Palazzo Bentivoglio.118 Bentivoglio females entered Corpus Domini because it was the most prestigious convent. The Bentivoglio also followed family tradition because Genevra’s extended family and many relations through marriage of both the Sforza and Bentivoglio families had long-standing relationships with the order. Genevra in particular 111 Milanese ambassador Trachedino reported to his duke that Genevra entered Corpus Domini to care for her sick daughter Francesca and spent the day of 4 January 1492 there helping her; he also reported that Francesca had recovered by 17 January; see ASMI, PER, reg.cart. 1041, bobina 185, 4 and 17 January 1491. 112 Ubaldini, December 1510 entry. 113 Arienti, ‘Vita de Catherina beata da Bologna’ in his Gynevera, p. 205. 114 ASFE, FB, Lib. 7, no. 28; ASFE, FB, Lib. 7, no. 29. 115 Ubaldini, c. 661. 116 ASFE, FB, Libro 11, no. 31. 117 See the brief at ASFE, FB, Libro 13, no. 25 (dated 22 October 1488). 118 For her stay during 1505 earthquakes, see Ubaldini, f. 732, and Gigli, f. 17.

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

patronised Corpus Domini to ensure a haven for herself and her relations—and it proved to have been such a refuge several times during her life. Genevra and Giovanni II also had daughters and granddaughters enter the convent to save on dowry expenditures. Although Corpus Domini required a relatively high convent dowry, it still cost less than marriage dowries as convent dowries usually cost around 1/10 of their lay equivalents. Into the twentieth century the Bentivoglio have remained tied to Corpus Domini: Countess Annetta Bentivoglio (1824–1905), a descendant of Genevra and Giovanni II and under investigation for canonisation, was commissioned by Pope Pius IX to found the order of Poor Clares in North America.119

Conclusions Genevra’s large family and her political motherhood fashioned her identity. In biographies written about her by Arienti and Foresti, she was treated first as a mother. In the inscription at the foot of the Bentivoglio tower, she was primarily remembered as a mother who contributed so many children to the magnificence of her family. She chose to be fashioned as a fertile woman in her diptych and as a mother of eleven healthy children in the portrait at San Giacomo. In Giovanni II’s will, Genevra was given great respect because she had delivered so many children to the Bentivoglio and had greatly raised their fame over the course of their fortytwo-year partnership. She was proud of her family and their home, and she was a great hostess to others who visited. Her world was shaped by her family and within their home, the traditional woman’s world.120 Beyond Genevra’s classic fulfilment of her female role, politics played an important part in her style of motherhood. Although no written testimony survives to explain Bentivoglio planning schemes, a study of Genevra’s and Giovanni II’s actions as parents allows us to hypothesise some of their most important ideas and goals. Their strategy in their patterns of behaviour fits into the framework of how other rising early modern families acted: an enormous family went in tandem with political plans. Because Sante and Genevra only produced two children, they did not follow a large-scale political strategy, or they simply could not do so for a variety of reasons. It could be argued that Sante showed husbandly concern for his wife and her health by making Genevra pregnant only twice and by having no other children by other women in Bologna. But Giovanni II and Genevra followed a clear 119 See Bragantini; Flanagan. She established houses in Omaha, New Orleans and Evansville. 120 ASMN, AG 2116, fasc. 11, f. 189r, 11 March 1506, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga. For the home as a woman’s space, see Thornton, pp. 252–259, 348–358.

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and a different strategy: to dominate Bologna. Their plans involved the creation of as many children as quickly as possible, and both parents were exceptionally capable of physically acting on their shared political vision. Genevra’s married life after her wedding to Giovanni II was spent more often in pregnancy than not thanks to her unusual strength, fecundity, focus—and incredible luck. Their children’s careers prospered the Bentivoglio in their city and throughout that region of Italy. To reach these goals Genevra fostered and supported illegitimate children born under the roof of Palazzo Bentivoglio. Although the example to have as many children as possible was set by rulers of ambitious fifteenth-century courts, such a plan in Bologna could only have worked with the Bentivoglio thanks to Genevra’s mental outlook manifested in her biological performance. Genevra’s strong will and constitution determined the family’s destiny. Giovanni II and Genevra wished to save the Bentivoglio from extinction, and specifically from being overrun by Bolognese political enemies. The fact that Genevra willingly risked the dangers of pregnancy so often that she ended up as the most fecund consort in Renaissance Italy points to a deliberate and shared political strategy of ultimately securing the family through the marriages and careers of its children. Despite so much energy and effort given to childbearing, Genevra maintained a full agenda of public appearances and acts of patronage and service to promote her family. She took part in literally dozens of important family-related occasions—betrothals, weddings, baptisms, entries into convents and masses for special circumstances—all of which bestowed dignity and respect on the Bentivoglio and bound it by many ties to the influential families of Bologna and those of Northern Italy of that age. In all of this time Genevra was fully cooperative, dedicated 100% to the success of the Bentivoglio, fulfilling in full measure and in an entirely traditional style the role of leading lady of a great house. This was the honourable woman whose public life was happily documented by the chroniclers of Bologna and in Arienti’s and Foresti’s lives of eminent women. For these reasons, the fact that Genevra risked so much demonstrates that she was not dutifully silent or submissive, and it was not Giovanni II who denied her husbandly love or care by impregnating her so often thus risking her life annually. The fact that there is no evidence that Genevra opposed her husband’s illegitimates is only further proof that Genevra desired a large powerful family. Although she may have originated as the ‘wrong’ kind of Sforza bride, it was through her that Giovanni II was able to tie his family through their children to some of the most important Italian families. Giovanni II soon grew to value Genevra dearly because of her extraordinarily capacity to deliver him legitimates who would act as important pawns in marriage alliances and ecclesiastical positions for the glory of his family line.

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

The strategy I am hypothesising would only make sense if each of the Bentivoglio children were placed in the ‘right’ marriages and careers. And in fact each of their placements followed specific premeditated arrangements. Legitimate boys married into the most important court families of Northern Italy. Legitimate girls married into lesser court families grounded in geographically important positions around Bologna’s borders up and down the Via Emilia and across the northern Papal State; they also married condottieri who could help Giovanni II protect and defend his de facto régime. It was no accident that illegitimate boys and girls stayed local; they married into families of Bolognese magnates or became religious in their city. The Bentivoglio parents further planned local alliances when serving hundreds of Bolognese children as godparents. Finally, there is clear evidence in Giovanni II’s last will that he and Genevra tried hard to keep their large family working together and on good terms with one another. In order to highlight the family strategies as fully as possible, this chapter has thus required more lengthy consideration of the lives of the Bentivoglio children than may otherwise make sense in a book primarily focusing on Genevra Sforza. At mid-century Genevra appeared in Bologna as a young pawn but emerged over the course of the second half of the century to play a significant role in the creation and management of her family. Her extended Milanese family influenced and dominated much of Northern and Central Italy, and they acted as a model for her and Giovanni II in their vision for a large, politically influential family. Since Genevra’s Milanese relations influenced and controlled the Bentivoglio in many ways, she could have considered her position in Bologna as that of a contributor on the small-scale to larger-scale Sforza projects going on across the peninsula.

145

Sante & GSB

Sante & GSB

GII & (?)

GII & GSB

Costanza

Ercole

Isabetta

Annibale II (died young) Bianca

2

3

4

5

GII & GSB

Sante & unnamed widow

Antonio

1

6

Parents

Name

#

ca. 1440

Baptism date

1465 or early 1466 25 March 1467

ca. 1460

25 May 1459

1465 or early 1466 8 May 1467

ca. 1460

26 June 1459 Tuesday

(?) Jan.–June 1458 1458 (and well before 14 Oct. 1458)

ca. 1440, Poppi (Arezzo)

Birthdate

Antonio Cascese; Sante’s father figure & guardian in Poppi Costanza di AntonGaleazzo I Bentivoglio Bevilacqua, pre-eminent Bentivoglio female ancestor and GII’s aunt, (d. ca. 1435); Costanza da Varano (1428–1477), GSB’s stepmother Ercole I Bentivoglio (ca. 1380s–1424); Sante’s father

Namesake (speculation)

Archbishop Stefano of Milan & Girolamo Ranuzzi

?

ASFE, FB, Cat. A, f. 50 and Cat. Croce, f. 150 (dowry papers) Arienti, p. 4

AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 23v

Ady (1937), p. 137; Arienti, p. 398

Ady (1937), pp. 32–35

Birth Sources (several births go unrecorded in primary sources; most appear in a variety of sources as their lives carry on)

Annibale I Bentivoglio (1413–1445); GII’s father. Carrati, Battesimi ms. B 849, Bianca Maria Visconti f. 120; Arienti, pp. 263–287 Sforza (1428–1468), Genevra’s Milanese aunt; her vita is in Arienti’s Gynevera

Cardinal Niceno or Bessarione (rep. by Virgilio Malvezzi) & Bishop of Termini (rep. by Nicolo de Meleto) ? ?

?

?

Godparent(s)

Table 3.2  THE BENTIVOGLIO CHILDREN (in chronological order; illegitimates italicised)

146  Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Parents

GII & GSB

GII & (?)

GII & GSB

GII & GSB

GII & GSB

Name

Francesca

Ascanio

Annibale III, later known as Annibale II

Eleonora or Leonora or Lionora

Donnina (died young)

#

7

8

9

10

11

ca. 1468

18 Feb. 1468 Thursday

Baptism date

28 July 1471

1 Sep. 1471

hora 4, between hora xvi, 14 Feb. 1469 cum Sat. and Sun., noctis 4 Feb. 1469 magno triumpho. Ceremony led by Cristorofo, sacristan (before 11 April 1470 2 April 1470)

ca. 1468

18 Feb. 1468

Birthdate

Duke of Milan (rep. by Gherardo), & Antonio Trotti (Captain General for BO)

Duke of Milan (rep. by Milanese ducal representative G.A. Figino)

Birth Sources (several births go unrecorded in primary sources; most appear in a variety of sources as their lives carry on)

Eleonora d’Aragona d’Este (ca. 1460–1493), wife of Ercole d’Este); connection through betrothal of Annibale II & Lucrezia d’Este Donnina di Lancelotto Visconti Bentivoglio (b. 1425); Gio.II’s mother; sister of duke of Milan

AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 18r.; Arienti, p. 4

AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 119v. (also numbered 102v); Arienti, p. 401

AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 102v

AAB, Canonici di San Pietro, no. 458, ff. 41, 47–48

Francesca Gozzadini (b. ca. AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 87r (also 1405); GII’s grandmother numbered f. 68r)

Namesake (speculation)

Cardinal Ascanio di Francesco Sforza (1455–1505); Genevra’s 1st cousin and cardinal legate in BO Annibale I Bentivoglio Ercole d’Este (rep. by Galeazzo (1413–1445), GII’s father Ariosti miles levante)

?

Hyeronimo Ranuzzi

Godparent(s) Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

147

Parents

GII & GSB

GII & GSB

GII & GSB

GII & (?)

Name

AntonGaleazzo

Camilla

Violante

Griselda

#

12

13

14

15 ca. 1475 (?)

ca. Nov. 1475

20 Dec. 1473

hora 2 ½ noctis, 7 Dec. 1472, cum magno gaudio et pulsacione campana S. Jacobi

Birthdate

ca. 1475 (?)

30 Nov. 1475 Thursday

25 Feb. 1474

hora 17, 15 Jan. 1473, Friday, cum magno triumpho. Ceremony led by Bishop Matheus Tornensis

Baptism date

?

AntonGaleazzo I Bentivoglio (1413–1435); GII’s grandfather; Cerruti reports that the child was named after GII’s ancestor (see Cerruti in Duranti (2007)), tomo II, 15 January 1473, pp. 9–10

Namesake (speculation)

? Duke of Milan (rep. by Carlo) & Girolamo Ranuzzi Gonfalonier of Justice & Alberto Cattani ? ?

Duke of Milan (rep. by Gherardo Ciruglia); Federico, son of the Marchese of Mantua (rep. by [left blank]); Pino of Forlì (rep. by Franco Grati). (Cardinal Raffaele Riario also served as compare in 1473) Unlisted

Godparent(s)

ASFE, FB, Cat. B, f. 195 and Cat. Croce, f. 212

AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 93r.; Gerardo Cerruti reports she was born 23 January 1474—see Duranti, tomo II, p. 306 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 24v

AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 57v.; see Cerruti’s reports on details of the godfathers, baptism, and necklace given to GII from Milan in Duranti, tomo II, 6/11/15 January 1473, pp. 8–10

Birth Sources (several births go unrecorded in primary sources; most appear in a variety of sources as their lives carry on)

148  Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Parents

GII & GSB

GII & GSB

GII & GSB

GII & GSB

GII & GSB

GII & GSB

Name

Alessandro

Ermes or Hermes

Laura

Isotta (died young)

Cornelio (died young)

Lodovico (died young)

#

16

17

18

19

20

21

27 June 1482

26 Feb. 1481

ca. 1478–1479

17 Oct. 1477

late 1476 or late 1478

late 1474 or late 1476

Birthdate

28 July 1482

4 March 1481 Sunday

ca. 1478–1479

10 Nov. 1477

late 1476 or late 1478

1474 or 1476

Baptism date

Card. Gernvesge (?) (rep. by Bald. Castelli Protonotaio Apostolico) & Cardinal Malfetta (rep. by Fran. Canonico) & Don Battista Signa mansionario of San Petronio and chaplain of GSB

Johanus de Sala, Filippo Salarolis

?

Confirmed in 1496 by Card. Bernardo Caravajal (not listed)

?

Godparent(s)

AAB, FB, vol. 2, f. 71v

Arienti, p. 6

Arienti, p. 6

Birth Sources (several births go unrecorded in primary sources; most appear in a variety of sources as their lives carry on)

Lodovico Maria di Francesco Sforza (1451–1508; duke 1494–1499); Genevra’s 1st cousin

?

AAB, FB, vol. 2, f. 258 v; Arienti, p. 4

AAB, FB, vol. 2, f. 163r.; Arienti, p. 4

Arienti, pp. 4, 173–179 (?) Isotta Nogarola, humanist (1418–1466); vita in Arienti’s Gynevera

?

?

Alessandro Sforza, (1409–1473), Genevra’s father

Namesake (speculation)

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

149

Parents

GII & GSB

GII & unwed girl

GII & unwed girl

GII & (?)

GII & unwed girl

GII & unwed girl

GII & unwed girl

Name

Isotta

Leone

Rinaldo

Lucia

Sigismondo

Carlo

Ottaviano

#

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

1479 or ca. 1483

Baptism date

ca. 1491

(?) 1493 or earlier (healthy grown boy by 1503)

?

? (?) before 1493 (canon from 1504 & at least age 11 by then) (?) 1493 or earlier ? (healthy grown boy by 1503)

ca. 1491

1487 (?) 1485 (?) (or earlier, wed with (ASMN, AG 1146, children by 1505) 16 July 1505, mentions an illegit boy of Gio. II born in 1487) ? 1485 ? (or earlier, wed with children by 1505)

1479 or ca. 1483

Birthdate

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

Godparent(s)

Birth Sources (several births go unrecorded in primary sources; most appear in a variety of sources as their lives carry on)

ASFE, FB, Lib. 20, no. 47

ASFE, FB, Lib. 20, no. 47

(?) 8 th son born to his concubine mother

ASFE, FB, Lib. 20, no. 47

ASFE, FB, Cat. B, f. 190

ASFE, FB, Lib. 20, no. 47

ASFE, FB, Lib. 20, no. 47

Carlo Sforza, father of Ippolita Sforza, bride of Alessandro Bentivoglio

?

?

?

?

(see Isotta at no. 19 above) Arienti, p. 6

Namesake (speculation)

150  Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

GII & (?)

Isotta

29

GII & (?)

GII & (?)

GII & (?)

GII & (?)

GII & (?)

Confortino

Giovanni

Pantasilea

Paolo

Ragosa

30

31

32

33

34

More possible illegitimates:*

Parents

Name

#

?

?

?

?

?

(?) 1508 (or earlier ?)

Birthdate

?

?

?

?

?

?

Baptism date

?

?

?

?

?

?

Godparent(s)

Birth Sources (several births go unrecorded in primary sources; most appear in a variety of sources as their lives carry on)

?

?

?

Giovanni II Bentivoglio

?

Ghirardacci, p. 326

Prodi and Paolini, vol. 1, p. 204; Berti, p. 138

Berti, p. 138

Berti, p. 142

Ghirardacci, p. 326

(see Isotta at no. 19 above) ASFE, FB, Lib. 31, no. 13

Namesake (speculation)

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

151

GII & (?)

?

Birthdate

?

Baptism date

?

Godparent(s)

?

Namesake (speculation)

Sorbelli, p. 74; Prodi and Paolini, vol. 1, p. 204; Berti, p. 138

Birth Sources (several births go unrecorded in primary sources; most appear in a variety of sources as their lives carry on)

*Additional possible illegitimate children (documented in non-contemporary sources) can be seen on my Sforza-Bentivoglio family tree (Document 1.2).

36+

GII & (?)

Battista

35

Illegitimates who died young [completely unknown]

Parents

Name

#

152  Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

153

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

Table 3.3  BENTIVOGLIO AS GODPARENTS IN BOLOGNA Date of Baptism

Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Bolognese Godchild Sponsored by Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Source

1459 Feb 1459 Oct 1459 Oct 1459 Oct

Giovanni Sante Giovanni Giovanni & Gov. di Bologna

Annibale di Filippo Bianchi & Anna Tommaso di Filippo Salaroli & Caterina Ant. di Matt. Maltescillani (?) & Elisabet. Astorre di Ales dal Ferro & Girolama

BCB, Carr., B849, f. 6 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 14 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 15 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 15

1460 Feb 1460 Jun 1460 Aug 1460 Oct

Giovanni Giovanni et al. Giovanni Giovanni et al.

Alberto di Pietro Albergati & Cassandra Melchiorre di Andrea della Seta & Marg. Annibale di Nicolò de Zelini & Antonia Franco. di Clemente Agocchia & Gent.

BCB, Carr., B849, f. 18 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 23 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 28 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 30

1461 Feb 1461 Apr 1461 Sep 1461 Oct

Giovanni Giovanni et al. Giovanni Giovanni et al.

Gulielmo di Simone dalla Rote & M. Gio. Pel & Grato (twins) di Franco Ingrati Florido di Nic. de Salla & Biancafiore Fran. di Gio. Ant. Cap Gente d’Arme BO

BCB, Carr., B849, f. 34 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 37 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 43 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 44

1462 Mar 1462 May 1462 May

Giovanni Giovanni Genevra Sforza

Annibale di Carlo Bargellini & Margh. Azzo di Nic. Rubini & Bartolomea Achille di Gabriele Poeti & Anna

BCB, Carr., B849, f. 53 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 54 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 55

1463 Feb 1463 May 1463 Oct

Giovanni. et al. Giovanni in name of widow Genevra Sforza

Lod. di Tesio Marescotti & Caterina Letio di Nic. Gabrielli & Maddalena Sante di Girol.Ranuzzi & unknown mother

BCB, Carr., B849, f. 66 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 71 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 79

1464 Jan 1464 Jan 1464 Jan 1464 Feb 1464 Feb 1464 Jul 1464 Sep 1464 Sep

Giovanni ‘II’ (from here on) Giovanni II et al. Giovanni II Giovanni II Giovanni II Genevra Sforza et al. Giovanni II et al. Giovanni II

Donino di Donino de Negri & Margh. Cornelio di Gasp. Bargellini & Cassandra Bart. di Franco Silvestri & Taddea Annibale of unnamed parents Ercole di Gaspare Scrivernanzi & Gasp. Ercole di Stef. Malatonchi (?) & Libera Ales. di Ales. dal Ferro & Giacoma Carlo di Batt. Beliossi (?) & Caterina

BCB, Carr., B849, f. 83 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 83 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 83 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 62 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 84 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 90 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 92 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 93

1465 Jan 1465 Jan 1465 Jan 1465 Feb 1465 Mar 1465 Apr

Giovanni II Giovanni II Giovanni II Giovanni II Giovanni II et al. Giovanni II

Vincenzo di Pietro Piratesi & Lucrezia Porzirio di Gabriele de Inglielsi Galeotto di Lod. Usberti & Luana Gio. di Ant. Campanazzi & Maddalena Giacobo di Matteo Nobili (?) & Giulia Obizo di Vincenzo Paleotti & Dorotea

BCB, Carr., B849, f. 97 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 98 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 98 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 99 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 92 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 93v

1466 Apr 1466 Apr 1466 Aug 1466 (ca.)

Giovanni II Giovanni II Giovanni II Giovanni II

Annibale di Hieronimo Mafonibi (?) Annibale di Gio. Griffoni Vincenzo di Lod. Zelini & Caterina Annibale di Fran. Ingrati & Bilia

AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 29 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 114 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 119 AAB, FB, vol.1, loose page

1467

-

-

-

154 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Date of Baptism

Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Bolognese Godchild Sponsored by Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Source

1468 Jan 1468 May 1468 Jun 1468 Oct 1468 Dec.

Giovanni II Giovanni II Giovanni II Giovanni II Giovanni II & G. Ranuzzi

Mariscotto di Teseo Mariscotti & Cat.a Marc. Ant. di Ant. Campanazzi & Madd. Annibale di Bernardo Sassuno & Donna Carlo di Lod. Usberti & Laura Bened. di Ant. dal Lino & Camilla

BCB, Carr., B849, f. 138 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 144 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 143 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 145 BCB, Carr., B849, f. 146

1469 Mar 1469 Aug 1469 Oct 1469 Oct

Giovanni II Filippo cancelliere Giovanni II Giovanni II

Andrea di Tom. Mezzovillani & Costan. Camilia di Clementis Francesca di Ant. di Castello & Gio.na Helena di (?) Clavieculario

BCB, Carr., B849, f. 156 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f.109 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 112 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 112

1470 Feb 1470 May 1470 Oct 1470 Nov

Giovanni II Giovanni II Antonio Antonio

Gio. Batt. di Bald. Malavolta & Lucia Vincenzo di Gio.Batt. Barbieri & Cat.a Sante di Avvanzo beccaro & Benvenuta Matteo/Deifebo di Cesare Nappi

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 3 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 5 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 8 Nappi, 1997, p. 6

1471 Mar

Giovanni II

Biancha di Giovanni Stapis (?) & Adele

AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 10v

1472 Mar 1472 Apr 1472 Aug 1472 Sep 1472 Dec 1472 Dec

Giovanni II Giovanni II et al. Giovanni II Giovanni II Giovanni II Antonio

Annibale di Ant. Pandolfi & Gentile Annibale di Michele Mancari & Elisa. Bart. di Gio. Fibuzicci (?) & M. (?) Francesco di Bart. Budrioli Annibale di Bart. Volta Franco. di Girol. Berti & Concordia

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 26 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 35v BCB, Carr., B850, f. 30 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 31 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 34 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 35

1473 Jan 1473 Oct 1473 Dec

Antonio Antonio Giovanni II

Franco. di Annibale Zambeccari & P. Annibale di Pietro Ant. Cesesi & Lucia Gio. Luigi di Floriano Griffoni & Lod.ca

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 36 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 48 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 51

1474 Jan 1474 Jan 1474 Jan

Antonio Antonio Antonio

P. Ant. di Ant. Saltobelli (?) & Antonia Cesare di Bart. Chiari & Bart.a Ercole di Ant. Campanazzi & Maddalena

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 52 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 53 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 53

1475 Sep 1475 Oct

Annibale II Annibale II

Sante di Battista Simi (?) & Caterina Ant. di Ant. Sibaldini

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 75 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 77

1476 Feb 1476 May 1476 May 1476 Aug

Antonio Antonio et al. Giovanni II et al. Giovanni II

Alessio di Gerardo Bongrece & Mattea Ant. di Bald. Malavolta of Siena & Lucia Annibale di Girol. Guaschi & Biancha Annibale di Giac. Gandolfi & Anna

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 81 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 84 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 85 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 89

1477 Feb 1477 Apr

Antonio Antonio

Giovanni di Gio. Zanini & Lucia Vincenzo di Gio. Seccadenari & Madd.

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 92 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 94

1478 Jul 1478 Jul 1478 Aug 1478 Oct

Annibale II Annibale II Annibale II Isabetta di Antonio

Verardino di Ercole Verardini & Franca Gio. di Bernardo Andrei & Giulia Bas.(?) di Cav. Ant.Fantuzzi & Elena Maria/Virginia di Cesare Nappi

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 109 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 112 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 113 Nappi, 1997, p. 7

155

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

Date of Baptism

Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Bolognese Godchild Sponsored by Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Source

1479 Feb 1479 Jul 1479 Aug

Niccolò Rangoni et al. Annibale II Annibale II &Ant.Ma Mirandola

Alessandro di Vinc. Paleotti & Dorotea Franc. di Hieronimo Castellani & Isotta Cornelio Lod. di Filippo Bentivoglio & Corn.

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 118 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 117v BCB, Carr., B850, f. 122

1480 Jan 1480 Apr 1480 May 1480 Jul 1480 Sep 1480 Oct 1480 Dec

Antonio, Nic.Rangoni et al. Giovanni II Ann. II & Nic.Rangoni et al. Ann. II & Nic.Rangoni et al. Niccolò Rangoni Antonio Annibale II

Annibale di Franco Balestre (?) & Lucia Giorgio di Giorgio Zenzifabri Annibale di Tom. Zenzanini & Aless.ra Tarsia di Giuliano Albtione (?) Galeaz. di Ant.Campanazzi & Giacoma Luca di Ant. Cappelletti & Mina Annibale di Bernardo Andrei & Giulia

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 124 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 125 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 128 AAB, FB, vol. 1, f. 132 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 127 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 129 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 131

1481 Jan 1481 Mar 1481 Apr 1481 Jul 1481 Jul 1481 Jul 1481 Aug 1481 Sep 1481 Sep 1481 Oct 1481 Nov

Niccolò Rangoni Giovanni II Bianca Antonio M. (?) Bentivoglio Antonio et al. Annibale II et al. Giovanni II Filippo cancelliere et al. Annibale II Giberto Pio of Carpi

Gio. Elia di Ales. Ratta & Dorotea Gio. Gal. di Ant. Inglesini & Chiara Annibale di Girol. Astesani & Isotta Bartolomeo di Nicolò Sampieri & Lucia Cornelia di Giu.Ant.Lambertini & Madd. Annibale di Ant. di Quarto Gasp. di Mag.co Nicolò d’Arca & Madd. Gio. di Fil. Armeli & T. (?) Gaspare di Lod. Scala & Elena Giac. di Guarc. Regoli & Elisabetta Cornelio di Bart. Volta & Lena

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 132 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 134 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 136 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 134 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 140 AAB, FB, vol. 2, f. 179 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 140 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 142 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 142 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 143 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 145

1482 Apr 1482 May 1482 Jun 1482 Jul 1482 Nov 1482 Nov

Niccolò Rangoni Annibale II Giovanni II Annibale II et al. Annibale II Annibale II

Marc. Ant. di Floriano Griffoni & Lod.a Marc. Ant. di Ercole de Antiani Celesi Giac. di Stefano Ghelli & Francesca Annibale di Virgil. de’ Poeti & Candora Ales. di Lod. Bianchi Virgilio di And. Gambalunghi & Sara

BCB, Carr., B850, f. 150 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 152 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 154 AAB, FB, vol. 2, f. 253v BCB, Carr., B850, f. 160 BCB, Carr., B850, f. 159

1483 Sep 1483 Sep 1483 Sep 1483 Sep

Annibale II Annibale II Annibale II Annibale II

Ales di Virgilio Poeti & Candora Arg.(?) di Andrea Cattani & Maria (?) Annibale di Giul. Ant. Poggi & Margh. Bart. di Ant. Hercolani & Laura

BCB, Carr., B851, f. 11 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 11 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 11 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 12

1484 Mar 1484 Aug 1484 Sep 1484 Sep 1484 Sep 1484 Nov 1484 Nov 1484 Dec 1484 Dec

Annibale II et al. Annibale II Genevra Sforza Giovanni II Giberto Pio of Carpi Filippo cancelliere et al. Annibale II et al. Annibale II AntonGaleazzo

Galeazzo di Bart. Gigli (?) & Antonia Annibale di Bart. Morandi & Lodovica Innocenzo di Franco Bensi & Bart.a B. di Gio. Usberti & Agostina Astorre di Ales. Volta & Ippolita Aristotele di Bald. Muratore & Margh. Girol. di Giac. Asti (?) & Margherita Giorgio di Giud. Ghisilieri & Margh. Bart. di Dom. Zagnoni & Antonia

BCB, Carr., B851, f. 20 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 25 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 25 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 25 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 26 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 28 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 28 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 29 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 16

156 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Date of Baptism

Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Bolognese Godchild Sponsored by Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Source

1485 Sep 1485 Jan 1485 Mar 1485 May 1485 Oct 1485 Oct 1485 Dec

Ann., N. Rangoni, Gib.Pio AntonGaleazzo Ascanio & Giberto Pio Annibale Ann., Gib.Pio, N.Rangoni Ascanio Annibale

Annibale di Floriano dalla Nave & Luc. T.(?) di Agos. Foscarari & Elisabetta Roberto di Giov. Gasp. Sala & Madalena Annibale di And. Pasquali & Dorotea Galeazzo di Lod. Bianchi & Violante Gio. Bened. di Giac. Paselli (?) & Polis. Marcello di Vinc. Paleotti & Dorotea

AAB, FB, vol. 3, f. 100 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 29 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 31 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 34 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 36 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 37 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 39

1486 Jan

Tom. di Giov. Barbari di Bentivogli (?)

AAB, FB, vol. 3, f. 101

1486 Jan 1486 Mar 1486 May 1486 Jun 1486 Dec

AntonGaleazzo, Genevra et al. Giberto Pio di Carpi et al. AntonGaleazzo Giberto Pio et al. Giovanni II AntonGaleazzo

L.(?) di Bonifiacio Caroli S. di Filippo Carratti & Caterina Agostino di Cristo. Bessoli (?) & Giulia Gio. di Bart. Felicini & Dorotea Gio. di Gio. Cecchini & Veronica

AAB, FB, vol. 3, f. 101 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 43 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 44 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 45 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 48

1487 Jan 1487 May 1487 June 1487 May 1487 Jun 1487 Aug 1487 Sep

AntonGaleazzo Lucrezia Este & Annibale II Giovanni II GII, Violante Rangoni et al. Niccolò Rangoni Marco di Gib. Pio di Carpi Annibale II

Carlo di Franco Monterenzi & Polisena Annibale di Giov. Ant. Boncefatti (?)& D Gio. Batt. di Bald. Morandi Costanzo di Gio. Manfredi & Anna Annibale di Ant. Paganelli & B(?) Ant. di Ercole Ranchetti & Lodovica Annibale di Cecch. Ferraboscho & Fiora

BCB, Carr., B851, f. 49 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 52 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 53 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 53 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 53 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 54 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 56

1488 Jan 1488 Feb 1488 May 1488 May 1488 May 1488 May 1488 Nov 1488 Nov 1488 Nov 1488 Nov

Antonio AntonGaleazzo Salustio Guidotti Giovanni II AntonGaleazzo AntonGaleazzo Annibale II Annibale II et al. Annibale II & Ercole Giberto Pio of Carpi

Giov. di Ant. Presliteri (?) & Nicolosa Antonio di Flor. Caccialupi & Lucrezia Salustio di Gio. Giac. de’ Medici & Lu. Camillo di Gio. Marsili & Leona Agostino di Pietro Gambero Alessandro di Pet. di Forlì (?) & Lena Gentile di A. Romanzi & Vincenza Dorotea di Annibale da Sassuno Ercole di Ant. G…. (?) & Lucrezia Alberto di Nanne R (?) & Caterina

BCB, Carr., B851, f. 59 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 59 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 61 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 62 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 79 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 79 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 65 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 18 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 18v BCB, Carr., B851, f. 56

1489

-

-

-

1490 Jan 1490 Jan 1490 Feb 1490 Mar 1490 Apr 1490 Jul 1490 Jul

Giovanni II Annibale II Annibale II & Nic. Rangoni AntonGaleazzo & Gib. Pio Giovanni II Antonio Annibale II et al.

Zibolaus (?) di Gio. Marsili & Leona Annibale di (?) Salaroli & Maria AntonGaleazzo di Guendi (?) & Lucr. AntonGal. di Tom. Montecalvo& Laura Gio. di Giudo Manfredi & Anna Manfredo di Fil. Manfredi & Prudenza Bart. di Genna (?) & Dorotea

AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 36 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 71 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 72 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 74 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 74 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 75 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 75

157

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

Date of Baptism

Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Bolognese Godchild Sponsored by Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Source

1490 Jul 1490 Aug 1490 Aug 1490 Aug 1490 Oct 1490 Oct 1490 Nov 1490 Dec

Marco Pio of Carpi Annibale II AntonGaleazzo et al. Annibale II AntonGaleazzo Annibale II Alessandro et al. Ercole et al.

B. (?) di Nic. Caradini & Giulia Gio. di Prospero dall’Armi & Isotta S.(?) di Andrea de Fava Ginevra di Fil. Calcina & Anna AntonGal. di Lod. di Sala & Elena Annibale di Bart. Rossi & Ginevra Annibale di M. Bocchi & Lena Giov. Andrea (?) Filippo & Diamante

BCB, Carr., B851, f. 81 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 76 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 82 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 82 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 77 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 83 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 86v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 39v

1491 Jan 1491 Jan 1491 Feb 1491 Jul 1491 Aug 1491 Sep 1491 Sep 1491 Oct 1491 Oct 1491 Oct

Alessandro Antonio et al. Alessandro Alessandro Annibale II Niccolò Rangoni et al. Bentivoglio (unspecified) Annibale II et al. Alessandro et al. Annibale II

Gio. Batt. di Gio. Zucchini & Lucia Ales.ro di Nic. Rangoni & Bianca Bent. Marc. Ant. di Dorso Volta & Giulia Annibale di Fil. Caccialupi & Domenica Lodovica di Giac. Pio & Lucrezia Ulisse di Tommaso Cospi & Cornelia Scipione di Lod. Gozzadini & Ippolita Billi (?) di Vincenzo Zofini & Taddea Ales. di Z. Ferraboschi & Fiora Gaspare di Matteo Panzacchi & Margh.

BCB, Carr., B851, f. 85 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 94 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 86 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 88 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 89 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 107v BCB, Carr., B851, f. 104 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 110 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 90 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 90

1492 Jan 1492 Feb 1492 Feb 1492 Mar

Genevra Sforza & Lucr. Este Ermes Annibale II Genevra Sforza & N. Rangoni Annibale II Alessandro Giovanni II et al. Annibale II Francesca et al. Giovanni II AntonGaleazzo Alessandro AntonGaleazzo Annibale II & AntonGaleazzo Alessandro Annibale II Annibale II Alessandro Annibale II AntonGaleazzo

Bernardo di Ann. Sassoni & Lucia Ercole di Giov. Ant. of FE & Costanza Marcello di Lodovico Panico & Ant.a Carlo Ant. di Franc. Fantuzzi & Cater.a

BCB, Carr., B851, f. 92 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 121 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 93 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 95

Ant. di Ant. dalla Torre & Agnese Alessandro di Cesare Ricamatori & D. Annibale di (fam.) Albergati & Violante Carlo di Tiberio Bentivoglio & Ginevra (?) di Bart. Dossi & Francesca T. (?) di Franco de Rizzo & Camilla Marc.Ant. di Taddeo Bolognini & Dom. Giuliano di Rin. de Montevesi (?) & C. Alessandro Bolognini de Fiabbi & Z. Antonio di Franco Scardui & Lucrezia Scipione di Lod. Gozzadini & Ippolita Alessandro di Ant. dalla Fava & Giulia Annibale di Inn. Renghiera & Ginevra Aless.ro di Francesco de Vigre & Laura Franco.di Ales. Curialti de Tosignano & P AntonGaleazzo di Ercole Rossi

BCB, Carr., B851, f. 97 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 97 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 97 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 148 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 147v BCB, Carr., B851, f. 99 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 100 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 102 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 102 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 103 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 104 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 104 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 105 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 106 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 107 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 107

1492 Apr 1492 Apr 1492 May 1492 Jun 1492 Jun 1492 Jun 1492 Jun 1492 Jul 1492 Aug 1492 Aug 1492 Sep 1492 Sep 1492 Sep 1492 Nov 1492 Nov 1492 Nov

158 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Date of Baptism

Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Bolognese Godchild Sponsored by Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Source

1493 Feb 1493 Feb 1493 Feb 1493 Feb 1493 Mar 1493 Mar 1493 Apr 1493 Apr 1493 May 1493 May 1493 Jun 1493 Jun 1493 Jun 1493 Jun 1493 July 1493 Aug 1493 Aug 1493 Aug 1493 Aug 1493 Aug 1493 Aug 1493 Aug 1493 Aug 1493 Sep 1493 Oct 1493 Oct 1493 Oct 1493 Nov 1493 Nov 1493 Nov

Annibale II Ippolita Sforza & Laura Giovanni II Annibale II & Giberto Pio Alessandro et al. Bentivoglio (unspecified) Annibale II AntonGaleazzo Annibale II (rep. by Ermes) Giberto Pio et al. Ermes Eleonora et al. AntonGaleazzo Giovanni II Giovanni II’s servant Lorenzo Clara (wife of Antonio) AntonGaleazzo Giovanni II’s servant Lorenzo AntonGaleazzo Alessandro Annibale II AntonGaleazzo Alessandro et al. Alessandro Annibale II Alessandro AntonGaleazzo AntonGaleazzo & Giberto Pio Nic. Rangoni et al. AntonGaleazzo & Nic. Rangoni

Cornelio di Lodovico Bianchi Aless. di Co. Erc. Bentivoglio & Isotta Gio. Franco di Carlo Ingrati & Bart.a Girol. di Matteo Griffoni & Camilla Ant. di Ant. Carrati & Giulia Romana di Ant. Dolfi & Cassandra Aless. di Gio. Marsigli & Liona AntonGal. di Ant. Ercolani & Laura Bart di Cav. Ant. Volta & Polissena Giberto di Ercole Zani & Cassandra Melchiore di Girol. Ercolani & Gentile Pelegrino di Paolo Zambeccari & Fran.a Marc. Ant. di Tadei Bolognini Ippolita di Heronimo Ranuzzi & Aless.ra di Franco. de Vigri & Ant.a Lucrezia di Carlo Bevilacqua & Ursula Alessandro di Bolognini Tadea di Pet. Fornari de Regio & Jacoba Giacomo di Bart. de Negri & Giacoma Ermese di Pet. Alessandrini & Cat.a Gandolfo di Tadeo Fantuzzi & Laura Crist. di Giac. Syrida (?) & Giac.a Gio. Fil. di Tom. Salaroli & Lena Ugone di Giac. Gambaro Annibale di Cesare Calcini (?) Aless. di Giov. dalla Torre & Diamante Gio. di Franc. Scandui & Lucrezia Lucrezia di Gio.Zanetti & Elisabetta Paolo & Ant. (twins) di Ales. Lignano Ant. & Galeazzo (twins) di Gio. Donati

BCB, Carr., B851, f. 112 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 112 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 112 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 112 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 113 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 114 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 115 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 219v BCB, Carr., B851, f. 117 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 117 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 118 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 118 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 148 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 151 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 154 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 158 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 158 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 155v BCB, Carr., B851, f. 120 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 120 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 120 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 121 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 121 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 121 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 123 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 124 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 124 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 126 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 127 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 128

1494 Feb 1494 Feb 1494 Feb 1494 Aug 1494 Sep 1494 Oct 1494 Oct 1494 Oct 1494 Nov 1494 Nov

AntonGaleazzo AntonGaleazzo et al. Filippo cancelliere Asciano Alessandro Alessandro Alessandro AntonGaleazzo AntonGaleazzo AntonGaleazzo

Francesca di Antonio di Tari (?) Leo di Ercole Marescotti & Elena Laura di Gaspare Anelli & Franc.a Franc. di Lor. Speziali & Cornelia Ermes di Napoleone Malvasia P. (?) di Giac. di Etuitia (?) & Costanza Alessandro di Virgilio Comini& Gentile Lodovico di Prospero dall’Arme & Isotta Giacomo di Paolo Pasqualini & Laura Lod. di Gio. Ant. Sangiorgi & Elisabetta

AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 293v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 293v BCB, Carr., B851, f. 132 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 134 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 134 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 135 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 135 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 136 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 137 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 138

159

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

Date of Baptism

Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Bolognese Godchild Sponsored by Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Source

1495 Jan 1495 Jan 1495 Feb 1495 Feb 1495 Mar 1495 Mar 1495 Mar 1495 Apr 1495 Apr 1495 May 1495 May 1495 June 1495 July 1495 July 1495 Aug 1495 Aug 1495 Aug 1495 Aug 1495 Sep 1495 Sep 1495 Sep 1495 Sep 1495 Oct 1495 Oct 1495 Oct 1495 Nov 1495 Nov 1495 Nov 1495 Nov 1495 Nov 1495 Nov 1495 Nov 1495 Dec 1495 Dec 1495 Dec 1495 Dec 1495 Dec

Annibale II Giac. Gamb. cancelliere Giovanni II, AnnII &Ipp.Sforza Annibale II et al. Ginevra Rangoni et al. Genevra Sforza & Ipp. Sforza AntonGaleazzo Leone & his procetore Carlo Alessandro Niccolò Rangoni Alessandro et al. Niccolò Rangoni et al. Ermes et al. Genevra Sforza AntonGaleazzo et al. Alessandro et al. AntGaleazzo & Lucr. Este (?) AntonGaleazzo Giovanni II Giovanni II’s servant Pet. Ant. AntonGaleazzo Filippo canc., Ippolita Sforza, Alessandro, Ginevra Rangoni Ippolita Sforza AntonGaleazzo Alessandro et al. Annibale II & Alessandro Alessandro & Nicc. Rangoni Annibale II et al. Alessandro et al. Filippo cancelliere Giovanni II AntonGaleazzo et al. Annibale II Annibale II Alessandro AntGaleazzo, Ermes et al.

Antonio di Bart. Felicini(?) & Dorotea Rin(?) di Alessandro Fabbri Aless.ro di Lod. Bianchi & Violante Annibal di Sal. Guidotti & Griselda Bent. Ginevra di Thioli (?) of Spilamberto Hector of Annibal Orsi & Costanza Alberto di Giulio Piacentini & Bart.a Girolomo di Mateo Torrelli & Chiara Lucrezio di Dom. Cattani Bart. di Gio. Bursi (?) & Maria Galeazzo di Ant.Maria Fava & Lorenza Anibal di Bastiano (?) Aldrovandi Katerina di Francesco Spagnoli Octavanio di Andrea Fava & Giulia Ginevra of Alessandro Volta & Ippolita AntonGal. di Franco Fantuzzi & Kat.ra Baldassare (?) di Alessandro Dolfi Giovanni di Giuelmi (?) Bart. di Dom. Aurei (i.e. dall’ Oro) Ales.o di Battista (blank) Nicolaus di Andrea de’ Poeti Anibal di Pompei (?) & Francesca Gio. Ant. Maria di Borso Volta & Zoana Ippolita of Aloxious Griffoni Galeazzo di Bernardino dall’Oglio Alessandro di Alessandro Castel Bol. Agamemnon di Gal.Marescotti & Ant.a Nicolo di Lionello Vittori (?) of Faenza Roberto di B. R. Torxani (Torresani?) Annibale di Astorre Piacentini Lodovico di Beltrami (?) Annibale di Ercole Marescotti Domenica di Dom. Balatini Galeazzo Maria di Fil. da Sala (Sandri?) Cristoforo di Astorre Morandi Ales. di Gio. Ant. Machiavelli AntonGal. di Franco Albergati & Lena

AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 358 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 139 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 357v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 359 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 360 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 362 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 147 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 142 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 142 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 368v BCB, Carr., B851, f. 143 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 377v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 379 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 380v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 385v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 385v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 388 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 392v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 393v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 394 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 394 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 396 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 403 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 407v BCB, Carr., B851, f. 149 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 409 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 413v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 413v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 413v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 413v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 414v BCB, Carr., B851, f. 151 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 420 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 421v BCB, Carr., B851, f. 151 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 151 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 152

160 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Date of Baptism

Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Bolognese Godchild Sponsored by Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Source

1496 Jan 1496 Jan 1496 Jan 1496 Jan 1496 Jan 1496 Feb 1496 Feb 1496 Mar 1496 May 1496 July 1496 July

AntonGaleazzo Ascanio et al. AntonGaleazzo Giovanni II Carlo AntonGaleazzo et al. Annibale II AntonGaleazzo Annibale II & Lat.Bargellini Ippolita Sforza et al. Giovanni II

AntonGaleazzo di Antonio Pane (?) Giacobo di Giacobo Grassi Gio.Ant. di Giacobo Giannini (?) Alberto di Lodovico Gessi Cesare di Pellegrino Caccianemici AntonGaleazzo di Mardi (Marchi?) Alessandro di Ant. Recordati (?) AntonGaleazzo di Giac. Rolandi Filippo di Franco of San Pietro Ippolita di Giacobi (?) Gio.Giac. di Domenico Ingrati

AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 428 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 428 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 429 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 152 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 152 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 432 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 432 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 153 AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 444v AAB, FB, vol. 4, f. 449 BCB, Carr., B851, f. 154

1497

(all baptismal records lost)

-

-

1498

(all baptismal records lost)

-

-

1499

(all baptismal records lost)

-

-

1500 Jan 1500 Jan 1500 Mar 1500 Apr 1500 May 1500 Aug 1500 Aug 1500 Aug 1500 Aug 1500 Sep 1500 Sep 1500 Sep

Ferrante di Annibale II Alessandro & Ermes Alessandro Alessandro Alessandro Ascanio (in his name) Ermes Alessandro AntonGaleazzo et al. Annibale II Annibale II AntonGaleazzo et al.

Ferrante di Valchistuma & Fava Ales. di Bald. Fantuzzi & Valeria Vinc. di Giac. Ercolani & Lucia Lodovico di Giulio Piacentini & Ant.a Franc. di Galeazzo Malvasia & Margh. Fil. Maria di Fil. Maria Sacchi & Gian.a Benino di Biagio Benini & Elena Gio. Gal. di Egano Amadei & Laura AntonGal. di Aug.(?) Fontana & Franca. Annibale di Gui. Ant. Mezzavillani & An. Bened.di Lod.(servant of Gio.II B.) & Elena AntonGal. di Alaman. Zanolini & Laura

BCB, Carr., B852, f. 2 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 2 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 4 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 5 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 5 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 7 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 8 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 8 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 8 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 9 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 9 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 9

1501 Jan 1501 Mar 1501 Apr 1501 Sep 1501 Oct 1501 Oct 1501 Nov 1501 Dec

AntonGaleazzo Ermes & M.A.Pallavicino Annibale II Ermes et al. Leone di Annibale II Ermes AntonGaleazzo Giovanni di Salustio Guidotti

AntonGal. di Gio.Batt.Brindi & Dorotea Ant. di Lod. Bulignolti & Cam.(?) Gio. Ant. di Ant. Monterenzi & Nobilia Sebastiano di Ant. Speziali & Elisabetta Egano di Annibale Lambertini Marc. Ant. di Ant. Morandi & V.(?) AntonGal. di Ales. Campanazzi & Santa Salustio di Lod. Cavallina & Leonora

BCB, Carr., B852, f. 11 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 12 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 13 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 17 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 17 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 17 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 18 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 19

1502 Jan 1502 May 1502 Jul 1502 Sep 1502 Sep 1502 Oct

Ippolita Sforza Genevra Sforza Alessandro & Costanza Ascanio et al. (Alessandro?) AntonGaleazzo AntonGaleazzo & Ipp. Bargellini

Franco di Nic. Torrchi & Lianora Gio.Maria di Franco Bolognini & Elena Costanzo di Vinc. Gal. Fava & Bart.a Lod. di Melchiore Manzoli & Paola AntonGal. di Gio. Buosidi & Polisenna Girol. di Carlo dall’Armi & Lucia

BCB, Carr., B852, f. 20 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 22 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 23 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 23 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 24 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 24

161

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

Date of Baptism

Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Bolognese Godchild Sponsored by Bentivoglio Godparent(s)

Source

1503 Jan 1503 Jan 1503 Jul 1503 Jul 1503 Jul 1503 Nov

Alessandro Alessandro Annibale II Alessandro Giovanni II Ermes et al.

Gio. Ales. di Gin. Mancino Legatoria(?) Petronio di Sante Passarotti & Laura Gio. Batt. di Nic. Rossi & Zana Ippolito di Franc. Caprara & Violante Carlo di Carlo Grati & Bartolomea Dino di Nestore di Mino (de Rossi?)

BCB, Carr., B852, f. 27 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 29 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 31 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 31 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 31 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 33

1504 Feb 1504 Mar 1504 Apr 1504 Dec

AntonGaleazzo et al. Carlo & Sforzino Ippolita Sforza Ermes

AntonGal. di Amico Pittore & Ales.a Friano di Nic. Campani & Fiora Alessandro di Lor. Campeggi & Franca. Ermes di Pietro Ranuzzi & Lucrezia

BCB, Carr., B852, f. 35 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 36 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 37 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 39

1505 Apr. 1505 Apr

Alessandro Alessandro

Camillo di Marc. Ant. Griffoni & Isotta Ales. di Melchiore Manzoli & Paola

BCB, Carr., B852, f. 41 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 41

1506 Feb 1506 Aug 1506 Sep

Annibale II Martino cancelliere Carlo

Annibale di Amico Pittore Gio. Ant. di Giac. Zanetti Lodovico di Matteo Griffoni

BCB, Carr., B852, f. 44 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 47 BCB, Carr., B852, f. 47

1507

-

-

-

1508

-

-

-

1509

Alessandro Manzoli

Teodoro di Gio. Ant. Ganferndi (?)

BCB, Carr., B852, f. 67

1510

-

-

-

1511 Jun 1511 Oct

Ermes Alfonso, Ginevra di Annibale II

Annibale di Stazio Zanettini & Sine(?) Ant. di Ant. Caltani & Caterina

BCB, Carr., B853, f. 7 BCB, Carr., B853, f. 12

1512 Jun

Ottaviano

Tiberio di Alessandro Banchetti

BCB, Carr., B853, f. 20

Antonio di Sante, dedicated partisan Annibale II, would inherit signore position from Giovanni II; condottiere for Milan, Florence & Venice; knight; gonfalonier of justice

3

5

Ascanio, canon of S. Pietro; prior of S. M. Maggiore

Isabetta

2

4

AntonMaria Pico della Mirandola, brother of signore of Mirandola; condottiere; count of Concordia Lattanzio Bargellini, member of ruling-class family in Bologna Clara [?]

Costanza di Sante, countess of Concordia

1

pre–1475 (age ca. 15 ?)

pre–1473 (less than 15)

Betrothal Date or Pledge Date (& Age at Betrothal or Pledge)

?

Time between Betrothal / Pledge & Wedding / Profession

?

? 16 Sep. 1475 (Sponsali) (age ca. 15 ?) pre–1478 (?) ? (less than 38) 9 years Jan. 1487 (wife’s dowry papers dated 1 Feb. 1487) (age 18)

hore 21, 13 March 1473 (age 15)

Wedding Date / Profession Date (& Age)

pre–1478 (?) (less than 38?) 3 Feb. 1478: negoLucrezia d’Este, illegitimate daughter of Duke tiations made; 20 Feb. 1478: papal dispensaErcole d’Este of Ferrara tion granted due to & mistress Lodovica cognizione spirituale; Condulmero 29 Mar. 1478: Atti di promesso di matrimonio & Sponsali (age 9) Prior of S.M. (partners= unknown 20 Jan. 1479 (became Maggiore from at concubines) canon) least 1487 (age 11) (19 or less)

Name of Partner, Title, Position or Institution

Name, Title, Position

No./ order of strategy

Table 3.4  POLITICAL DESTINIES OF BENTIVOGLIO CHILDREN (in chronological order; illegitimates in italics)

Bologna

Via Borgo Nuovo within parish of S. Tommaso (Bologna) possibly Palazzo Bentivoglio (BO) Palazzo Bentivoglio (Bologna); Il Casino (Bologna); Palazzina La Viola (BO)

Mirandola; Concordia

Residence after Marriage / Profession

162  Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Eleonora, wife of signore Giberto Pio III, signore of Carpi from 1494; condotof Carpi; tiere; captain general of regent of Sassuolo Bolognese forces from 1484 Camilla, Corpus Domini convent nun

8

9

Francesca, wife of signore of Faenza

7

Galeotto ­Manfredi, signore of Faenza; condottiere

Bianca, wife of signore of Niccolò Rangoni, signore Spilamberto of Spilamberto; condottiere; count; captain general for Bolognese forces from 1479

6

Name of Partner, Title, Position or Institution

Name, Title, Position

No./ order of strategy

11 July 1481 (age 13) (dowry account opened in Nov. 1470 in Florence) 11 July 1481 (age 11) (dowry account opened in Nov. 1470 in Florence) 1483 confessio (age 10)

11 July 1481 (age 14) (dowry account had been opened in Monte in Florence in Nov. 1470 at same time as accounts for Francesca & Eleonora)

Betrothal Date or Pledge Date (& Age at Betrothal or Pledge)

6 months

10 weeks

Time between Betrothal / Pledge & Wedding / Profession

5 years Oct. 1486 (part of dowry received 10 June 1486; paid by 2 Oct. 1486) (age 16) 1494 formal entry 11 years (?) (age 20)

Jan 1482 (age 13); (see #18 here below too)

29 Sep. 1481 (sopradote dated 16 Aug. 1481) (age 14)

Wedding Date / Profession Date (& Age)

Corpus Domini convent (BO)

Carpi; Sassuolo; kept home in quarter of San Piero and in the parish of S. Nicolò di S. Felice (BO)

Modena; Spilamberto; from 1488 Malvezzi home: Cà Grande di San Sigismondo (Bologna). Also lived in following parishes in BO: 1481: S. Procolo 1489: S. Giac. Car. 1495: S. Sigismondo Faenza until 1488; then between Corpus Domini & Palazzo Bentivoglio (BO)

Residence after Marriage / Profession

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

163

1484 (age 9)

ca. 1485 (?) (attended wedding in Rimini with Guidotti that year & was referred to as his wife) (age 10?) pre–1487 (less than 28)

Pandolfo IV ­Malatesta, signore of Rimini; condottiere

Salustio Guidotti, member of Sedici from 1503; gonfalonier of justice; son of Giovanni, a wealthy banker Barbara Torelli of Montechiarugolo, countess Giovanna Malatesta, sister of signore of Rimini

Griselda

Ercole di Sante, condottiere for Florence, Pisa, Papal State Alessandro, condottiere for Florence; knight; gonfalonier of justice

12

13

14

Jan. 1487, at Annibale II’s wedding (age 11 or age 13 ?)

1483 (age 11)

(partners = unknown concubines)

AntonGaleazzo, protonotaio apostolico; prior of S. Giuliano; canon & archdeacon of S. Pietro cathedral; bishop of Bologna (position later recalled) Violante, wife of signore of Rimini

10

11

Betrothal Date or Pledge Date (& Age at Betrothal or Pledge)

Name of Partner, Title, Position or Institution

Name, Title, Position

No./ order of strategy

?

n/a (cancelled); (see #16 here below too)

ca. 5 years (?)

ca. 1 year

?

Time between Betrothal / Pledge & Wedding / Profession

pre–1487 (less than 28)

ca. 1490 (8 July 1495 dowry papers, dated later) (age 15 ?)

1483 (age 11); from 1491 archdeacon (age 19); from 1496 cardinalate discussions (age 23) Feb. 1485 (age 9) ?

Wedding Date / Profession Date (& Age)

Florence; Pisa; owned Casa del Mag.co Annibale I Bentivoglio (BO) n/a

Rimini; rented home of Annibale Gozzadini in Via S. Vitale (Bologna) for 26 ducats/yr. in parish of S. Lucia neighbourhood of San Domenico, within parish of S. Damiano (BO)

Palazzo Bentivoglio (BO) & Rome

Residence after Marriage / Profession

164  Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Alessandro, condottiere for Florence; knight; gonfalonier of justice; (2nd betrothal, 1st marriage) Isotta

Francesca, (2nd betrothal, 2nd marriage)

Isotta, nun (2nd outcome, change from lay to religious life)

16

18

19

Wedding Date / Profession Date (& Age)

(cancelled sometime before 1497); (see #19 here below too) 1494 (age 26); (see #7 here above too) 1497 (age 15 or 18 ?); see #17 here above too)

10 Aug. 1487 reference Jan. 1494 (age 16) made to it in correspondence, at ASMN, AG (age 9); 20 Sep. 1493 (dowry confessione) (age 15) (age 15) June 1492 (age 16 or age 18?); (see #14 above here too)

Betrothal Date or Pledge Date (& Age at Betrothal or Pledge)

Ottaviano Riario, signore 20 Aug. 1488 (marriage of Forlì & Imola; young son contract & dowry provision) of Caterina Sforza (age 5 or 9 ?) ca. 1492 (?) Guido Torelli of Montechiarugolo, count; (age 24 ca.) condottiere (& traitor, assassin) 1497 (?) Corpus Domini convent then San Mattia (age 15 or 18 ?) convent

Giovanni Gonzaga, marchese of Vescovato; brother of marchese of Mantua; condottiere for Italian states, king of France, Holy R. Emperor Ippolita Sforza, granddaughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan

Laura, Marchesa of Vescovato

15

17

Name of Partner, Title, Position or Institution

Name, Title, Position

No./ order of strategy

?

ca. 2 years

n/a

4 years

ca. 6 ½ years

Time between Betrothal / Pledge & Wedding / Profession

Corpus Domini (Bologna)

Guastalla

n/a

Palazzo Bentivoglio & house in Via Castagnoli (BO)

Mantua; Vescovato

Residence after Marriage / Profession

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

165

Sigismondo, canon of San Pietro Lucia

Isotta

Carlo

23

25

26

24

Rinaldo

22

Alessandro Attendoli Manzoli, adopted son of Filippo Manzoli, architectural theorist Galeazzo Bargellini, member of ruling class in Bologna (unknown whether pursued lay or religious life)

San Pietro

Giulia Fantuzzi, of an extremely wealthy and loyal bentivolesco partisan family Francesca (Bersello?)

Leone

21

?

pre–1534 ? (age 26 or more ? )

pre–1503 (age ?) 26 Aug. 1504 (age ?) pre–1505 (age 15 ca.?)

pre–1503 (age ?)

Giacoma di Giulio Orsini, 1501 (age 23 or 25?) of Rome, niece of Orsini ambassador

Ermes, condottiere for VE; knight

20

Betrothal Date or Pledge Date (& Age at Betrothal or Pledge)

Name of Partner, Title, Position or Institution

Name, Title, Position

No./ order of strategy

?

?

?

ca. 3 years

Time between Betrothal / Pledge & Wedding / Profession

30 Sep. 1534 (Sponsali) (age 26 at least ?) ?

?

?

12 Nov. 1505 (dowry ? papers) (age ca. 15 ?)

pre–1503 (age ?) ?

Oct. 1504 (11 Feb. 1507 procura for dowry) (age 26 or 28?) pre–1503 (age ?)

Wedding Date / Profession Date (& Age)

Bologna

Bologna then Ferrara (?)

Bologna

Bologna

Bologna

Bologna

Palazzo Bentivoglio (Bologna)

Residence after Marriage / Profession

166  Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

(unknown whether pursued lay or religious life)

Ottaviano

More possible illegitimates with unknown outcomes: Confortino Giovanni Pantasilea Paolo Ragosa Battista

27

28 29 30 31 32 33

? ? nun at Sant’Orsola (?) Augustinian friar (?) ? canon at S. Pietro (?)

Name of Partner, Title, Position or Institution

Name, Title, Position

No./ order of strategy

? ? ? ? ? ?

?

Betrothal Date or Pledge Date (& Age at Betrothal or Pledge)

? ? ? ? ? ?

?

Wedding Date / Profession Date (& Age)

? ? ? ? ? ?

?

Time between Betrothal / Pledge & Wedding / Profession

Bologna Bologna Bologna Bologna Bologna Bologna

Bologna

Residence after Marriage / Profession

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

167

168 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Table 3.5  WEDDING FESTIVITIES OF BENTIVOGLIO OFFSPRING (illegitimates in italics) Entertainment details (if known) and/or location

Partners

Date & location of proxy and marriage information

Costanza & AntonMaria Pico della Mirandola

Palazzo Pico in Sunday 13 Mirandola Mar. 1473: Costanza married by proxy in Bologna by unnamed men sent by Pico from Mirandola

Guests, gifts, cloth- Personal ing, miscellanea symbol & motto (worn at time of marriage) many scholars, knights and citizens were present at proxy signing in Bologna

Isabetta & Sep. 1475 (?): Lattanzio Bologna Bargellino

Palazzo Bargellini in Bologna

?

pre–1478 (?): Antonio di Sante & BO Clara (?)

Palazzo Bentivoglio (?) or elsewhere (?) in Bologna

?

Ercole & Barbara Torelli

1487 (?): by proxy in Montechiarugolo (?)

Palazzo de’ Medici (?) ? in Florence

Bianca & Niccolò Rangoni

29 Sep. 1481: Rangoni sent Modenese citizens to Bologna with 100 horses to fetch bride

Palazzo Rangoni in Spilamberto/ Modena (Rangoni lived in Bologna from 1479)

­Francesca & Galeotto Manfredi

24 Jan. 1482: Manfredi sent 100 horses & many faentini to Bologna to fetch bride

Palazzo Manfredi in Faenza

Sources

?

Ubaldini, f. 659r. Also in October 1470, Galeazzo Marescotti had wished to marry a son to Costanza—see Cerruti’s report in Duranti (2007), tomo I, pp. 93–94 Lattanzio: reef ASFE, FB, Catastro A, f. 50r; in middle of wave w/ motto: Catastro Croce, f. 150r (for dowry) Hine et tuni obdureo ? ?

Ercole: per troppo amare (no symbol specified)

?

On her ride to Modena, Bianca wore gold cloth; 25 mules carried her trousseau; 4 carriages of guests left Bologna with her for Modena

?

Varignana, p. 462; Ubaldini, f. 676

Francesca wore a gold brocade dress & rode a white horse that wore a matching gold brocade cover; 25 mules carried her trousseau; 2 carriages of women accompanied her

?

Nadi, p. 93; Varignana, p. 471; Ubaldini, 24 January 1482 entry

169

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

Partners

Date & location of proxy and marriage information

Entertainment details (if known) and/or location

Guests, gifts, cloth- Personal ing, miscellanea symbol & motto (worn at time of marriage)

Sources

Violante & 5 Feb. 1485: Pandolfo Violante was Malatesta married to Pandolfo by proxy in Bologna before returning to Rimini one week later

Genevra Sforza accompanied Violante to Rimini and then made a pilgrimage to nearby Loreto

?

Varignana, p. 481; Ubaldini, f. 690r; Ghirardacci, pp. 231–232

Eleonora & Giberto III Pio

3 carriages of women from Bologna accompanied Eleonora to Carpi; many left Bologna on foot

?

Nadi, p. 118; Ghirardacci, p. 235; Varignana, p. 486; Ubaldini, f.694r

urban renewal projects in preparation for festivities in Bologna. Guests wore special tights with Bentivoglio emblem on them; Lucrezia wore many special jewels. Detailed description of guests’ clothes survive. Detailed guest and gift lists survive.

Annibale II: a falcon flying out of its nest with his motto: nunc mihi

Varignana, p. 490; Ubaldini, ff. 695v.–700r.; Tuate, ff. 206r–209v; Nadi, pp. 120–124; ASFE, FB, Misc. F, no. 8; Salimbeni, Epistolario at ASFE, FB, Lib. 13, no.4; Arienti, Istoria delle nozze at ASFE,FB, Lib. 13, no.3; Arienti, Hymeneo; Beroaldo, Nuptiae bentivolorum; Naldi, Nuptiae domini; see Basile (1984, 2014); Ghirardacci, pp. 235–241

­Annibale II & Lucrezia d’Este

ambassadors from Rimini visited Palazzo Bentivoglio, heard mass at S. Petronio, dined at Palazzo Bent., enjoyed 2 days of corte bandita and 1 week of festivities in Bologna; more festivities upon return to Rimini the cortège sent 6–7 Oct. 1486 from Carpi stayed in Bologna for a jousting match, a magna cena & an evening of dancing; more festivities upon arrival in Carpi many festivities in 22 Jan. 1487: Ann. II went to Ferrara for one week including theatrical Ferrara with presentation of 150 horses Plautus’ Anfitrone; and many many festivities in citizens to marry Lucrezia Bologna including 7-hour meal with himself and accompany her 150 waiters, games, to Bologna on dancing, jousting, mass at San Petronio 28 Jan. for 120 women led by Genevra Sforza & 50 women led by Violante Bentivoglio Malatesta

170 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Sources

Entertainment details (if known) and/or location

Guests, gifts, cloth- Personal ing, miscellanea symbol & motto (worn at time of marriage)

large procession w/ religious dramas (mystery plays) held along route

upon entry into BO, Ippolita wore white dresses and rode a white horse

Mantuans heard mass at San Petronio, saw tableaux of life of Saint Augustine there (directed by AntonGaleazzo Bent.), large cena at Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna entertainment in Montechiarugolo (?)

? Laura & Giovanni sailed to Mantua with many Bolognese citizens & 5 chariots of women. The Bolognese returned home 2 weeks later

Tuate, f. 213r; Nadi, pp. 176–177; Ghirardacci, pp. 273–275

?

?

Tuate, f. 220r

July 1495: Griselda & Salustio dowry papers signed (but Guidotti marriage took place between 1485 & 1490)

Palazzo Guidotti in Bologna

?

Salustio: wheel on tripod with motto: utrung utragi resti

ASFE, FB, Catastro B, f. 195 and Catastro Croce, f. 212

Rinaldo & pre–1503: Francesca Bologna (Bersello ?)

Palazzo Bentivoglio (?) or elsewhere in Bologna

?

?

Leone & Giulia Fantuzzi

pre–1503: Bologna

Palazzo Bentivoglio (?) or elsewhere in Bologna

?

?

Ermes & Giacoma Orsini

Oct. 1504: a cortège led by Alessandro Bent. left for Rome to marry Giacoma by proxy and bring her back to Bologna

Giacoma & Bolognese ? cortège entered Bologna thru Porta S. Stefano & paraded her through main square; magna festa in Palazzo Bentivoglio; everything dampened by news of death of Francesca Bentivoglio

Partners

Date & location of proxy and marriage information

­ lessandro ore 15, A & Ippolita 20 June 1492: IpSforza polita entered Bologna with 200 relatives & friends from Milan Jan. 1494: Laura & Giovanni the marquis Gonzaga of Mantua and many Mantuans came to Bologna for Laura

Francesca & Guido Torelli

1494

Alessandro: arm around a woman’s waist (without a Latin motto)

Varignana, p. 529; Nadi, pp. 165–166; Ghirardacci, pp. 266–267

Ubaldini, f. 730 Ermes: pear with initials FCV (reports magna festa); Tuate on written on it 13 Oct. 1504 reports ‘non fano festa alchuna’); Ghirardacci, p. 332

171

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

Partners

Date & location of proxy and marriage information

Entertainment details (if known) and/or location

Guests, gifts, cloth- Personal ing, miscellanea symbol & motto (worn at time of marriage)

Sources

Lucia & Alessandro Attendoli Manzoli

Nov. 1505: Bologna

Palazzo Manzoli in Bologna

?

?

ASFE, FB, Cat. B, f. 190

Isotta & Galeazzo Bargellini

1534: Sponsali were dated (but couple could have been married earlier)

Palazzo Bargellini in Bologna (?) or at Palazzo Bargellini in Ferrara (?)

?

?

ASFE, FB, Lib. 31, no. 13

172 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Table 3.6  ECCLESIASTICAL VOCATIONS OF BENTIVOGLIO OFFSPRING (illegitimates in italics) Profession Name of Bentivoglio child Dates (or grandchild) & dates

Positions held & Institution(s)

Miscellanea

Sources

AntonGaleazzo (1472–1525)

1483 (age 11); 1491 archdeacon; from 27 Feb. 1495 canon until late 1506 when he went into exile

after pilgrimage to Holy Land (June–Oct. 1498), commissioned altarpiece from Francesco Francia; after family exile, he moved to Rome and lived there until his death in 1525

AAB, Canonici di San Pietro, no. 477, f. 44 (27 February 1495)

Camilla (= Suor Pantasilea ? ) (1473–1541)

1483 confessio (age 10); official public entry in 1494 (age 20) 1494 ?

protonotaio apostolico and canon at San Pietro; commendatarius at S. M. degli Angeli; bishop of Bologna (in theory); GII and GSB negotiated for his cardinalate but could not accept it in order to keep Bologna neutral (1496) nun at Corpus Domini convent; served twice as abbess meritamente

died within Corpus Domini at age 68

Carrati, Defunti, ms. B914, ff. 206–207

Isotta (= Suor ? ) (1479/83–post 1502?) Ascanio (1468–1512)

Ubaldini, f. 712; Tuate, f. 288

Engagement to marry Ottaviano Riario cancelled; nun at Corpus Domini then at San Mattia Canon at San Pietro; prior at S. M. Maggiore

20 Jan. 1479 (canon from age 11); prior sometime thereafter nun at Corpus Ginevra (di Ercole 1494 (age 10) Domini convent ‘venne alla Bentivoglio & religione’ Barbara Torelli) (= Suor ? ) (1487–1524) canon at San Pietro Sigismondo 1504, 26 Aug.; served as canon till late 1506 (when he probably followed Giovanni II in exile to Milan)

AAB, Canonici di San Pietro, no. 458, no. 499, ff. 41, 47–48 died within Corpus Domini at age 37

Carrati, Defunti, f. 208; Tuate, f. 288

AAB, Canonici di San Pietro, no. 488, f. 46

173

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

Profession Name of Bentivoglio child Dates (or grandchild) & dates

Positions held & Institution(s)

Miscellanea

Sources

Ippolita Pio (di Eleonora Bentivoglio & Giberto Pio) (= Suor ? ) (1492–1554) Eleonora Pio (di Eleonora Bentivoglio & Giberto Pio) (= Suor ? ) (1493–1556) Ginevra Gonzaga (di Laura Bentivoglio & Giovanni Gonzaga) (= Suor Angelica) (14??–15??) Ercole ­Rangoni (di Bianca Bentivoglio & Niccolò Rangoni) (14??–15??) Alessandra (di Ales. Bentivoglio & Ippolita Sforza) (= Suor Bianca) (14??–15??) F ­ ederico ­Gonzaga (di Laura Bentivoglio & Giovanni Gonzaga)

1500 (age 8) ‘venne alla religione’

nun, vicaria twice, and abbess once at Corpus Domini

died within Corpus Domini at age 62 (1554)

Carrati, Defunti, f. 208

1500 (age 7) ‘venne alla religione’

nun, vicaria twice, and abbess once at Corpus Domini

died within Corpus Domini at age 63 (1556)

Carrati, Defunti, f. 208.

?

nun and abbess of convent of Poor Clares (Mantua)

ASMN, AG (throughout)

?

secret servant for Pope Leo X in Rome; protonotaio apostolico; cardinal from 1517 nun at Monastero Maggiore (Milan)

ASMO, Cart. P.E.

?

?

abbot of S. Benedetto of Polirone; protonotaio apostolico

Coppini her parents heavily patronised Monastero Maggiore; large donor paintings of them by Luini survive on the walls of the convent’s church in Milan ASMN, AG

174 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Lay Bentivoglio who used religious institutions

Dates

Institution

Reason for stay

Genevra Sforza Bentivoglio

1463, 22 Oct.

Corpus Domini

Entry pass after Sante’s death

1463, 9 Nov.

Corpus Domini

1470

S. Giacomo

1475, 23 May

S. Michele in Bosco

1475, 2 April 1478/80

Corpus Domini Corpus Domini

1488, 22 Oct. 1492 1496, 13 Aug. 1505

Corpus Domini & ‘all other convents’ Corpus Domini Corpus Domini Corpus Domini

Francesca Bentivoglio

ca. 1488–1492

Corpus Domini

Bianca Bentivoglio & some of her children

Dec. 1510 (with Corpus Domini papal license due to exiled status)

Sources

ASFE, FB, Lib. 7, no. 28 2nd entry pass after S.’s death ASFE, FB, Lib. 7, no. 29 Participation in orations & ASFE, FB, Lib. 9, vigils no. 16 Entry permit ASFE, FB, Lib. 10, no. 34 Led procession Ubaldini, c. 661 Entry permit ASFE, FB, Lib. 11, no. 31 Entry permit (post Faenza ASFE, FB, Lib. 13, crisis) no. 25 Aiding daughter Francesca ASMN, AG [1492] Participated in baptism feste Tuate, f. 230r Took refuge from earthquakes Ubaldini, f. 732r Temporary safety after 1488 assassination of her husband

ASMN, AG

Safe base in Bologna when visiting friends & family

Ubaldini, December 1510 entry

Genevr a Sforza and Bentivoglio Family Str ategies 

Map 3.1  Political Destinies of Bentivoglio Offspring

175

176 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Bibliography Archives AAB Archivio Arcivescovile, Bologna (FB = Fonti Battesimali) ASB Archivio di Stato, Bologna ASFE Archivio di Stato, Ferrara (FB = Fondo Bentivoglio) ASFI Archivio di Stato, Florence (Archivio Mediceo Avanti il Principato) ASMN Archivio di Stato, Mantua (Archivio Gonzaga) ASMO Archivio di Stato, Modena (Archivio Segreto Estense, Carteggio Principi Esteri and Cancelleria Ducale) ASPR Archivio di Stato, Parma (Fondo Pallavicino) ASRI Archivio di Stato, Rimini BCB Biblioteca Comunale (‘L’Archiginnasio’), Bologna (Manoscritti) BUB Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna (Manoscritti) CAS Carpi, Archivio Storico (Archivio Pio di Savoia) MIBA Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Archivio Falcò Pio di Savoia, et al.) MRBC Mirandola, Biblioteca Comunale (Collezione Generale) MOBE Modena, Biblioteca Estense (Raccolta Campori; Raccolta Ferrari Moreni; Collezione Generale) NYPM New York, Pierpont Morgan Library PRBP Parma, Biblioteca Palatina RIBG Rimini, Biblioteca Gambalunga (Collezione Generale) SAR Spilamberto, Archivio Rangoni SBCC Sassuolo, Biblioteca Comunale Cionini (Carte Pio) VEBM Venice, Biblioteca Marciana (Lettere quattrocentesche)

Manuscript Sources Anonymous. Cronica, BCB, ms. 356. Arienti, Giovanni Sabadino degli. Hymeneo Bentivoglio, PRBP, ms. 1294. Carrati, Baldassare Antonio Maria. Battesimi, BCB, ms. B849, B850, B851, B852. Carrati, Baldassare Antonio Maria. Defunti, BCB, ms. B914. Gigli [or Zili], Giacomo. Cronica di Bologna dall’anno 1494 sino al 1513. BUB, ms. 779. Pagliarolo, Girolamo [Hieronymous Paiarolus] and unnamed Bolognese illuminators. Libro d’ore. 1497. NYPM, ms. M53. Tuate, Fileno dalle [or della Tuata or dalla Tuata or delle Tuate]. Sustanziosa narrazione dell’origine della città di Bologna e suo vario stato dall’anno 305 all’anno 1521, composta da Fileno dalle Tuate, nobile bolognese. BUB, ms. 1438. Ubaldini, Friano deli. Originale della cronaca di Friano deli Ubaldini Bolognese, dalla creazione del mondo et arriva sino al 1513. BUB, ms. 430.

Published Primary Sources Arienti, Giovanni Sabadino degli. Gynevera de le clare donne [ca. 1490]. Corrado Ricci and Alberto Bacchi della Lega, eds. Bologna: Romagnoli-Dall’Acqua, 1888; Bologna: Forni, 1968.

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Basile, Bruno and Stefano Scioli, eds. Le nozze dei Bentivoglio (1487): cronisti e poeti. Napoli: La scuola di Pitagora, 2014. Dallari, Umberto, ed. ‘Carteggio tra i Bentivoglio e gli Estensi dal 1401 al 1542 esistente nell’Archivio di Stato di Modena’ in AMR, series 3, vols. 18–19 (1902); also published as vol. 18 (1900): 1–88, 285–332 and vol. 19 (1901): 245–372. Dolfo, Floriano. Floriano Dolfo: lettere ai Gonzaga. Marzia Minutelli, ed. Rome: Edizione di storia e letteratura, 2002. Duranti, Tommaso. Il carteggio di Gerardo Cerruti oratore sforzesco a Bologna (1470–1474). 2 vols. Bologna: CLEUB, 2007. Eiche, Sabin, ed. Ordine et officii de casa de lo Illustrissimo signor duca de Urbino. Urbino: Accademia Raffaello, 1999. Fantuzzi, Giovanni. Notizie degli scrittori bolognesi. 9 vols. Bologna: Stamperia di S. Tommaso d’Aquino, 1781–1794; Bologna: Forni, 1965. Forestis, Jacopo de (also Jacobus Philippus de Bergamo or Giacomo Filippo Foresti). De plurimus claris selectisque mulieribus. Ferrara: Laurentius de Rubeis de Valentia, 29 April 1497; available online at Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis, On Famous Women, Library of Congress, World Digital Library, https:// www.loc.gov/item/2021667031 (accessed 17 September 2022). Litta, Pompeo. Famiglie celebri italiane. 10 vols. [Vol. 1, Tav. 5: Bentivoglio]. Milan and Torino: Giusti, 1818–1881. Nadi, Gaspare. Diario bolognese di Gaspare Nadi. Corrado Ricci and Alberto Bacchi della Lega, eds. Bologna: Romagnoli dall’Acqua, 1886. Nappi, Cesare. Memoriale mie. Leonardo Quaquarelli, ed. Bologna: Archivio umanistico rinascimentale bolognese, 1997. Pellegrini, Flaminio. ‘Due atti testamentarii di Giovanni II Bentivoglio signore di Bologna’ in AMR, vol. 11 (1892–1893): 303–359. Simonetti, Cicco. I diarii di Cicco Simonetti. Alfio Rosario Natale, ed. Milano: Acta italica, 1962.

Secondary Sources Ady, Cecilia M. The Bentivoglio of Bologna: A Study in Despotism. London: Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford, 1937. Ady, Cecilia M. ‘Francesco Puteolano: Maestro dei figlioli di Giovanni II Bentivoglio’ in L’Archiginnasio, vol. 30, pp. 156–159. Ady, Cecilia M. A History of Milan under the Sforza. London: Methuen, 1907. Antenhofer, Christina. ‘Il potere delle gentildonne: l’esempio di Barbara di Brandenburgo e Paula Gonzaga’ in Letizia Arcangeli and Susanna Peyronel, eds., Donne di potere nel Rinascimento (Rome: Viella, 2008), pp. 67–87. Arthur, Kathleen Giles. Women, Art and Observant Franciscan Piety: Caterina Vigri and the Poor Clares in Early Modern Ferrara. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. Basile Bruno, ed. Bentivolorum magnificentia: principe e cultura a Bologna nel Rinascimento. Rome: Bulzoni, 1984. Berti, Lanfranco. Giovanni II Bentivoglio: il potere politico a Bologna nel secolo Decimoquinto. Bologna: Ponte nuovo editrice, 1976. Boschetti, Anton Ferrante. Famiglie celebri italiane. Milano: Ferrerio, 1833. Bossy, John. ‘Padrini e madrine: un’istituzione sociale del cristianesimo popolare in occidente’ in Quaderni storici (1979): 440–449. Bragantini, Bonifacio. Cenni della vita della serva di Dio, madre Maria Maddalena (Contessa Annetta Bentivoglio): l’umile fondatrice delle povere clarisse negli Stati Uniti d’America. Rome: Tipograf ia pontifica nell’Istituto Pio IX, 1912.

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Burckhardt, Jacob. S.G.C. Middlemore, Trans. The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1878. Cockram, Sarah D. P. Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga: Power Sharing at the Italian Renaissance Court. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Coniglio, Giuseppe. I Gonzaga. Varese: Dall’Oglio, 1967. Coppini, Carlo, ed., San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore in Milano. Milan: Banca Popolare di Milano, 1998. Dean, Trevor. ‘Court and Household in Ferrara, 1494’ in David Abulafia, The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–95: Antecedents and Effects (Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, Vt: Variorum Ashgate, 1995), pp. 165–87. Drogin, David J. ‘Art, Patronage, and Civic Identities in Renaissance Bologna’ in Charles Rosemberg, ed., The Court Cities of Northern Italy: Milan, Parma, Piacenza, Mantua, Ferrara, Bologna, Urbino, Pesaro and Rimini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 244–324. Drogin, David J. ‘Bologna’s Bentivoglio Family and Its Artists: Overview of a Quattrocento Court in the Making’ in Stephen J. Campbell, ed., Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity 1300–1550 (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum distributed by the University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 72–90. Eckstein, Nicholas A. The District of the Green Dragon. Florence: Olschki, 1995. Ettlinger, Helen S. ‘Visibilis et invisibilis: The Mistress in Italian Renaissance Court Society’ in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 4 (1994): 770–792. Flanagan, Eileen. ‘Establishment of the Poor Clares in the United States: Ecclesiastical Conflicts, Vocational Challenges’ in American Catholic Studies, vol. 121, no. 1. (2010): 51–68. Fosi, Irene and Maria Antonietta Visceglia, ‘Marriage and Politics at the Papal Court in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’ in Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy 1300–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 197–224. Gélis, Jacques. History of Childbirth: Fertility, Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern Europe. Rosemary Morris, trans. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Gundersheimer, Werner L. Ferrara: The Style of a Renaissance Despotism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972. Hallman, Mary McClung. Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property, 1492–1563. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Herlihy, David, ‘Tuscan Names, 1200–1530’ in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 4 (1988): 561–582. James, Carolyn. ‘An Insatiable Appetite for News: Isabella d’Este and a Bolognese Correspondent’ in F.W. Kent and Charles Zika, eds., Rituals, Images and Words: Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Brussels: Brepols, 2005), pp. 375–388. James, Carolyn. ‘The Palazzo Bentivoglio in 1487’ in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, vol. 41 (1997): 188–196. Jones, Philip James. ‘The End of Malatesta Rule in Rimini’ in Ernest Fraser Jacob, ed., Italian Renaissance Studies: A Tribute to the Late Cecilia M. Ady (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1960), pp. 217–255. Kent, Francis William and Dale V. Kent. Neighbours and Neighbourhood in Renaissance Florence: The District of the Red Lion in the Fifteenth Century. Florence: Villa I Tatti, 1982. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. L. G. Cochrane, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Kolsky, Stephen. ‘Bending the Rules: Marriage in Renaissance Collections of Biographies of Famous Women’ in Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, 1300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 227–248. Kuehn, Thomas. Illegitimacy in Renaissance Florence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press: 2002. Lubkin, Gregory. A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1994. McLaughlin, Mary Martin. ‘Creating and Recreating Communities of Women: The Case of Corpus Domini, Ferrara, 1406–1452’ in Signs, vol. 14, no. 21 (1989): 293–320.

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Molho, Anthony. Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence. London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Murphy, Caroline P. The Pope’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice della Rovere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie. The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999. Nieuwenhuizen, Paul. ‘Worldly Ritual and Dynastic Iconography in the Bentivoglio Chapel in Bologna 1483–1499’ in Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome, vol. 55 (1966), pp. 187–212. Nussdorfer, Laurie. ‘Men at Home in Baroque Rome’ in I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 17, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 103–129. Pellegrini, Marco. Ascanio Maria Sforza, 2 vols. Rome: ISIME, 2002. Prodi, Paolo and Lorenzo Paolini, eds. Storia della Chiesa Bolognese. Paolo: Bolis, 1997. Ruggiero, Guido. The Renaissance in Italy: A Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Seletti, Emilio. La città di Busseto: capitale un tempo dello stato Pallavicino. Milan: Bortolotti, 1883. Senatore, Francesco. Uno mundo de carta: forme e strutture della diplomazia sforzesca. Napoli: Liguori, 1998. Sorbelli, Albano. Storia della stampa in Bologna. Maria Gioia Tavoni, ed. Bologna: Forni, 2003. Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. Strocchia, Sharon T. Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Terpstra, Nicholas. Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Thornton, Peter. Italian Renaissance Interiors, 1400–1600. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991. Tomas, Natalie. The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence. Aldershot, UK and Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2003. Tuohy, Thomas. Herculanean Ferrara: Ercole d’Este, 1471–1505, and the Invention of a Ducal Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Viazzo, Piero Paolo. ‘Mortality, Fertility and Family’ in David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, eds., Family Life in Early Modern Times, 1500–1789 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 157–187. Wallace, Katherine. ‘Lorenzo Costa’s Concert: A Fresh Look at a Familiar Portrait’ in Music in Art, vol. 33, no. 1/2 (Spring–Fall 2008): 52–67. Welch, Evelyn. ‘The Art of Expenditure: The Court of Paola Malatesta Gonzaga in Fifteenth-century Mantua’ in Renaissance Studies, vol. 16, no. 3 (2002): 306–317. Welch, Evelyn. ‘Between Milan and Naples: Ippolita Maria Sforza, Duchess of Calabria’ in David Abulafia, ed., The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–95: Antecedents and Effects (Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, Vt: Ashgate, 1995), pp. 123–136. Williams, Allyson Burgess. ‘Rewriting Lucrezia Borgia: Property, Magnificence, and Piety in Portraits of a Renaissance Duchess’ in Katherine McIver, Wives, Widows, Mistresses, and Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible through Art and Patronage (Adlershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 77–97. Wood, Jeryldene M., Women, Art and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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4. Genevra Sforza in Her Own Words Patron and Client Relationships from Her Correspondence Abstract: Genevra helped create and maintain important relationships with courtly figures through an exchange of formal letters. As part of a de facto ruling family, she understood how crucial the development of these relationships were. Her correspondence reflects her gendered status within the nuances of the ruling class and that of her correspondents including rulers of Milan, Ferrara, Florence and Mantua. Her letters analysed here, predominantly exchanged with the Gonzaga, demonstrate that she acted as a loyal Bentivoglio consort who desired to serve her family and staff. Overall, she communicated as a traditional fifteenth-century female for the good of her family. In no way did she demonstrate hateful or inappropriate behaviour, psychologically manipulate others or arrange political coups—as legends proclaim. Keywords: Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio, Italian court culture, Italian women’s writing, Gonzaga, family history, fifteenth-century Italy

Introduction In the previous three chapters we have seen Genevra Sforza from multiple perspectives: from how the Bolognese and other contemporaries recorded her, from Milan where Francesco Sforza used her as a representative of the Sforza to create closer ties to Bologna, and from the framework of motherhood as she whole-heartedly contributed to the creation and management of the Bentivoglio cause. Now we will see how she presented herself in her correspondence as both patron and client. Who were her correspondents, what did she write about, and what can we learn about her from her surviving letters? From Bologna Genevra exchanged mail with fellow members of the ruling class across Northern Italy including the Gonzaga in Mantua, Sforza in Milan, Medici

Bernhardt, E.L., Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726849_ch04

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in Florence and d’Este in Ferrara.1 Letters once sent to other places where Genevra had family seem to have been lost, including exchanges with the Malatesta in Rimini, Pio in Carpi, Pico in Mirandola, Manfredi in Faenza, Sforza in Pesaro, and others. Although this chapter will include information taken from all of her uncovered letters located in various archives, due to the most important cache in Mantua, the chapter will focus primarily on what we can learn from her epistolary relations with the Gonzaga. The Archivo Gonzaga is also particularly rich with material once sent by fifteenth-century Bolognese plus it is well organised and in amazingly good condition. And although Genevra was most closely tied to the Sforza, her correspondence suggests that she and the Bentivoglio became quite close to the Gonzaga over the years. Furthermore, focusing on Genevra’s interactions with a single family allows us to observe the development and shifting tenor of a longstanding extended family relationship. This chapter also helps set the stage for the last period of Genevra’s life when she took refuge with the Gonzaga, moving in with Isabella d’Este (to be examined in Chapter Five).

The Bentivoglio-Gonzaga Relationship From the correspondence of over 1700 surviving letters exchanged between the two families in the years prior to the Bentivoglio exile, we see Genevra actively serving as Bentivoglio materfamilias, patron to individual members of her family as well as to members of her large servant staff by representing them and their many wishes to the Gonzaga. She worked hard to maintain positive relations with the Gonzaga, doing her best to promote the Bentivoglio while simultaneously helping the Gonzaga facilitate their desires in Bologna. The Gonzaga valued their developing relationships with others, evident in the careful writing, copying, saving and cataloging of mail. Their extensive archive of the second half of the fifteenth century holds thousands of loose letters once received from hundreds of correspondents across Italy and Europe. The archive also contains over 100 bound books of meticulously copied missives—made of the 1 For names, dates, content summaries and a brief introduction to the 668 surviving letters exchanged between the Bentivoglio and the d’Este, see Dallari; see the originals at ASMO, Carteggi principi esteri. N.B. Dallari’s numbering of letters no longer corresponds to their classification. A large portion of that d’Este archive has not survived; e.g. Eleonora d’Aragona kept copy letter books but only one survives, covering under two months of 1482 yet presents 693 letters. For exchanges between the Bentivoglio and the Medici, see them scanned at www.archiviodistato.firenze.it from ASF, MAP, filze 38–60. Five of Genevra’s letters sent to the Medici have been published; see Sorbelli. For Bentivoglio letters sent to Sforza Milan, see microfilm at ASMI, Potenze Estere Romagna, rolls 141–199 and miscellaneous others where thousands of letters in the fifteenth-century Bologna-Milan carteggio remain uninventoried and unstudied.

Genevr a Sforza in Her Own Words 

Gonzaga’s own letters before they sent them out into the world—so it is thanks to their excellent safekeeping of thousands of original and copied letters signed by secretarial scribes such as Antimachus and Ptolomeo that allow us access to the two-way correspondence between these families.2 As mentioned earlier, incoming correspondence once sent to Palazzo Bentivoglio (as well as any copied outgoing letters) has unfortunately been lost.3 Despite the considerable amount of fifteenth-century correspondence exchanged between these two families, their complex relationship has not been studied. In 1993 one nine-page article outlining the Bentivoglio presence within ASMN was published, yet it considers only a small part of the relationship based on a handful of relevant archival collections, offering only traces of the actual relationship hidden within the masses of papers. 4 Furthermore, the article identifies many of the correspondents writing from Palazzo Bentivoglio to Mantua but fails to recognise the contributions of Genevra Sforza—who happened to have written more in this correspondence than even the prolific Isabella d’Este.5 The article minimises Genevra’s role as an active correspondent for over twenty-five years of both Marchese Francesco Gonzaga and Marchesana Isabella d’Este. Relations with the Gonzaga developed into a couple of marriage alliances. The most important and direct alliance was arranged through Genevra’s and Giovanni II’s seventh daughter, Laura, and the marchese’s youngest brother, Giovanni (finalised with festivities, 1494).6 A marriage alliance between the families was first discussed sometime in the 1480s, when Laura (b. 1477) and Giovanni (b. 1474) were small children. Giovanni was a legitimate Gonzaga but apart from his eventual 2 Isabella d’Este’s surviving correspondence consists of over 16,000 letters written and 9000 received; see Cochram, p. 29. In a different count, Isabella received 28,000; see Shemek, Selected Letters, p. 12. 3 Original letters sent from Genevra and the Bentivoglio survive in many deposits there; see ASMN, AG (Archivio Gonzaga) as referenced in the bibliography below. For helpful guides to the Gonzaga archive, see Luzio; Torelli; Davari. Bolognese lawyer/professor Floriano Dolfo served Francesco Gonzaga during those years, and many of his letters refer to the Bentivoglio, as dispersed within ASMN, AG 1143, 1144, 1145 and 1146; see Minutelli. 4 See Lipparini; the article leads us to believe that there is little fifteenth-century Bentivoglio material surviving in Ferrara, labelling it an ‘archivio fantasma’. But throughout ASFE, FB, many fifteenth-century materials survive: dowries, donations, wills, tax credits, privileges, papal briefs, licenses to enter convents and monasteries, property transactions, condotta contracts, sponsali records, lists of employees, various inventories, etc.; see especially the Catastro Croce, a large miniated record book including entries/ summaries of important documents. Some historians have rightly noted that the Bentivoglio cancelleria papers (letters received and letter books made of copied outgoing letters) were lost with the 1506 exile. 5 Shemek has published a large sample of Isabella’s fascinating and enormous correspondence, including some exchanges with Genevra; see Shemek and http://isabelladeste.web.unc.edu/ (accessed 21 November 2018). 6 The arrangement is mentioned at ASMN, AG, Libro 129, f. 81r–v., 10 August 1487, Francesco Gonzaga to Giovanni II Bentivoglio. For the betrothal, see ASMO, Cart. P. E., letter no. 200 (Dallari, no. 349), 20 June 1491, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Eleonora d’Aragona.

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appointment as signore of a village called Vescovato, he did not hold power in Mantua or fill any other particular position. Their marriage alliance also paved the way for further ties among the families. Within the next five years, two grandchildren of Giovanni II and Genevra were considered in strategies: in 1494, the first-born son of Eleonora Bentivoglio and Giberto Pio was promised to an unnamed illegitimate daughter of Francesco Gonzaga. The Bentivoglio were thrilled to have arranged that link because after arrangements had been set, the Bentivoglio wished immediately to publicise it. The marchese prohibited it however, reminding them (or rather, instructing them) that as the girl was naturale (illegitimate) any publication of the engagement before the wedding would go against custom.7 Then in 1499 the Bentivoglio suggested that another of the marchese’s illegitimate daughters marry their grandson Astorigo, the first-born son of Francesca Bentivoglio and the late Galeotto Manfredi, and presumptive signore of Faenza. The marchese responded to the Bentivoglio secretary that he would consider the idea but the relationship never materialised.8 From such matches made (or merely suggested) between first-born legitimate Bentivoglio sons and illegitimate Gonzaga girls, the difference in social status is made evident. The unions demonstrate ongoing Bentivoglio ambition beyond Bologna yet continue to underline their ongoing subordination to the most important Italian families. To understand more completely the ties that bound the Bentivoglio and Gonzaga, it is helpful to consider the broad web of marriages contracted between them, i.e. among members of their extended families: we see that both families had common relations in many cities including Milan, Ferrara, Carpi, Mirandola, Modena, Pesaro, Urbino, Faenza and Rimini. Many of these marriage connections that tied the extended relations of the Bentivoglio to the Gonzaga hinged on the Sforza side of the family, making it clear again that Genevra and her relations were essential links in the political relationships of the Bentivoglio. It had been Genevra’s position as a Sforza that elevated the Bentivoglio from their provincial status, connecting them to the major families in the first place. Compared with Bentivoglio de facto signori, the Gonzaga ruled as legally recognised signori (or ‘lords’ from 1328) and marquises (from 1433) thanks to investment by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund; and the d’Este ruled as signori (from 1264), papal vicars (from 1332), marquises (from 1308), and dukes (from 1471). Considering these fifteenth-century class-based hierarchies, 7 See the related letters (circa la parentella novamente firmata tra lei et mi col mezo dela Ill. soa figliola nel primogenito del Ill. S.re Ghiberto mio genero) at ASMN, AG 1144, f. 123, 16 February 1497 and f. 125, also dated 16 February 1497, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga and Isabella d’Este. For first talk of the betrothal in writing by Giovanni II, see ASMN, AG 1143, 12 August 1494. Regarding the custom of silence behind marriage plans for illegitimate girls, see Francesco Gonzaga’s explanation at ASMN, AG 2961, Copialettere riservate, Libro 3, f. 45v, 23 August 1494. 8 ASMN, AG 2909, Libro 163, f. 5r, 3 February 1499, Francesco Gonzaga to Cristoforo Poggio.

Genevr a Sforza in Her Own Words 

without Genevra it is doubtful that the Bentivoglio could have married even their highest-ranking children to any level of relations of either the d’Este or Gonzaga. Leading families understood that the Bentivoglio did not have an illustrious or lengthy history and that they were not officially in power—and this attitude thoroughly permeated their lives and the Gonzaga correspondence, including the letters of Genevra Sforza. That notwithstanding, the Gonzaga spent time with the Bentivoglio, fulfilled many of their requests, married some of their kin to them, and in order to do these things, frequently corresponded. Thanks to the cultivation of the relationship on the part of the Bentivoglio, the Gonzaga would eventually help the Bentivoglio by offering them important aid after their exile. At that point, when the Bentivoglio found themselves with no home and few allies, it would be Francesco Gonzaga and his family who would provide them shelter and at a considerable cost. Helping out an exiled family caused the Gonzaga numerous and repeated problems, most significantly with the pope in Rome. So, despite the unequal status, through marriages and children born into those bonds, the families had become ‘blood relatives’—as the Bentivoglio regularly emphasised—and the Gonzaga took risks to help their extended family (to be explored in Chapter Five here).

Review of the Correspondence Only after Genevra had been Giovanni II’s wife for about twenty years did they begin to cultivate a relationship with the Gonzaga, demonstrated by their developing correspondence (see Table 4.1). After the families organised the parentela between Laura and Giovanni, the relationship became increasingly close. As a reflection of it, up to 150 letters were exchanged per year throughout the 1490s and until the Bentivoglio exile of 1506, after which time the Gonzaga hosted many Bentivoglio within their territory. When together, they no longer needed to correspond—so we know less about their relationship when they are all in Mantua as we lose the written record of their real life exchanges. Each family kept its personal interests in the forefront but tried to keep the other side content by answering favours and requests. Many of the letters exchanged were written as personal recommendations for family, staff and friends: to help a friend obtain a political office, be freed from jail, recoup money lent or stolen, win a lawsuit, amass a dowry for a young girl, land a job for a teacher, find a friend’s runaway slave, or recommend someone sent to speak on the sender’s behalf—a ‘living’ letter. Others were more political, relating events and requesting advice or help in times of need, including the coup d’état in Faenza, the civil war in Carpi, and the threat of Cesare Borgia who came to Romagna in search of a dukedom. Grain passage was requested in times of both abundance and famine. Wedding

185

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Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

invitations and preparatory information (requests to borrow silver, tapestries, clothes), invitations to joust, congratulations about children’s births, a few missives about high culture (art, literature and music) and discussions of animals all figure into their fascinating early modern conversations. Over twenty members of the Bentivoglio family exchanged letters with two Gonzaga: Francesco and Isabella. Of the male correspondents, Giovanni II wrote them the most (478 of his letters to them survive); and his secretary Cristoforo Poggio contributed another 209 letters on behalf of him and the family. The marchese answered them regularly: over 357 of his letters were copied before being sent to Bologna. Of Giovanni II’s sons, Annibale II wrote at least 117 times, AntonGaleazzo 54, Alessandro 45, and Hermes 7—as could be predicted, following birth order hierarchy, relative importance and capacity to influence. Some of Giovanni II’s sons-in-law wrote to Mantua from Bologna, too, especially Giovanni Gonzaga (225 times). Of the women involved, Genevra Sforza wrote most often, contributing 40 letters, 8 of which were co-signed by either Giovanni II or Annibale II, and Isabella d’Este wrote back to Bologna 30 times. Lucrezia d’Este and Laura Bentivoglio wrote nearly as much. Oftentimes several Bentivoglio wrote similar letters on the same days, bombarding the Gonzaga with identical intents. ‘Signing’ a letter was rare and meant writing one’s name with one’s own hand at the end of the letter—it did not mean writing out the letter in its entirety; doing that was extremely rare and almost never happened. Signing one’s name distinguished the letter, giving it special importance, and the signature would be noted immediately with manu propria or M.P. recorded next to it. Giovanni II signed 5 times out of roughly 500. ‘Genevra’—who spelled her name in this manner (rather than some of the more usual contemporary variant spellings Zenevra, Zanevera or Zinevra and close to our more modern spelling Ginevra)—signed once.

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Table 4.1  Letters Exchanged between the Bentivoglio and Gonzaga [surviving within ASMN, AG] GSB SB 14621472 1479

1 1

GII AN AG AL

NR GP GG LE

LB

BB

IS

IB

CP JP

FB

DB FD FG IE

misc G

7 1

6

1483

1

10

1484

1

20

1

1485

14

1

1486

19

1487

1

1488

2

22

1489 1

1 1

14

6

13

3

10

3

1

8

4

5

36

1

5

1

1

2

22

6

8

2

20

6

4

1495

2

13

8

4

1496

4

24

3

2

1497

2

60

2

2

1

1498

2

23

8

5

6

1499

1

15

4

3

2

1500

7

24

12

5

9

1501

1

18

15

3

12

10

9

1

3

1+1

1

2

3

2

1

2

9

4

6

4

4

8

2

26 1

8

4

2

3

1

1504

1

19

10

8

3

1

1505

2

14

5

2

3

1

16

8

3

2

[+2 by GR]

2

1

2 1

4

2

3

1

4 2

3

14

2

3

20

4

15

14

12

2

10

11

1

20

36

2

1

69

2

12

2

15

2

1

10

1

3

2

2

4 1 1

6

20

1

27

2

22

1

3

5

12

2

34

1

13

2

11

1

19

7

1

2 20

2

7

1

225 29

1

2

40

2

42 7

6

5

2

33

16

6

1

5 12

1

58 4

5 2

4

20

11

45

1

10

1

478 117 54

1

1

2 1

1

1503

1

1

1

1493

40

8

1

1494

1506

1

9

1491

1502

17 18

1

1492

TOT:

EB

9

1482

1490

ER

209 5

7

2

19

6

1

2

18

2

6

73

357 30

9

Key writers from Bologna: GSB = Genevra Sforza Bentivoglio

GG = Giovanni Gonzaga, LB’s husband

SB = Sante Bentivoglio, GSB’s 1st husband

LE = Lucrezia d’Este Bentivoglio, AN’s wife

GII = Giovanni II Bentivoglio, GSB’s 2nd husband

LB = Laura Bentivoglio Gonzaga, GG’s wife

AN = Annibale II Bentivoglio, GSB & GII’s 1st son

BB = Bianca Bentivoglio Rangoni, NR’s wife

AG = AntonGaleazzo Bentivoglio, their 2nd son

IS = Ippolita Sforza Bentivoglio, AL’s wife

AL = Alessandro Bentivoglio, their 3rd son

IB = Isabetta Bentivoglio Bargellini, GII’s daughter

ER = Hermes Bentivoglio, their 4th son

CP = Cristoforo Poggio, Bentivoglio secretary

EB = Ercole Bentivoglio, GSB & Sante’s son

JP = Jacomo Poggio, Bentivoglio servant

NR = Niccolò Rangoni, BB’s husband

FB = Filippo Bentivoglio, Bentivoglio secretary

GR = Guido Rangoni, NR & BB’s son

DB = Don Baptista da Segna, GSB’s chaplain

GP = Gilberto Pio of Carpi, Eleonora Bent.’s husband

FD = Floriano Dolfo ‘Gonzaga’, the marchese’s informant in Bologna

Key writers from Mantua: FG = Marchese Francesco II Gonzaga; IE = Marchesana Isabella d’Este Gonzaga; misc G = misc. Gonzaga

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Genevra Sforza as Writer and Gonzaga Client Genevra composed appropriately formal, elegant and courteous letters as a reflection of her courtly education, gender and status—and that of her known correspondents—including three dukes of Milan (Francesco Sforza, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Giangaleazzo Sforza), the duke and duchess of Ferrara (Ercole I d’Este, Eleonora d’Aragona), two Florentine de facto rulers (Lorenzo de’ Medici, Piero de’ Medici), and the marchese and two successive marchesane of Mantua (Francesco Gonzaga, Margarita of Bavaria, Isabella d’Este). Genevra acquired an ability to read (and later write) in the vernacular with the help of tutors plus the use of popular textbooks on the subject circulating through Italy; she probably was familiar with some Latin but did not study the medieval ars dictaminis, the ancient art of letter writing in Latin, as it was a highly stylised rhetoric; we also know she did not read Latin well or Arienti would not have had to translate a Latin text about Loreto into the vernacular for her.9 In the 1450s a pedagogical manual based on Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares (Letters to Friends) was written to help instruct ducal children (including Genevra’s half siblings) tutored at the Sforza court.10 This vernacular version of Cicero’s letters sets an example that the children copied and imitated, learning to compose their first letters in an ‘Italian’ version of Ciceronian composition. The formal social skills that Genevra cultivated appear in the appropriateness of every element of her correspondence. Her writing demonstrates that she had been instructed in the art of courtly rhetoric and that she knew how to express herself appropriately regarding style, organisation and content.11 Hers (and most all courtly letters) followed the formula: salutatio (greeting/ introduction), exordium (introduction of the subject), narratio (background nature of the case), petitio (petition/request), conclusio (concluding remarks), followed by the writer’s location, date, and the signature of the writer (usually made on behalf of the scribe who also signed). Genevra was part of a family whose many members were among hundreds of clients to more powerful courts. Genevra ingratiated herself into the web of patronage around the Gonzaga family by fulfilling obligations and requests for them. When they desired fruits, wines and various products, she politely assisted them; clues in the surviving correspondence demonstrate that some letters were lost (or never copied) pertaining to additional material exchanges. Genevra announced mail and gifts and sent various congratulatory letters and household news. Helping the 9 See Chapter One here. 10 For more on Cicero, his sample letters, ars dictaminis, and its teachers and textbooks, see Grendler, pp. 203–229; Webb, p. 19. 11 For fifteenth-century women as letter writers, see Zarri; Shemek.

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Gonzaga when she could, Genevra received wine or other gifts and was thanked.12 She served as a cooperative intermediary when the Gonzaga made requests of her for themselves, their own families, their friends, and their servants.

Genevra Maintaining Family Relations: Complimentary Letters Genevra wrote congratulatory missives for a variety of reasons. In 1490 she wrote to Mantua with congratulations after the marchese earned a certain political position.13 In 1495 she thanked him for having helped her son Annibale II become military captain for the Republic of Venice, a position for which negotiations had gone on for months.14 And in 1498, she complemented the marchese for his military contract recently offered by the duke of Milan, a position that Giovanni II had held in the 1470s: Illustrious and Excellent Lord, my blood relative and honourable Lord. I heard through your letters about your new condotta with the Illustrious and Excellent Lord Duke of Milan. I could not be happier since I desire glory and joy for you as much as I do for my husband. And I congratulate you greatly. Thank you very much for having sent me this news. To you I always offer and entrust myself. Bologna last day of May 1498. Zenevara Sforza de Bentivolys Comittissa 15

In the above example, Genevra was the first in her family to send him her best regarding his new military contract under Duke Ludovico Sforza, a first cousin of hers. Other congratulations from her home were mailed in the following days from AntonGaleazzo Bentivoglio (1 June), Giovanni II (2 June), and Bentivoglio secretary Cristoforo Poggio (4 June). Genevra promptly participated in a hierarchical fashion as a Sforza before other Bentivoglio supported her message.16 Genevra wrote other kinds of complimentary notes: she followed patriarchal tradition by glorifying the arrival of male children, further highlighting their importance. Although technically a congratulatory missive, the letter below attempted 12 See Tables 4.2 and 4.3 (below) for letter details. 13 ASMN, AG 1143, 27 March 1490, Genevra Sforza to unspecified correspondent at Gonzaga palace in Mantua (presumably Isabella d’Este). 14 ASMN, AG 1143, 4 August 1495, Genevra Sforza and Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. 15 The letter is an abbreviated and translated version of ASMN, AG 1144, 31 May 1498, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga. 16 ASMN, AG 1144, f. 251, 1 June 1498, AntonGaleazzo Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1143, 4 June 1498, Cristoforo Poggio to Francesco Gonzaga.

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to console the marchese after his wife bore him a daughter. Genevra (and others as we see below) hoped that God would soon grant him sons: Illustrious and Excellent Lord, my blood relative and honourable Lord. From my heart I greatly desired a male child for you from your Illustrious wife. I heard the news that she had a beautiful little girl. I understand that they are both doing well, which pleased me greatly. I thank your Excellency very much for having advised me of this. And I pray the highest God to make you content with what you desire by granting you male children. With my heart I always offer and entrust myself. Bologna 12 January 1494. Your Illustrious and Excellent Lady and blood relative. Zenevera Sforza de Bentivoliis Contessa 17

In this example it must be noted that Genevra wrote last to the marchese in a series of writers from Palazzo Bentivoglio. The order in which specific letters were sent out of the Bentivoglio home was not haphazard; it was instead calculated based on the importance of the relationship between the writer and recipient or based on the importance of the writer according to early modern status and gender order; other hierarchies and circumstances were considered as letters leaving for the important court in Mantua were never delivered randomly. Niccolò Rangoni wrote first (8 January) as an important condottiere whose daughter would one day marry another marchese in Mantuan territory, Aloisio Gonzaga; his letter was followed by those of Giovanni II, Lucrezia d’Este, and Laura Bentivoglio (all three independent letters dated 11 January), followed by Genevra (12 January).18 The above five Bentivoglio writers (three of whom were women) each communicated the same thing: they had hoped his wife would have borne him a male. These letters are examples of normalised sexism promoted by women and men alike, by a culture that had been ingrained with systemic ideas about gender—as the organisation of their entire society was based on gender and birth-related hierarchies. Based solely on sheer luck, it was of course difficult for some women to produce a healthy male heir, so in this case perhaps Genevra wrote last in an attempt to appear modest, as she had already successfully given birth to eight males herself. In those same years Genevra sent out elated news of other healthy baby boys born to her daughters-in-law living under her roof—baby boys who ‘counted’ as additional legitimate males of the Bentivoglio line, alongside her own male offspring. 17 The letter above is an abbreviated and translated version of ASMN, AG 1143, 12 January 1494, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga. 18 ASMN, AG 1143, 8 January 1494, Niccolò Rangoni to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1143, 11 January 1494, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2109a, 11 January 1494, Lucrezia d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2109a, 11 January 1494, Laura Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga.

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In 1492, Genevra communicated that Lucrezia d’Este’s son arrived thanks to the grace of God and the joy of his relations and that he was a ‘beautiful, healthy and big baby boy’; in this case, Genevra was the only Bentivoglio who sent news to Mantua; writing as a proud grandmother, Genevra’s good news about Lucrezia’s son was surely meant to encourage Isabella whose own half-sister in Bologna had just produced a little boy, suggesting that she could do the same.19 In October 1497, co-signed with Giovanni II, Genevra described to Isabella another boy—the arrival of Ippolita Sforza’s ‘beautiful and healthy son’, praying God he would bring her the same gift.20 Then, finally, twenty years after their engagement (set when Isabella was age six in 1480) and ten years after their wedding, with the arrival of a male to Isabella in May 1500, Genevra and Giovanni II wrote to the marchese together, exclaiming to him that the birth of his baby boy was ‘the best news they had ever heard’. They proclaimed they were so happy about that boy that they could not explain it in words. The couple even sent live messengers to Mantua to congratulate the marchese about the newborn.21 Interestingly, Genevra and Giovanni II did not address congratulations to Isabella or send her an individual letter. Although they were surely happy for her as the mother of the baby, that baby changed the marchese’s life: if surviving into adulthood, the boy would guarantee the survival of his Gonzaga family as legitimate rulers of Mantua.

Genevra Maintaining Family Relations: Gift Exchanges To turn to the world of gifts, much was exchanged between Bentivoglio and Gonzaga women as Genevra, Isabella d’Este, Lucrezia d’Este, Bianca Bentivoglio and Laura Bentivoglio participated in the exchanges. Typical gifts consisted of wine, olives, fish, birds, mushrooms, fruits, nuts, perfume, wax, oil and soap.22 The males of these families also exchanged items, preferring dogs, falcons and horses for tournaments, 19 ‘Madonna Lucrezia vostra cognata e nostra nora amantissima ha partorito tra le 16 e 17 hor uno belletissimo figliolo maschio, formoso e ha tutti li soi membri ed è grande e grosso’, in ASMN, AG 1143, 11 October 1492, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga. 20 ‘Ipolyta nostra ha parturito uno bello figliolo maschio con salute de luno e laltro et cussi preghiamo il nostro signore Dio conceda ad la Excellentia vostra simile dono’, in ASMN, AG 1144, 22 October 1497, Genevra and Giovanni II to Isabella d’Este. 21 ‘Nulla altra cosa al presente ci haveressemo maiormente potuto consolare de questa’ and ‘Cum tanto contento & piacere havemo sentito il jocondo parto de la Illustrissima Madonna Consorte de Vostra Excellentia de uno figliolo maschio, che impossibile seria exprimerlo cum littere’, in ASMN, AG 1145, 18 May 1500 and 21 May 1500, both Genevra Sforza and Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. 22 Examples abound, see ASMN, AG 1142: 18 September 1479, 8 January 1484, 16 & 23 February 1484; 1143: 5 March 1490, 28 February 1491, 22 July 1491; 1144: 2 April 1496, 22 July 1496, 24 September 1496, 3 March 1498, 4 March 1498; 1145, 9 March 1500, 19 January 1503; 2112, f. 124r, 4 April 1497; 2905, Lib. 147, f.

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hunting and pleasure. To turn to specifics, when Isabella d’Este’s mother, Eleonora d’Aragona, requested almond plants, that she wished to transplant in her garden in Ferrara, Genevra replied that they were difficult to find since it was late in the season; in the end Genevra found twelve of the best ones in the land and forwarded them, adding that if those plants were not perfect, she would make sure Eleonora had an abundance of almonds the following year.23 On a different occasion, Genevra responded to Eleonora’s request in early autumn for pomegranates and oranges: pomegranates were not yet ripe in Bologna, but after carefully looking, she found enough of them to fill two baskets, apologising that oranges could not be found.24 Isabella had perhaps learned from her mother of Genevra’s availability to go out of her way to fulfil requests from the fertile Bolognese plain, so she, too, pushed Genevra for items including certain Bolognese plants with good roots for her garden.25 On another occasion when Isabella wrote in search of wine, Genevra replied she would send it at the proper time, around the feast of San Martino (11 November): Illustrious and Excellent Lady, my blood relative & honourable Lady. Knowing that it is not the proper time for your messenger to obtain wine for your mouth, I advised him to return for San Martino when wine will be ready. When your messenger will return at that time, let me know so that I can have the wine ready for him. In every other thing I am always here to please you and in this way from my heart I offer and entrust myself. Bologna 14 September 1500. Zenevara Sforza de Bentivolys Comitissa26

When San Martino came around the following year, it was Isabella who sent Genevra wine and other items.27 Such domestic letters backing generous material exchanges were typical of Genevra’s courteous behaviour and availability to serve. Although Genevra did not write to reveal herself to her correspondents, her letters related to gifts do provide some understanding of her. They testify to her polite and helpful nature, that she understood her position in life as wife of a de facto signore in Bologna, and that she desired to fit into the set hierarchical relations around her and serve members of the Gonzaga family. Participating in repeated favours of course 74v, 16 March 1493; 2992: f. 39r, 3 March 1496, f. 70, 13 July 1496; 2993, Lib. 11, f. 28v, 7 March 1500, Lib. 13, f. 47r, 22 February 1502; 2994, Lib. 18, f. 20v, 7 July 1505. 23 ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1134, fasc. 11, sottofasc. 1, letter 271, 18 February 1482 (Dallari 130). 24 ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1134, fasc. 11, sottofasc. 1, letter 278, 10 September 1493 (Dallari 391). 25 ASMN, AG 2991, Libro 4, f. 3v, 3 December 1493. 26 The letter is an abbreviated and translated version of ASMN, AG 1145, 14 September 1500, Genevra Sforza to Isabella d’Este. 27 ASMN, AG 2993, Libro 13, f. 11r, 23 November 1501, Isabella d’Este to Genevra Sforza.

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demonstrates the submission of the Bentivoglio as clients to the d’Este, Gonzaga and other Italian court families. A final example: Isabella made a request for 400 Ortolan birds that had been captured near Bologna. She wanted Genevra to pay a certain Masarento for the birds and find someone responsible to accompany the birds alive and in good condition to her in Mantua. Isabella excused herself for asking Genevra to do such common things.28 But relying on Genevra to do ‘common things’ demonstrates the good terms on which these women communicated and the eager willingness of Genevra to please Isabella. By successfully fulfilling favours, Genevra developed and maintained trustworthy and amicable relationships with some of the most important Italian women of her time. Although Genevra’s personal character in the correspondence may sometimes seem elusive, it is beside the point. Genevra’s prompt and careful acting on requests was professional; knowledge of Genevra’s unwavering behaviour would have spread into other aspects of these families’ relationships, ultimately influencing larger political relationship between their families and cities—and of course reflecting Genevra’s and Giovanni’s ultimate goal: to promote their own family.

Genevra Sforza as Patron of Her Family Genevra’s main purpose for writing letters aimed more directly at the promotion of her family, including members of her household staff. As a motherly kind of patron to many local clients, she desired respect and success for each individual family member—for the Casa Bentivoglio at large. She had recommendations penned, revealing her family orientation and highlighting the overall Bentivoglio goal of family establishment and stabilisation. Although she did not have the opportunity to do so often, Genevra did serve as a trusted Bentivoglio representative and was sometimes given the responsibility to act in the name of both her family and city.

Genevra Representing Bologna In autumn 1483 during a food shortage, one of Genevra’s missives was composed on behalf of the best interests of her city. When Giovanni II spent time away from Bologna, he relied on her to cooperate with various leaders in diplomatic 28 ASMN, AG 2994, Libro 18, f. 27v, 14 August 1505, Isabella d’Este to Genevra Sforza. Such small ‘gardener’ birds (classif ied in 1758 by Linnaeus as Emberiza hortulana, and called zigolo ortolano in Italian and Ortolan Bunting in English) have been popular together with the beccafico (also called Motacilla salicaria or Garden Warbler) as culinary delicacies throughout the Italian peninsula since ancient times.

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negotiations. Genevra wrote to Lorenzo de’ Medici requesting safe passage for a supply of grain moving from Siena to Bologna: Magnificent, strong and honourable brother. Our Magnificent Government and I are sending to Siena the present representatives who are citizens and great friends in order to buy a certain quantity of wheat for the need of our people, and being necessary that this wheat pass through your land I pray with all my heart that your Magnificency could let it pass freely and quickly as would be expected based on the ancient benevolence and solidarity that has existed and exists between your Excellent Republic and our Magnificent Community and between your Magnificent house and ours. We will receive it with singular gratification and grace from you to whom I always offer and entrust myself. Bologna, the last day of October 1483. Genevera Sfortia de Bentivoliis Comitissa29

Genevra represented the Bolognese people and relied on a long-standing benevolence she claimed between her family and others. The ‘ancient’ relationship between the Bentivoglio and the Medici dated back at least four decades to the 1440s with the ‘discovery’ of Sante as a Bentivoglio in Florentine territory—and the Bentivoglio were not shy about reminding recipients of such details. In another example from 1484, Genevra took political action on behalf of Giovanni II when she agreed to help a certain Gastaldino, keeper of the fortress at the nearby town of Cento. She let the marchese know she had sent for Gastaldino, would hear his case and do what was necessary.30 Although we do not uncover anything else about this story from the correspondence, Genevra’s response implies she read incoming mail addressed to her husband, that she stayed aware of current events and that she had the power and responsibility to summon people to her home, hear their cases, and take action in her husband’s name in his absence. In yet another instance, upon receipt of a letter from Piero de’ Medici addressed to Annibale II, Genevra replied that she had opened and read the letter, promising Piero that a thief would be arrested if he were to appear in Bologna. She added that she was doing as much as if Annibale II had been there himself.31 Cecilia Ady found evidence from reports about how Genevra communicated her husband’s and her family’s political wishes to the Sedici.32 When Ambassador Francesco Tranchedino of Milan came to Bologna, he spoke directly to Genevra about political affairs 29 The letter is an abbreviated and translated version of ASF, MAP, filza 51, doc. 268r, 31 October 1483, Genevra Sforza to Lorenzo de’ Medici. 30 ASMN, AG 1142, 26 January 1484, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga. 31 ASF, MAP, filza 60, 17 July 1493, Genevra Sforza to Piero de’ Medici. 32 ASB, Reg. Lit. 4, 23 August 1488, Sedici to Giovanni II Bentivoglio as seen in Ady (1937), p. 147.

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in times of crises.33 With her husband and their eldest son absent from Bologna on military campaigns or for other reasons, Genevra competently substituted them in appropriate ways according to her gender. She was trusted to represent the Bentivoglio and to make decisions on behalf of her family and for the good of them and Bologna.

Genevra Representing the Bentivoglio Genevra acted on behalf of her husband during the tumultuous events in Faenza involving Francesca and the succession of Astorigo. She wrote for her brother Costanzo and for her son Annibale II when they sought positions as condottieri. She wrote for two of her granddaughters when their honour was at stake following the death of their mother, Costanza. She tried to help an unnamed illegitimate son of Giovanni II. Overall, Genevra was successful in the promotion of her family. In June 1488 after the murder of Galeotto Manfredi in Faenza and Giovanni II’s appearance and capture there by the infuriated townspeople, Genevra and Annibale II sent appeals for help. They wrote lengthy letters to the marchese in Mantua and the duke in Ferrara, together representing Giovanni II. Genevra’s name appeared before Annibale II’s but his name and his signature gave extra weight to his mother’s request—as the young heir of the house in his father’s absence, he would have become the next de facto leader if his father were to have lost his life in the affair. Their first letter to the marchese offered initial information about the armed uprising and seizure of the Manfredi palace; they explained that the Bolognese had taken up arms and wished to save Bologna and free Giovanni II. Genevra and her son appealed to the marchese, letting him know they had hope and faith in his prudence and power and begged him to help. Two days later, after receiving no response, Genevra and her son wrote again, emphasising the importance of intervention: Illustrious Lord my blood relation and honourable Lord. We believe that your Excellency has heard the news of Faenza and the situation of our illustrious husband and father. By Florentine commissary news arrived that Giovanni II has been taken to Modigliani and is being held in the fortress. Even though he is being well treated and honoured, we very much desire his liberation, which we are working hard to obtain. We hope that with the help of good relatives and friends and with the great justice that your Signoria upholds that soon 33 ASM, PER, B187, 4 January 1496 as seen in Ady (1937), p. 119.

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he will be freed. We wanted to let your Excellency know of the situation. In you we have hope and faith and we believe when in need you would offer every aid and favour considering the aff inity and the ancient friendship and benevolence that has always existed between your illustrious house and ours. We would do the same for any of your needs and with as much good will as can be expressed. We will let your Excellency know what happens with our illustrious husband and father. We continually offer and entrust ourselves to you. Bologna 6 June 1488. Zenevera Sfortia & Hannibal de Bentivolijs34

This letter focuses on hopes that the marchese would help them because they were tied by blood and enjoyed a long-time friendship. The Bentivoglio repeatedly considered themselves blood relations even though the direct match between the two families through Laura and Giovanni’s betrothal would not be concluded for another six years. Despite appeals by Genevra, her son, and Carlo Grato of the Sedici, the marchese never responded.35 Duke Ercole did reply: neither Bologna nor Milan should make war on Faenza and taking up arms would further endanger Giovanni II.36 Giovanni II was eventually released to Lorenzo de’ Medici who retained him until he promised to leave Faenza alone.37 From evidence in the correspondence, Genevra lobbied hard to free her husband. The marchese’s silence may have been due to a lack of desire to deal directly with a family not officially in power over issues that had to be treated with great care by someone even more powerful, his father-in-law, Duke Ercole d’Este. As a client, with or without response from the recipients of her letters, Genevra tried her best to attract help from powerful neighbours—and she eventually received it. Another example of Genevra’s writing for the Bentivoglio can be seen in a different sort of letter that attempted to help an illegitimate son of her husband’s. On 16 July 1505 Giovanni II wrote to Mantua seeking for his unnamed eighteen-year-old a position as a soldier (homo d’arme) under the marchese.38 He described his boy as being of good appearance, fairly virtuous, and proficient with arms. One week later Francesco replied that he could not take the boy at that time;39 but by month’s end, Genevra decided to try to help him through Isabella. Her mention of the young 34 The letter above is an abbreviated and translated version of ASMN, AG 1143, 6 June 1488, Genevra Sforza and Hannibal de Bentivolijs to Francesco Gonzaga. 35 Grato’s letters are at ASMN, AG 1143, 11 and 13 June 1488. 36 ASMO, Cart. P. E., busta 1490/1 (Bologna), 5 June and 13 June 1488; ASMO, Cart. P. E., busta 1134, fasc. V, f. 261r–v, 9 June 1488. 37 For Manfredi’s murder and its political implications, see Medri. 38 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 121, 16 July 1505, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. 39 ASMN, AG 2913, Libro 187, f. 62v, 23 July 1505, Francesco Gonzaga to Giovanni II Bentivoglio.

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man was superfluous, meant to be a reminder of the boy’s unresolved position in a letter about a different topic: Illustrious and Excellent Lady, blood relative and honourable Lady. Regarding the letter you wrote to my husband about his son whom he wished to place with you: I will say little since my husband is not in the city now. Contrary to the postscript, I am sure that the cloak of your boy has not been found and there is no clue about its whereabouts, which greatly pains me. Your Excellency can be certain that if it was worth 10,000 ducats that that amount will be returned to you. I offer and entrust myself to you with my heart. Happiest farewells. Bologna. Last day of July 1505. Most dedicated to your Excellency. Zenevera Sforza de Bentivolys Comit.sa40

By addressing Isabella in a letter that focused on another matter, Genevra began the note with matters again related to the young man. Genevra reintroduced the question of her husband’s son, hoping to help him; it is as an example of how she considered each Bentivoglio child: the circumstance of each individual member of the family was important to the welfare of everybody. With the previous examples and others, Genevra acted on behalf of her family locally—from home and in writing—but did not go as far for her household clients as some of her female Medici peers who, for example, personally travelled to places like Rome to negotiate favours.41 Nor did Genevra master patron-client relationships on the level of Felice della Rovere who skilfully mediated between her natal (della Rovere) family and her marital (Orsini) family, serving as their informal regent, and successfully advancing her brother to cardinal. 42

Genevra Representing Herself Genevra also wrote letters regarding her own desires. In two of her earliest surviving missives (as examined in Chapter Two here), she recommended herself to the duke of Milan after he suggested she become wife of Giovanni II. Her innocuous words appear simple but when set in context, they masked quite a lot of information, understanding and sentiment—as her fate had been entirely up to the duke. Another six of Genevra’s letters appear elusive since they do not reveal 40 The letter is an abbreviated and translated version of ASMN, AG 1146, 31 July 1505, Genevra Sforza to Isabella d’Este. 41 Tomas, pp. 124–163. 42 Due to her authority in addition to her interest in politics, power and diplomacy, Murphy claims Felice became Rome’s (and Italy’s) most powerful woman; see Murphy, pp. 117, 122, 176, 202, 229.

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specifics about what she desired and were instead ‘living letters’, announcing she was sending someone to speak about something on her behalf.43 In these cases she believed that a conversation regarding a request between a chosen trusted speaker on her behalf and her patron was more effective than words in ink. Sometimes Genevra stated on paper what she wanted: once she petitioned the d’Este with a request that the duke’s medical doctor, Francesco Benci, remain longer to help f ind a cure for her ailments; 44 and once she wrote Francesco Gonzaga in an attempt to recover money owed her by certain Mantuans. 45 Unfortunately, we do not know the effect of these letters to discover whether or not (or to what extent) she was successful with requests on her own behalf. In absence of full closure, it seems that the letters she penned for her family and herself were successful; silences could at least sometimes demonstrate that her missives helped settle issues raised.

Genevra Representing the Bentivoglio Staff and Miscellaneous Others Genevra served as a patron to many when she composed letters to request help for members of her household staff (and their own relations) including her tailor; a personal servant; a brother-in-law of one of her unnamed servants; the widow of a relative of the household chancellor; and a cousin of a servant. 46 She also recommended various other Bolognese whose connections to her may or may not be traceable directly to her household including a woman and her daughters in need of judicial help with the podestà in Ferrara, a Jewish friend who had to obtain a dowry, another Jew who wished to recoup money stolen from him, a man who wished to obtain a government position in Florence, and others. Genevra clearly had a reputation as a helpful patron in Bologna—as someone with important connections who received the public often; one client claimed he went to Genevra’s court every day and that without her encouragement he and others would be ‘dead and desperate’ (‘Omni zorno andiamo a corte da Madona Zianevera […] ce conforta assai, a quest’ora saressemo morti et desperati’). 47 Florentine Ambassador 43 See Tables 4.2 and 4.3 for details. 44 See her letter requesting the extension of his license, originally granted for four days, ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1134, fasc. 11, sottofasc. 1, 19 November 1482. The request could have had to do with complications related to Ermes (born around that time). N.B. Genevra served as godmother to Benci’s son, Innocenzo, born less than two years after he worked for her; see Carrati, Battesimi, ms. B851, f. 25. 45 ASMN, AG 1142, 7 November 1483, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga. 46 See Tables 4.2 and. 4.3 below for details. 47 ASFI, MAP, f. 78, c. 354, 24 November 1503, Giambattista Tonello to Caterina Sforza, as seen in Pasolini, p. 485.

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Pandolfo Collenuccio also knew of Genevra’s political capacities and referred to her as ‘Madonna Ginevra to whom every event is communicated and to whom all Bologna turns for help’. 48 Meeting with local citizens in need of political or legal assistance was something that other ruling-class women did, including Lucrezia Borgia, known also for having given alms to those in need. 49 In many letters Genevra’s helpful household orientation is revealed alongside her benevolence toward Bolognese who in turn served and protected her family. A specific example can be seen in an intercession made for an unnamed Mantuan woman who may have been a relation of someone of the Bentivoglio staff or someone who came to Bologna specifically seeking help from Genevra who found the woman’s cause worthy enough to recommend her to Francesco Gonzaga: Illustrious and Excellent Lord: Blood relative and honourable Lord. The woman here before your Excellency has come to recover certain lands and goods of hers that were taken from her by others, by some of her relatives, as your Excellency will hear from her. I very much desire her well-being. I hope that she will be seen and favoured. With this letter I wanted to recommend her to your Illustrious Lord to whom I affectionately pray that you will be happy in the name of justice; and due to your relationship to me I hope she will soon be expedited and on her way. I know that my intercession for her is worth much. As I hope and as she desires: I received her in an unusually pleasant way. I always offer and entrust myself to your Excellency. Bologna 6 September 1492. Zenevera Sforza de Bentivoliis Comitissa50

Genevra wrote to the marchese representing a woman from his city who needed help recovering property from relatives in his territory. Genevra clearly believed enough in the cause to grant her a letter. Genevra received, compassionately heard, and promoted someone in need, despite their condition. We hear nothing more in the correspondence—so we do not know if the case was resolved or ignored. But we can imagine what the marchese might have thought about hearing the case of an unnamed female client of another subordinate female regarding the handling of justice within his own territory. Around the same time Genevra wrote f ive letters in support of long-term Bentivoglio secretary Cristoforo Poggio.51 At the conclusion of one of those letters 48 ASF, MAP filza 43, 64 and filza 26, 568, 10 February 1490 and 13 March 1491 as seen in Ady (1937), p. 147. 49 Williams, p. 80. 50 The letter above is an abbreviated and translated version of ASMN, AG 1143, 6 September 1492, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga. 51 ASMN, AG 1143, 9 July 1491, Genevra Sforza to unspecified member of Gonzaga family; ASMN, AG 1143, 13 November 1493, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1144, Genevra Sforza to Isabella

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Genevra signed her name, leaving us with the sole surviving example of her signature in her own hand (and with an example of her beautiful penmanship): Illustrious and Excellent Lord, my blood relative & honourable Lord. Your and our Cristoforo Poggio is coming to see you for the distress some things have caused him with the intention of demonstrating fully that on his side are justice, honesty and equity. I did not want to let him arrive without this note even though I am sure that he does not need my recommendation for the most just nature of your Excellency and for knowing Cristoforo to be a true and faithful servant. I recommend him much and pray with my entire heart that he is given justice. I would be very happy and enormously in debt to you since Cristoforo is very dear to me, and I again recommend him and offer and entrust myself to you always. Bologna 13 November 1493. Genevra Sforcia de Bentivoglio in my own hand52

Genevra’s letter was one of three M.P. notes sent by the Bentivoglio on the same day, including one by Lucrezia d’Este whose letter appears to have been entirely composed and signed with her own hand—proof that she had poured her soul into it.53 The letters demonstrate Genevra’s part in a long-term Bentivoglio attempt to help their secretary with several of his Mantua-related problems. Poggio-related correspondence demonstrates that his Mantuan wife had lost possessions that had been confiscated by Giovanni Maria Gonzaga, the marchese’s brother. Although many Bentivoglio letters in support of him were general and ambiguous, some clearly attempted to show that Mantuans owed Poggio money and that justice had been long due. Letters of recommendation composed by the Bentivoglio over the course of many years attempted to help him resolve a variety of extremely delicate matters. Genevra Sforza’s only surviving personally signed letter was part of a series of Bentivoglio missives aimed at supporting their chancellor—but the marchese never responded to any of those notes. About two weeks after Genevra’s letter (quoted above), Annibale II wrote him, recommended another Bentivoglio servant, the family’s secretary emeritus, Filippo, who also wished to repossess some confiscated property in order to give it to his daughter for her inheritance. Floriano Dolfo wrote in great praise of Filippo describing how he had served the Bentivoglio faithfully d’Este; ASMN, AG 1144, 28 July 1496, Genevra Sforza to Jacobo Hadriaco; ASMN, AG 1145, 12 June 1500, Genevra Sforza to Isabella d’Este. 52 The letter is an abbreviated and translated version of ASMN, AG 1143, 13 November 1493, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga. 53 See two other recommendations of Poggio by Lucrezia d’Este and Giovanni II Bentivoglio, both at ASMN, AG 1143, 13 November 1493.

Genevr a Sforza in Her Own Words 

for thirty-six years and dedicated his life to Giovanni II’s successes, suggesting that Filippo should be praised and favoured by the marchese since his position had always been beneficial not only to the Bentivoglio but also, by extension, to the Gonzaga.54 Finally, on 10 December 1493 the marchese replied—but not to those who had been written to him including Annibale II, Genevra, Lucrezia and Dolfo. Francesco wrote directly to Giovanni II, as paterfamilias, and he responded with rage, criticising Giovanni II and his family severely, stating that he did not want to hold anyone’s possessions unfairly, and that Poggio’s case had already been resolved in his favour. The marchese told Giovanni II that members of his family were stepping too far. The persistent and numerous Bentivoglio letters sent with simultaneous requests for the Olivieri brothers (beginning in the 1480s, as we will see below) and for many other servants, staff, and other random Bolognese must have factored into the equation as well. Francesco repeated that he would be glad to help Giovanni II or his own children but told him not to write with requests for household staff. The marchese then cited universal laws based on just statutes involving confiscations, statues he declared were valid not only in Mantua but also in Bologna, throughout Italy and all over the world, statutes that the Bentivoglio servants apparently did not think applied to them. The marchese suggested the Bentivoglio demonstrate more respect for him and the Gonzaga than for their servants (‘mi pareria dovesse far più stima de noi che de loro’) by not attempting to interfere any longer with universal laws and the affairs of his household.55 Despite the marchese’s stance in early December, the two families once again resumed their intense correspondence by the end of that year—after all, Laura was to wed his brother just one month later. Francesco’s angry December response had probably also meant, more generally, that he wanted the Bentivoglio to understand their subordinate place in Italian ruling-class society before the parentela would be set in January. In time, it is unclear whether the Bentivoglio understood (or accepted) their scolding or their status—or whether Francesco Gonzaga had had the facts before him when he responded. Several additional letters involving the Poggio case survive in the correspondence, and by 1503 Poggio regained his lost Mantuan possessions; and at that time the Bentivoglio wrote and signed several M.P. letters thanking the marchese for his help.56 Ap54 ASMN, AG 1143, 30 November 1493, Floriano Dolfo to Francesco Gonzaga. 55 Part of his lesson reads, ‘non è soltanto in mantoa: ma a bologna et in tuti li degni luoci de Italia: se usa et observa civilmente come justissimo et convenientissimo como è noto ad tuto il mondo benche forse non pare cossi ali decti suoi cancelleri’. See ASMN, AG 2961, Copialettera riservata, Libro 2, ff. 59r–60r, 10 December 1493, Francesco Gonzaga to Giovanni II Bentivoglio. 56 See Giovanni II’s thanks for expediting Cristoforo Poggio’s case at ASMN, AG 1145, 26 July 1500 (M.P.); Giovanni II sent an ambassador to Mantua to discuss the resolution of Poggio’s problems, see ASMN, AG

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parently Poggio’s case had not been justly settled prior to 1493, as the marchese had adamantly declared. Another example of an ongoing dilemma regarding a staff member appears in a letter composed by Genevra for Zoane deli Olivieri, a household servant who worked directly for the casa of Genevra and who came from Acquanegra, a town within Mantuan territory—which is enough information to establish another tricky situation. In 1487, in order to award Zoane’s ‘good service, merit, and virtue’, Genevra tried to help him obtain from the marchese a benefice at Santa Maria della Beverara, also within Mantuan territory. Genevra convinced Lucrezia d’Este to write on that same day in support of Zoane.57 At later dates, other Bentivoglio lobbied in favour of Zoane in an attempt to gain the benefice, and by 1491, Annibale II began pushing for it in the name of his brother, Don Bernardino Olivieri.58 Twelve years later Giovanni II was still attempting to obtain it.59 In April 1499 the marchese finally responded nonchalantly: he had promised the benefice to someone else.60 Taking everyone’s interests into consideration and writing while continuously reflecting appropriate respect, status, needs and desires, it is fair to say that these patron-client relationships involved incredible amounts of patience on everyone’s part. In 1503, Bentivoglio persistence in this case with the Gonzaga reappears as Genevra wrote to Francesco and Isabella requesting grace for a relation of the Olivieri;61 and by 1504, seventeen years after Genevra’s initial request of the benefice, Giovanni II was pressing the marchese for a different Mantuan benefice.62 Genevra did not give up; she truly wished to help her faithful servant with the hope of obtaining a new and seemingly more modest wish for him: Your most illustrious and excellent Lord: My blood relation and most honourable Lord. If there were something nearly impossible for me to do for you, I would still attempt to do it based on the respect I have for you. I feel confident when I know that this sentiment is reciprocal. Zoane of Acquanegra, my dear servant, 1145, 18 August 1500 (also M.P.); Giovanni II sent Poggio’s son to Mantua to speak about an undisclosed ‘something’, see ASMN, AG 1145, 13 January 1501; Giovanni II was very grateful to the marquis for allowing Poggio to regain his possessions, see ASMN, AG 1146, f. 2, 1 January 1504; see also a letter signed M.P. by each one of Giovanni II’s sons (Annibale II, AntonGaleazzo, Alessandro and Hermes), in recommendation of Poggio at ASMN, AG 1146, f. 40, 1 January 1504. 57 ASMN, AG 1143, 6 March 1487, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1143, 6 March 1487, Lucrezia d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga. 58 ASMN, AG 1143, 14 October 1491, Annibale II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2903, f. 82r, 3 March 1491, Francesco Gonzaga to Giovanni II Bentivoglio. 59 ASMN, AG 1144, f. 364, 6 April 1499, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. 60 ASMN, AG 2908, Libro 161, f. 50v, 18 April 1499, Francesco Gonzaga to Giovanni II Bentivoglio. 61 ASMN, AG 1145, 17 December 1503, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga and Isabella d’Este. 62 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 19, 6 July 1504, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga.

Genevr a Sforza in Her Own Words 

came with his family to live in Bologna and to work for me. It is necessary for his well-being to obtain some grain from his land at Acquanegra, about 100 stava of it. I beg you as much as I can to do something nice for me. Please concede to Zoane the possibility of obtaining this grain and let him bring it to this city for his needs. I will be greatly obliged. I offer my heart always and entrust myself to you. Happiest farewell. Bologna 9 October 1504. Zenevera Sforza de Bentivoliis Comittss.63

With the above letter sent during a time of famine, Genevra asked the marchese to help her servant obtain grain grown on his own property at Acquanegra. In that time of desperation, closure from Mantua arrived fairly promptly, nine days later: Genevra received word that her request to obtain that grain would be impossible to fulfil. Not only did the marchese refuse Genevra’s request for any benefice for Zoane or his brother over the course of nearly two decades, he would reject a grain request in a time of need. The marchese wrote that from that time forward Genevra would be an example for all others requesting food from Mantuan lands, explaining that if he could go so far as to deny her request, he could reject anyone’s petition—or at least that is how he politely described his position to Genevra.64 Over the years Francesco Gonzaga’s responses sent to Bologna underline the careful diplomacy he practiced with some of his many subordinates. He maintained a close relationship with the Bentivoglio, and he succeeded at leaving Genevra and the Bentivoglio (and their clients) with hope over the years that they might eventually be considered. Some of his replies openly negating what could have been relatively simple requests serve as examples of Genevra’s and the Bentivoglio’s misunderstanding of their position in Bologna—or perhaps of their audacity to test limits and force responses. The negative responses are evidence of inequalities, of their lack of influence and power, and of their failure on some levels as clients of the Gonzaga. Although Genevra unwaveringly displays interest and eager generosity towards her own clients, the responses (including non-responses) show that her appeals sometimes carried little weight. The denial of the importance of Genevra and the Bentivoglio as clients must have been humiliating (or infuriating) to them at times. Their relationship was complicated though. By 1493 when Francesco had had enough and attempted to teach the family a clear, strong and critical lesson, we 63 The letter above is an abbreviated and translated version of ASMN, AG 1146, f. 44, 9 October 1504, Genevra Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga. 64 See his letter at ASMN, AG 2912, Libro 184, f. 33v, 18 October 1504, ‘…Volemo che la S.V. sii exempio ali altri ch havessino animo di farni tal dimanda pch negandola a lei, alaqual cu difficulta potemo negare cosa alcuna’.

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see that he had been wrong to explode over a matter that ultimately demonstrated Mantuan justice had not been served. It is apparent that on some levels the Bentivoglio had long been annoying the marchese—yet at the same time he agreed to marry his brother and one of his own illegitimate daughters to them and intensify their family bonds. Possibly some of the misunderstanding with the marchese and marchesana could have had to do with their being of another generation, the age of Giovanni II’s and Genevra’s own children. It is clear that the marchese wanted to mark his territory and exercise his authority by putting the Bentivoglio and Bologna in their place—something that the duke of Milan had done in the 1460s when he forced Giovanni II (and Bologna) into an unprecedented relationship through the re-use of Genevra as a Sforza bride. And perhaps Genevra and Giovanni II, as elders, knowingly overstepped blurred lines in their requests with the younger Gonzaga because they knew they could, with little to lose by making requests. After all the marchese had become ‘uncle’ to many Bentivoglio grandchildren and ‘grandfather’ to some of Genevra’s and Giovanni II’s many great-grandchildren. Whether or not the marchese considered them elderly grasping parvenus of little sophistication, bonds between them could have never been fully severed as they were family many times over; fundamentally they existed as one enormous and powerful Northern Italian ruling-class clan.

Genevra’s Absences in the Correspondence Like other wives of rulers, Genevra had to follow politics responsibly and understand how to maintain her family’s best interests when her husband was absent. But under more normal circumstances when Giovanni II was in Bologna, Genevra tended to remain silent, following political events but acting appropriately subordinate, according to the ‘natural’ gendered hierarchy of the times. Proof of Genevra’s lesser role in leadership—or rather, of her understanding of fifteenth-century gendered realities—is evidenced by her absence in some of the key challenges that faced the Bentivoglio of the late fifteenth century. For example, we do not see her writing anyone about the effects of the Malvezzi conspiracy (November 1488).65 She remained silent during the civil war in Carpi (mid–1490s), during which time Giovanni II defended his son-in-law, Giberto Pio, against the marchese who protected 65 In relation to the Malvezzi behaviour and related punishment, see the exchange of ten letters among Giovanni II Bentivoglio, Francesco Gonzaga and their ambassadors at ASMN, AG 1143, 27 November 1488, 29 November 1488; 1 December 1488, 2 December 1488, 4 December 1488; ASMN, AG 2903, f. 4r, 1 December 1488.

Genevr a Sforza in Her Own Words 

his, Alberto Pio.66 While Giovanni II also actively participated in heated debates about Cesare Borgia’s attempt at creating a personal duchy in Romagna (between 1499 and 1503), Genevra never played an independent part in that major problem. Genevra may have been consulted by Giovanni II but it was he who took the lead in the dilemma and in the correspondence about it, as we see in over eighty of his surviving letters.67 Genevra’s name can be seen at the bottom of four letters about Borgia—but none of her letters were her individual work; three were identical to pieces also sent on the same days by Giovanni II or co-signed with him. It is significant though that two of these were addressed to Isabella d’Este. The favours Genevra did for Isabella and the ‘simple’ gifts exchanged over the years laid the groundwork for a situation in which Genevra could ask for an important favour. However, when the biggest crisis for the Bentivoglio came in 1506 when Giovanni II engaged in intense debates with Mantua about Bologna’s position before papal and French troops invaded the Bolognese contado, hundreds of letters were exchanged about the matter—but Genevra never wrote one. By then she was an elderly woman who surely followed Roman and French news, but she stepped aside to let Giovanni II deal with it in his name alone. Perhaps the most disappointing absence in this correspondence pertains to high culture. We know Genevra was close to much cultural production in Bologna for over fifty years yet there is no trace of Genevra’s direct participation in the world of art, music or literature within the correspondence—and although we know full well that she was active in these fields in Bologna as she and her husband commissioned both lay and religious art, built and decorated an impressive and absolutely enormous palace, were involved in literary production and printing, had their children educated with dance and music (and had them painted singing), and held parties and banquets involving multiple elements of high culture. It is also noteworthy that Giovanni II never wrote a single letter to the Gonzaga about high culture either. Instead, it was Annibale II, AntonGaleazzo and Giovanni Gonzaga who exchanged letters from Bologna with Isabella about such matters—maybe here 66 See instead Giovanni II Bentivoglio, Francesco Gonzaga and Isabella d’Este’s many exchanges about their sides in the complex matter at ASMN, AG 2961, Copialettere riservate, Libro 4, f. 133r, 5 December 1495; ASMN, AG 2907, Libro 154, f. 70v, 11 March 1496; ASMN, AG 1144, f. 30, 13 March 1496; ASMN, AG 2907, Libro 154, f. 72v, 16 March 1496; ASMN, AG 2907, Libro 155, f. 49r, 21 March 1496; ASMN, AG 1144, f. 31, 21 March 1496, ASMN, AG 1144, f. 33, 28 March 1496; ASMN, AG 1144, f. 40, 24 May 1496; ASMN, AG 2992, f. 25, 26 May 1496; ASMN, AG 2992, f. 50, 19 June 1496; ASMN, AG 1144, f. 44, 20 June 1496. The civil war was resolved thanks to intervention by the duke of Ferrara. On another occasion, it was the marquis who helped resolve a matter between the duke of Ferrara and the Bentivoglio; see Ambassador Tolomeo’s report for the marquis at ASMN, AG 2913, Libro 188, ff. 47v–49r, 20 September 1505. 67 Over eighty letters related to Borgia (dated 1499–1504) are dispersed throughout ASMN, AG that were exchanged between Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Francesco Gonzaga.

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again though, the generational gap between family members could have affected their interests, tastes and written exchanges.

Conclusions The sample of nearly eighty of Genevra Sforza’s letters found in several court archives offers much understanding about her position in Bologna and her developing relationships across Northern Italy. Even with much of her correspondence presumably lost due to the family exile and aftermath, thanks to the Gonzaga’s careful keeping of mail we are able to learn much about Genevra and the Bentivoglio. The correspondence reveals her as an eloquent, well-educated and respected woman who participated in a complex web of formal relations with several ruling courts and who acted as an active patron to her family and many Bolognese. Although she followed politics and took action in times of emergency, it was not in Genevra’s nature to take a leading role in political relationships with members of ruling families; perhaps she stood back because she understood well where she stood within the ruling class as an illegitimate female Sforza with no dowry married to someone who did not enjoy legitimate power. She functioned in somewhat restricted spheres as a reflection of the reality of her social position within the ruling-class. In comparison to her other female correspondents, we can see why Isabella d’Este, for example, had more ability to write (and to act) as she was the legitimate daughter of a princess and a duke, and she held on to great social status even when she was married below her rank into the Gonzaga family; so not only was she a brilliant and progressive female correspondent interested in so many people and so much around her, but she also could act in certain ways because of her fully legitimate political, social and economic standing.68 Although Genevra might have been able to push beyond more prescribed gendered and class roles, she preferred to dedicate herself to her family, including much activity in the realm of patronage and favours. Twenty years after moving to Bologna, a Milanese ambassador reported that Genevra left her house rarely, choosing to live much of her life at home involved in family affairs.69 Looking at the correspondence with the Gonzaga as a case 68 Some Medici women also served as powerful benefactors, intercessors and arbiters of influence, especially Lucrezia Tornabuoni; see Tomas, pp. 44–64; for an inventory of her correspondence, see Tornabuoni. 69 See Cerruti’s report to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, 19–20 May 1474, as seen in Duranti (2007), tomo. II, pp. 416–418. It is noteworthy that between 1470 and 1474 (when Cerruti was stationed in Bologna) in over 1300 detailed ambassadorial reports sent to Milan, he never once mentions Genevra as politically active. Those years represent an intense snapshot in time but Genevra’s understanding of her political position, from other evidence in this chapter, concords with them.

Genevr a Sforza in Her Own Words 

study underlines this family-oriented and domestic reality. Her always-polite stance towards the Gonzaga (and all other ruling-class members with whom she corresponded) was dictated by her political and familial ties to them, her close yet subordinate relationship with them based on nuances within the ruling class, her understanding of fifteenth-century birth and gender norms, and her family’s profound political need as de facto rulers to maintain friendly allies with off icial rulers across Northern Italy. Although when necessary and at specif ic times of need when Giovanni II was absent, she stood in for him; although she was capable of standing in and represented the best interests of the Bentivoglio and Bologna, she fundamentally chose for herself a family-oriented domestic role, one in which she did not step beyond birth, gender or civic norms to consider herself a political leader or influencer in her own right. Genevra’s understanding and performance of her own life as a traditional and loyal consort is evident from relationships seen in her correspondence—and her historical character, further outlined and understood from her correspondence in this chapter, continues to stand in sharp contrast to what negative legends about her later suggest (the focus of Chapter Six).

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Table 4.2  Letters Currently Known and Attributable to Genevra Sforza Bentivoglio (thanks to recipients’ safekeeping; general identification and dates of each are given at his/her first appearance) Date Mailed (* denotes a co-signed letter)

Recipient & Recipient’s Identification

ReSummary cipient Location

Current Location

13 Oct. 1463

Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan (1401–1466) Francesco Sforza

Milan

Ser Cola will come speak to you in my name on behalf of Bologna’s government. Prospero Camillo’s stay in Bologna consoled & comforted me greatly; I thank you & entrust myself and my children to you. Please listen to him as he will now speak on my behalf. My great friend/messenger Domenico will speak on my behalf.

ASMI, PER, (bobina 149) reg. cart. 163 ASMI, PER, (bobina 149) reg. cart. 163

I send you the wines, as requested.

ASMN, AG 1142

20 Dec. 1463

26 Oct. 1470

18 Sep. 1479

21 Aug. 1481

Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan (1444–1476) Margherita of Bavaria Gonzaga, Marchesa of Mantua (ca. 1445–1479) Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florentine ruler (1449–1492)

Milan

Milan

Mantua

Florence I recommend my brother Costanzo Sforza to obtain a military contract with Florence. Ferrara I send you some of our almond plants, as requested.

18 Feb. 1482

Eleonora d’Aragona d’Este, Duchess of Ferrara (ca. 1450–1493)

8 Mar. 1482

Eleonora d’Aragona

Ferrara

11 Mar. 1482

Eleonora d’Aragona

Ferrara

19 Nov. 1482

Eleonora d’Aragona

Ferrara

ASMI, PER, (bobina 158) reg. cart. 172

ASF, MAP, filza 38, no. 299

ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1134, fasc. 11, sottofasc. 1, no. 271 (Dallari 130) ASMO, Cart. P.E., I recommend my great friend Vincenzo of Pesaro to busta 1134, fasc. obtain the position of Judge 11, sottofasc. 1, no. 272 (Dallari of Apellationi. 140) ASMO, Cart. P.E., I recommend my tailor Francesco Cimselo to obtain busta 1134, fasc. justice in his problems with 11, sottofasc. 1, no. 273 (Dallari some Modenese. 142) ASMO, Cart. P.E., Thanks for having sent busta 1134, fasc. me your medical doctor 11, sottofasc. 1, Francesco Benci. Please let no. 274 (Dallari him stay with me longer. 234)

209

Genevr a Sforza in Her Own Words 

Date Mailed (* denotes a co-signed letter)

Recipient & Recipient’s Identification

ReSummary cipient Location

31 Oct. 1483

Lorenzo de’ Medici

7 Nov. 1483

26 Jan. 1484

Francesco II Gonzaga, 4th Marquis of Mantua (1466–1519) Francesco Gonzaga

ASF, MAP, filza 51, Florence Please let grain pass (free no. 268 & safely) from Siena to Bologna through Florentine territory. ASMN, AG 1142 Mantua I send my servant Gianantonio to recuperate money owed me by the Arigoni brothers of Mantua. Mantua

28 Dec. 1484

Eleonora d’Aragona

Ferrara

16 Aug. 1485

Eleonora d’Aragona

Ferrara

6 Mar. 1487

Francesco Gonzaga

Mantua

Giangaleazzo Sforza, Milan 30 Apr. 1488 (* w/ Annibale II) Duke of Milan (1469–1494) 5 May 1488 Eleonora d’Aragona Ferrara

4 June 1488 Francesco Gonzaga (* w/ Annibale II)

Mantua

I received your letter of recommendation in favour of Gastaldino castellan of Cento. I have sent for him to hear from him. I hope to obtain free passage through Ferrarese territory for the family of Bartolomea, widow of Filippo Ugiero, former chancellor. I recommend now (as in the past) Zoana & her daughters in their case with Francesco Righizo of Bondeno. I recommend my dear servant Zoane deli Oliveri of Aquanegra to obtain a benefice at Beverara. Everything is going well thanks to you, your sister, etc. I recommend Zoannepaolo my old friend & dear servant to justify the behaviour of his cousin, Antonio Magnano da Ranochio of Montecucolo. Giovanni II (our husband/ father) has been captured in Faenza, the Bolognese people offer themselves to save Bologna and have him freed.

Current Location

ASMN, AG 1142

ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1134, fasc. 11, sottofasc. 1, no. 275 (Dallari 263) ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1134, fasc. 11, sottofasc. 1, no. 276 (Dallari 271) ASMN, AG 1143

ASMI, PER, (bobina 183) reg. cart. 1039 ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1134, fasc. 11, sottofasc. 1, no. 277 (Dallari 299) ASMN, AG 1143

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Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Date Mailed (* denotes a co-signed letter)

Recipient & Recipient’s Identification

6 June 1488 Francesco Gonzaga (* w/ Annibale II)

9 June 1488 Ercole I d’Este, (* w/ Annibale II) Duke of Ferrara (1413–1505)

25 Aug. 1489

Lorenzo de’ Medici

27 Mar. 1490

[unspecified]

28 Apr. 1491

Giangaleazzo Sforza

9 July 1491

[unspecified]

Isabella d’Este 12 May 1492 (* w/ Giovanni II) Gonzaga, Marchesa of Mantua (1474–1539) 6 Sep. 1492 Francesco Gonzaga

ReSummary cipient Location

Current Location

Mantua

ASMN, AG 1143

Giovanni II is now held at Modigliani. We have worked a lot toward his liberation & hope that with help from good relatives & friends like you he will be freed soon. Ferrara Giovanni II may be freed after talking with Lorenzo de’ Medici at Caffaggiolo. Florence wants Milan to promise to not make war on Faenza. Please help make Milan promise peace. Your great authority will play an important part. Florence I recommend my friend Alessandro di Fideli of Pesaro to obtain the Office of the Arte della Lana (Wool Guild). Mantua I heard that the marquis of Mantua has been elected al loco et provisione deli soi secretarii cavalcanti, congratulations. Milan I feel great pain due to my daughter Costanza’s death & would like to arrange marriages for Costanza’s daughters with your approval. Mantua I send & recommend to you our beloved secretaries, Filippo & Cristoforo, to obtain justice in their differences with some Mantuans. Mantua We tried to help Antonio di Sala as much as possible but we did not get far as he has difficult adversaries. Mantua I send & recommend this woman to you to re-obtain lands & possessions taken from her by her relatives.

ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1134, fasc. 5, c. 261 (Dallari 304)

ASF, MAP, filza 61, 1489, no. 111

ASMN, AG 1143

ASMI, PER, (bobina 184) reg. cart. 1040

ASMN, AG 1143

ASMN, AG 1143

ASMN, AG 1143

211

Genevr a Sforza in Her Own Words 

Date Mailed (* denotes a co-signed letter)

Recipient & Recipient’s Identification

ReSummary cipient Location

Current Location

11 Oct. 1492

Francesco Gonzaga

Mantua

ASMN, AG 1143

22 Oct. 1492

Francesco Gonzaga

30 Oct. 1492

Francesco Gonzaga

29 May 1493

Piero de’ Medici, Florentine ruler (1472–1503)

17 July 1493

Piero de’ Medici

29 July 1493

Francesco Gonzaga

10 Sep. 1493

Eleonora d’Aragona

13 Nov. 1493 [Manu Propria]

Francesco Gonzaga

Francesco Gonzaga 12 Jan. 1494 (sent together with 4 other similar letters by others) Isabella d’Este 17 June 1494

Our beloved Lucrezia gave birth to a big beautiful boy. Both are doing well. Mantua I forward you these letters with this messenger. Mantua I forward you these letters as requested. Florence I recommend Giovanni dell’Antella in his lawsuit with the Otto di pratica. Please help him. Florence From letter sent to Annibale II, I learned of the thief & promise to help you find him if I can. Mantua I have gladly forwarded letters to Rome for you to PieroGentile. Ferrara I received the letter about your fever & the request for pomegranates & oranges. I forward you pomegranates. Sorry to hear about Don Alfonso being ill. Mantua I recommend our true and faithful servant Cristoforo Poggio. Mantua I greatly desired a baby boy for you. I pray God you will soon have boys.

Mantua

Francesco Gonzaga 4 Aug. 1495 (* w/ Giovanni II)

Mantua

18 Dec. 1495

Mantua

Francesco Gonzaga

ASMN, AG 1143 ASMN, AG 1143 ASF, MAP, filza 49, no. 370

ASF, MAP, filza 60, no.

ASMN, AG 1143

ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1134, fasc. 11, sottofasc. 1, no. 278 (Dallari 391) ASMN, AG 1143

ASMN, AG 1143

ASMN, AG 1143 I heard you would like to retain Don Baptista in Mantua. I would like to come to Mantua to please you. Thank you tremendously for ASMN, AG 1143 helping Annibale II find a position as military captain with Venice. I send my seschalcho (head ASMN, AG 1143 servant) Alex. Campanaro to you with the best olives, to show my love & benevolence toward you.

212 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

ReSummary cipient Location

Current Location

25 Mar. 1496 Isabella d’Este (* w/ Giovanni II)

Mantua

ASMN, AG 1144

Isabella d’Este 12 Apr. 1496 (* w/ Giovanni II)

Mantua

14 Apr. 1496

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

28 July 1496

Jacobo Hadriaco, Gonzaga servant (dates unknown) Ercole I d’Este

Mantua

Date Mailed (* denotes a co-signed letter)

19 Jan. 1497

Recipient & Recipient’s Identification

Ferrara

22 Oct. 1497 Isabella d’Este (* w/ Giovanni II)

Mantua

Francesco Gonzaga 4 Dec. 1497 (* w/ Giovanni II)

Mantua

31 May 1498

Francesco Gonzaga

Mantua

10 Oct. 1498

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

13 Jan. 1499

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

20 Mar. 1500

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

Although we would like to help with Zoane, we are sorry that we cannot. Our beloved secretary Cris. Poggio is owed 100 ducats by Bald. Soardo, as we have mentioned many times before. Please make Soardo pay him. Please help me stop Simone who is in Mantuan territory. He stole money from my 2 Jewish banker friends in Florence, brothers Emanuele & Habraam of Fano, who want their money back. Please do your best to help our beloved secretary, Cristoforo Poggio. I send you Luchino de Corte to speak about something on my behalf. This morning our Ippolita [Sforza] gave birth to a beautiful boy; we pray God he will give you a similar gift. Thanks for sending us Sigismondo Campeggio. We talked with him a lot. I am so happy for you about your new military contract with Milan. Congratulations. I send you someone to represent my Jewish friend to obtain a dowry. In response and in contrast to Giovanni II, I highly recommend the astrologer Maestro Scipione Manfredi. We send Ugolino Campeggio to your husband to speak on behalf of us.

ASMN, AG 1144

ASMN, AG 1144

ASMN, AG 1144

ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1134, fasc. 11, sottofasc. 2, c. 279 (Dallari 425) ASMN, AG 1144

ASMN, AG 1144

ASMN, AG 1144

ASMN, AG 1144

ASMN, AG 1144

ASMN, AG 1145

213

Genevr a Sforza in Her Own Words 

Date Mailed (* denotes a co-signed letter)

Recipient & Recipient’s Identification

ReSummary cipient Location

Current Location

2 Apr. 1500 [from Tombe]

Francesco Gonzaga

Mantua

ASMN, AG 1145

4 Apr. 1500

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

18 May 1500 (*w/ Giovanni II)

Francesco Gonzaga

Mantua

21 May 1500 (*w/ Giovanni II)

Francesco Gonzaga

Mantua

12 June 1500

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

14 Sep. 1500

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

Francesco Gonzaga 8 Feb. 1501 (* w/ Giovanni II)

Mantua

17 Dec. 1503

Francesco Gonzaga & Isabella d’Este

Mantua

9 Oct. 1504

Francesco Gonzaga

Mantua

12 Feb. 1505

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

31 July 1505

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

I send & greatly recommend Virgilio di Zani to obtain something from you. Ugolino Campeggio will come speak with you about some things. Congratulations on your baby boy. We send Matteo to congratulate you in person. Thanks for the news. Congratulations on your baby boy. We send Zoane Maria. Thanks for the news. We send Matteo to expedite Cristoforo Poggio’s case. I suggest you send your credentiero (banquet steward) to return for the wines at the time of San Martino. We send you Antonio Castellano to present something & speak for us. When here, you promised me you would give grace to Stephano deli Rizardi of Acquanegra, please do so. My dear servant Zoane of Acquanegra needs about 100 stava of grain from his land in Mantua, please let him take it from there to Bologna. Please free Antonio of Sala Bolognese. I will replace the missing cloak no matter what the cost.

ASMN, AG 1145

ASMN, AG 1145

ASMN, AG 1145

ASMN, AG 1145 ASMN, AG 1145

ASMN, AG 1145

ASMN, AG 1145

ASMN, AG 1146, c. 44

ASMN, AG 1146 ASMN, AG 1146

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Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Table 4.3: Letters Currently Known to Have Been Once Received by Genevra Sforza Bentivoglio (thanks to senders’ copies) Date

Sender

Sender’s Location

Topic of Discussion

Present Location

6 May 1482

Commissario of Castelbolognese Ercole I d’Este

[not specified] Ferrara

Ercole I d’Este

Ferrara

ASMO [current location unknown] (Dallari 173) ASMO, Cancelleria ducale, Registri di lettere no. 10, c. 8 ASMO, Cancelleria ducale, Registri di lettere no. 10, c. 327 (Dallari 300)

Ercole I d’Este

Ferrara

The few soldiers now stationed in Forlì must proceed to Rome. I recommend Jacomo of Cicognara to have a fine of £200 erased. We have freed Antonio Magnano Ranocchio (a relative of your familiare Zampolo) out of our good will toward you. We received your news about Giovanni II’s capture & we will act in his favour.

Giangaleazzo Sforza

Milan

13 June 1488 (*addressed also to Annibale II)

Ercole I d’Este

Ferrara

Jan. 1492 [no specific day recorded]

Giangaleazzo Sforza

Milan

21 Apr. 1492 (similar letter sent to Gio. II)

Francesco Gonzaga

Mantua

14 Oct. 1492

Francesco Gonzaga

Mantua

12 Jan. 1486 (similar letter sent to Gio. II) 8 May 1488

5 June 1488 (*addressed also to Annibale II) 11 June 1488 (*addressed also to Annibale II)

Discussion of the Faenza situation; Giovanni II’s liberation through force; location of Francesca & son Astorre at their rocca. We heard about letters sent to Milan & the promise to do no violence in Faenza; our letters & others will probably allow Giovanni II to be freed, if no arms are taken up. Together with Ippolita Sforza, we send our niece to you who is daughter-in-law of Giovanni del Conte & good friends with Ippolita Sforza (& who cares for her things) who will speak on our behalf. We have already recommended Antonio di Sala, Isabella d’Este’s servant. Please favour his case so he can return home soon. Thanks for news about Lucrezia’s baby, we are really happy.

ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1490/1

ASM, PER, (bobina 1039) reg. cart. 1039

ASMO, Cart. P.E., busta 1490/1

ASMI, PER, (bobina 185) reg. cart. 1041

ASMN, AG 2905, c. 78r

ASMN, AG 2905, Libro 145, c. 74v

215

Genevr a Sforza in Her Own Words 

Date

Sender

Sender’s Location

Topic of Discussion

Present Location

27 Oct. 1492

Mantua

3 Dec. 1493

Francesco Gonzaga Isabella d’Este

Mantua

ASMN, AG 2905, Libro 145, c. 89r ASMN, AG 2991, Libro 4, c. 3v

23 Nov. 1501

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

18 Oct. 1504

Francesco Gonzaga

Mantua

14 Aug. 1505

Isabella d’Este

Mantua

Thanks for having forwarded us these letters. Please send me some white plants & let me know how much they cost. Our credentiero (banquet steward) Jacomo comes to Bologna bringing you wine and other items. Sorry but since there is famine we cannot permit grain to be taken from our territory for your servant. By negating your request, I will also be able to negate anyone else who asks me such a favour. Please organise the trip of Antonio Masarento to Mantua with 400 birds. Please pay him and send him with a helper. Sorry to ask you to do such common things for me.

ASMN, AG 2993, Libro 13, c. 11r

ASMN, AG 2912, Libro 184, c. 33v

ASMN, AG 2994, Libro 18, c. 27v

Bibliography Manuscript Documentation ASFE Archivio di Stato di Ferrara, FB (Fondo Bentivoglio) ASFI Archivio di Stato di Firenze, MAP (Medici avanti il principato), filze 38–60; www.archiviodistato. firenze.it ASMI Archivio di Stato di Milano, PER (Potenze Estere Romagna), rolls 141–199 ASMN Archivio di Stato di Mantova, AG (Archivio Gonzaga), 1141, 1142, 1143, 1144, 1145, 1146, 1147, 2116, 2117, 1146, 1147, 2192, 2913, 2914, 2915, 2994, 2995, 2996, 1368, 1616, 1637, 1638, 1639, 1640, 1793, and others ASMO Archivio di Stato di Modena, Cart. P. E. (Carteggio Potenze Estere) BCB Biblioteca Comunale (‘L’Archiginnasio’), Bologna (Manoscritti) Carrati, Baldassare Antonio Maria. Battesimi. BCB, ms. B849–852. Davari, Stefano. Indice Davari, vol. 18 (Bologna). Mantua, ca. 1880.

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Published Primary Sources Dallari, Umberto. ‘Carteggio tra i Bentivoglio e gli Estensi dal 1401 al 1542 esistente nell’Archivio di Stato di Modena’ in AMR, series 3, vols. 18 and 19 (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1902). Dolfo, Floriano. Marzia Minutelli, ed., Floriano Dolfo: lettere ai Gonzaga. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2002. Shemek, Deanna. IDEA: Isabella d’Este Archive. http://isabelladeste.web.unc.edu/ (accessed 21 November 2018). Shemek, Deanna, ed. and trans. Isabella d’Este: Selected Letters. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series (54). Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2017. Sorbelli, Rita. ‘Lettere di Ginevra Sforza a Lorenzo e Piero de’ Medici’ in L’Archiginnasio: bollettino della Biblioteca comunale di Bologna, vol. 1 (1906): 225–229. Tornabuoni, Lucrezia. Ed. Patrizia Salvadori. Lettere [di Lucrezia Tornabuoni, 1425–1482]. Florence: Olschki, 1993.

Published Sources […] Archivio mediceo avanti il principato, inventario, vols. 1-4. Rome: Ministero dell’interno, 1951–1963. Ady, Cecilia M. The Bentivoglio of Bologna: A Study in Despotism. London: Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford, 1937. Grendler, Paul. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Lipparina, Rita. ‘Cronache e carteggi: fonti incrociate per la ricostruzione della cancelleria dei Bentivoglio’ in Schede umanistiche, vol. 1 (1993): 129–137. Luzio, Alessandro. L’Archivio Gonzaga di Mantova: la corrispondenza familiare, amministrativa e diplomatica dei Gonzaga. Verona: A. Mondadori, 1922; reprint, 1993. Medri, Antonio. Il duplice assassino di Galeotto Manfredi (1477–1488). Faenza: Tipografia faentina, 1972. Murphy, Caroline. The Pope’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pasolini, Pier Desiderio. Caterina Sforza. Rome: ELA, 1893. Shemek, Deanna. ‘In Continuous Expectation: Isabella d’Este’s Epistolary Desire’ in Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek, Phaethon’s Children: The Este Court and Its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2005), pp. 269–300. Tomas, Natalie. The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence. Aldershot, UK and Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2003. Torelli, Pietro. L’Archivio Gonzaga di Mantova, vols. 1–2. Verona and Ostiglia: Mondadori, 1922; reprint 1988. Webb Jennifer D. ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: Varano and Sforza Women of the Marche’ in Katherine A. McIver, ed., Wives, Widows, Mistresses and Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible through Art and Patronage (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 13–31. Williams, Allyson Burgess. ‘Rewriting Lucrezia Borgia: Property, Magnificence, and Piety in Portraits of a Renaissance Duchess’ in Katherine McIver, Wives, Widows, Mistresses, and Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible through Art and Patronage (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 77–97. Zarri, Gabriella. Per lettera: la scrittura epistolare femminile tra archivio e tipografia, secoli XV–XVII. Rome: Viella, 1999.

5.

The Wheel of Fortune Genevra Sforza and the Fall of the Bentivoglio (1506–1507) Abstract: Recruited by Pope Julius II due to his close and conflicting interests with the Bentivoglio, Marchese Francesco Gonzaga led a military expedition to regain Bologna. As a result, Genevra Sforza was forced into exile against custom and tradition with the downfall of the Bentivoglio (November 1506). Although Gonzaga led papal troops against the Bentivoglio, he and his wife, Isabella d’Este, hosted and covered for many Bentivoglio, including Genevra. In Mantua Genevra awaited direction from others while Julius II hounded her, forcing her out; she soon after died at the Pallavicino court in Busseto (May 1507). While elderly, sick with a fever and bleeding from a tumour, Genevra did not raise an army or encourage her sons to retake Bologna—as legends insist. Keywords: Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio, Bologna history, Gonzaga, Italian court culture, Italian family history, sixteenth-century Italy

Introduction After examining many facets of Genevra Sforza in the previous four chapters, we will now turn to events that took place at the time of the fall of the Bentivoglio in Bologna and the last months of her life (November 1506–May 1507). Based on contemporary archival evidence, during those tumultuous times, we see how Genevra lived as a hostage to fortuna—in Bologna while the Bentivoglio awaited the arrival of Pope Julius II, in Mantua where she remained quietly for five months through grave illness and with papal interdicts aimed at her, and in Busseto for a few weeks at the Pallavicino court while fighting a fever on what would become her deathbed. As an elderly woman, and from those various locations, Genevra did not make plans for herself or her family. Not one letter written by her survives in any of the 1506–1507 archival deposits examined over the course of research undertaken for this book. What we can learn about the last months of Genevra’s life comes from the people who lived around her and from what they chose to communicate

Bernhardt, E.L., Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726849_ch05

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about her as she was moved around and directed by others in sickness and old age. And the concept of fortuna (‘fortune’ or ‘luck’, and later understood to mean mostly ‘misfortune’ within this story), permeates the discussions and the correspondence regarding this final chapter of Genevra’s life and the fall of the Bentivoglio. As in the previous chapter, the Gonzaga archive is most relevant to these years of Genevra’s history because it contains the frequent correspondence exchanged among many members of the Gonzaga and Bentivoglio families, including hundreds of letters sent between the extremely communicative couple: Marchese Francesco Gonzaga and his wife Marchesana Isabella d’Este, who both played important roles in the story of the fall of the Bentivoglio. ‘Il marchese’, as he is referred to in almost every reference throughout the enormous correspondence, was appointed by Pope Julius II as Captain General of the papal army sent to retake Bologna. As he carried out the expedition, he wrote detailed accounts of his experiences that he often sent to Isabella who thrived on his news, encouraged him in his doings, and responded promptly with her ideas and advice.1 After the marchese finished his campaign in Bologna, successfully bringing the city under papal control, he soon returned to his family in Mantua. His youngest brother, Giovanni (husband of Laura Bentivoglio) stayed behind, serving as his informant by writing him long accounts of Bolognese events based on first-hand news gathered each morning. Giovanni’s day began at the ‘palazzo’, i.e. Palazzo Bentivoglio, which served as headquarters for the papal court from 11 November 1506 to 22 February 1507. On horseback he would continue his news-collecting rounds with visits to cardinals, dukes, ambassadors and condottieri stationed across the city. The marchese’s other younger brother, Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga, also happened to be in Bologna as one of approximately twenty-five cardinals who made up Julius’ entourage. He, too, frequently wrote home to the marchese with news—but did so from a distinctly pro-Julius, anti-Bentivoglio perspective. As a result of such a variety of Bentivoglio and Gonzaga points of view, the Gonzaga archive truly represents a prime source of information about the fall of the Bentivoglio and the restoration of papal rule—and until now nobody has studied this correspondence to learn about these matters. Angela De Benedictis published a related monograph based on a number of primary and secondary sources, constructing a lengthy ‘diario di guerra’ (war diary) of the mission to retake Bologna by carefully weaving fragments from many sources into one master chronicle.2 But because the book does not include the Gonzaga correspondence in 1 Relevant fondi at ASMN include AG 2116, 2117, 1146, 1147, 2192, 2913, 2914, 2915, 2994, 2995, 2996, 1368, 1637, 1639, 1640, 1793, and possibly others. 2 She includes testimonies from Niccolò Macchiavelli, Christoph Scheurl, Fileno dalle Tuate, Paride Grassi, Julius II, Giovanni Crotto, Giorgio Floro, Mario Salamonio degli Alberteschi and Erasmus of Rotterdam; see De Benedictis (2004), pp. 23–41 and her extensive bibliography.

The Wheel of Fortune 

its discourse, it underplays the marchese’s position and misses a wealth of details from his own accounts. Because Francesco Gonzaga served as Julius’ Captain General to retake Bologna—as well as being a Bentivoglio ‘blood relation’—his complicated perspective in his own words is fascinating and critical to our understanding of the pope’s approach to the campaign. And Julius was well aware of the close relationship between the Gonzaga and the Bentivoglio, exploiting the relationship to the fullest extent. Additional information about the Bentivoglio exile comes from other sources, including the d’Este family archive (now in Modena). There we find Lucrezia d’Este Bentivoglio’s appeals to various members of her family in an effort to return to her natal home in Ferrara. Other Bentivoglio corresponded with the d’Este duke and the d’Este cardinal from various places of exile.3 Iulius Exclusus e coelis (1514), a work attributed to Desiderius Erasmus, describes and exaggerates the pope’s comportment related to his various campaigns, including the Bentivoglio example. Lastly, contemporary Bolognese chroniclers yield details about the fall of the Bentivoglio, the arrival of Julius and the stronger papal influence in post-Bentivoglio Bologna—but since our chroniclers are in Bologna while Genevra abandoned the city months earlier, they relay only secondary information regarding the final months of her life. 4

Papal Plans Against Bentivoglio Bologna Well before Captain Marchese Francesco Gonzaga approached Bologna with troops in late October 1506, the Bolognese knew that Julius was planning to recover what he considered a rebel city. Arienti, who often communicated Bolognese news to Isabella d’Este, wrote in April 1506 with information about how the pope wished to visit Romagna.5 It is thus certain that word about an upcoming papal visit also arrived at Palazzo Bentivoglio by the springtime, if not earlier. But already from 1504 Julius followed a plan of summoning to Rome disobedient citizens from all corners of the Papal State, including Giovanni II Bentivoglio. Giovanni II, however, never travelled to Rome to explain himself or justify his rule, and he had been doing several things that annoyed Julius. He insisted that he and his sons accept military contracts from whomever they pleased, instead of reserving themselves for papal missions as Julius had requested.6 Julius was also upset over some of 3 Summaries of most letters are published in Dallari. 4 Some Bentivoglio exile histories and stories are insightful but do not relate many facts about the case of Genevra Sforza; see Ghirardacci; Ady; Patrizi Sacchetti; Gozzadini. 5 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 176r, 30 April 1506, Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti to Isabella d’Este. 6 Shaw (1997), p. 151.

219

220 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

the same reasons that annoyed Pope Paul II four decades earlier: the oligarchy’s arrangement of holding political offices for life, for their reserving of the offices exclusively for relatives and friends, and for their unauthorised spending of city revenue on themselves.7 Although contemporary reports of the account are confused, in 1500 it appears that Julius II (then Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, bishop of Bologna) also had a personal clash with Giovanni II who had plotted to capture him for Cesare Borgia in the town of Cento, the fortress of della Rovere’s bishopric.8 Christine Shaw found that there is little evidence of the relationship between Giovanni II and della Rovere during his term in Bologna, and that if personal hostility between the two had existed, it was not considered significant.9 But such hostility must have existed if della Rovere had to flee by night to escape imprisonment at Giovanni II’s hand—if Ghirardacci’s account can be trusted.10 To add to Giovanni II’s problems, many Bolognese appeared in Rome to complain about his government. Such complaining was something commonly done by exiles but when pro-Bentivoglio parties also lamented, including Bentivoglio Ambassador Carlo Grato, Bentivoglio secretary Sebastiano delle Agocchie and notary Giacomo Budrioli, the pope began to take special interest in the situation.11 Julius decided that the recovery of his state was ultimately so important that he would carry out the mission in person, something rare for the leader of Christendom.12 Julius’ main goal became the repossession of important lost cities within the Papal State: Perugia and especially Bologna. Bologna was then roughly the same size as Rome with a population of about 50,000 souls.13 With Bologna and Romagna under his control, the pope could defend his state by warding off Lombardy and the Venetian Republic farther north. Many states and individuals were interested in governing Bologna due to its wealth and strategic position north of the Apennines, along the Via Emilia, and near many active city-states, particularly Milan and Venice. Julius’ goals for the campaign included strengthening Rome’s hold over various subjects throughout the Papal State, the pacification of factions, the suppression of violence, and the stabilisation of civic governments with the help of closer papal control. 7 Robertson, see especially pp. 31–111. 8 Shaw (1997), p. 150. 9 Shaw (1997), pp. 150–151. 10 Ghirardacci, pp. 343–344. In the late 1500s he crafted a master chronicle by weaving many contemporary sources into one—but he sometimes also added his own additional ‘facts’ and commentary—see Chapter Six here for more on his historical practice. 11 Patrizi Sacchetti, pp. 116–117. 12 Shaw (1997), pp. 140–159. 13 Bellettini, p. 25.

The Wheel of Fortune 

In preparation for his attack, Julius called Marchese Francesco Gonzaga to Urbino for a discussion on 5 September 1506.14 About two weeks later, Francesco wrote to Isabella about how Julius wanted to pacify Bologna and free it of civil discord; but he did not yet know what the pope wanted of him.15 The marchese also wrote immediately to one of his brothers, Cardinal Sigismondo, with a secret: the pope had requested his service for the Bologna campaign. He reported that Julius was prepared to lead the mission in peace—or with force—if Giovanni II would not submit. The marchese confided that he believed Giovanni II and his family would be killed, literally ‘tagliati a pezzi’ (cut to pieces).16 Despite his belief that the Bentivoglio would soon be violently exterminated, he proceeded with his usual affairs and requests in his letters. In the same letter with the foreboding of their deaths, he made reference that he wanted a special falcon at all costs from Annibale II. He also gave orders that he would like his special camera pincta (his painted reception room) repaired in order to impress Julius, should he come to Mantua after the mission. He also worried immensely about a luxurious jewelled hat that he planned to wear upon entry into Bologna. Although the marchese’s interests and priorities related to his own honour and glory appear in those initial letters, his sentiments toward the mission and the Bentivoglio would fluctuate as events progressed. News of the marchese’s involvement in the papal mission arrived quickly at Palazzo Bentivoglio. But even before he accepted the military contract, Giovanni II must have felt uneasy as he had been sending ambassadors to the marchese and the pope to speak on behalf of himself and his city.17 Although neither Giovanni II nor Genevra Sforza explicitly recorded in writing what they wished to obtain through their ambassadors, their first-born son Annibale II was clear when he wrote with his own hand: he begged Francesco Gonzaga to protect them. He also sent a special ambassador to express Bentivoglio obedience to the pope, to hear his side of the story, and to ask what the pope wanted.18 Meanwhile, preoccupied by his lack of money, the marchese wrote to his cardinal brother: he forwarded him a key, which he kept on his person, to his bedroom safe asking for the scudi 14 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 5r, 5 September 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Giulio Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 4v, 5 September 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Gran Mestre of Milan. 15 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff.10r–12r, 18 September 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. Many of Isabella’s letters can be read in translation, see Shemek. 16 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 12v–13v, 18 September 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga; and ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 15r, 21 September 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 17 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 330r, 4 September 1506, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1146, f. 331, 9 September 1506, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. 18 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 333r–v, 19 September 1506, Annibale II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga.

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(cash) kept inside it.19 His lack of funds from the start of the mission would be a lingering problem. By 23 September he reported that the crusade to take Bologna seemed only ‘lukewarm’ and that he must await word from King Louis XII who would give final orders and form to the plan.20 The next day he admitted to Duke Alfonso d’Este that he thought the mission was ‘doubtful’ and that it would be better if Julius stopped wasting time planning it.21 The lukewarm spirit of the mission, its potential failure at any moment due to lack of money (for troops, artillery and ammunition), and his overall uncertainty were sentiments the marchese voiced over the course of many weeks. At one point the pope claimed he would pay the marchese well for the mission, although no price ever seems to have been set for the operation; and from surviving correspondence, there remains no trace of money exchanging hands.22 The pope ran the mission based on the reputation of the Holy Church, on the understanding that nobody would stop him. He believed that the marchese would support him for fear of the ruin of his reputation if he were to abandon the pope and for fear of disastrous spiritual consequences for himself, his family and Mantua. The marchese also admitted other reasons why he agreed to serve: to help secure a cardinal’s hat for the brother of Monsignor Luigi della Tramoglia and for other promises and favours.23 Most of the protagonists in this story were tied together as kin—both blood and spiritual kin—but the marchese of Mantua was in a particularly complicated position. He was tied by blood as an uncle to many Bentivoglio through his brother Giovanni’s and his wife Laura Bentivoglio’s children; and he could have been a grandfather to other Bentivoglio through a marriage that had been arranged between one of his unnamed illegitimate daughters and a son of Eleonora Bentivoglio and Giberto Pio.24 The Bentivoglio were also his spiritual kin since he and his wife had served as godparents to several Bentivoglio children and grandchildren.25 In the previous chapter we saw that the families had been bound by blood and friendship for decades, leaving traces of their dynamic long-term relationship in over 1700 letters at ASMN. In addition, the marchese and Julius II (when Cardinal della Rovere) had 19 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 15r, 21 September 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 20 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 16v, 23 September 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 21 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 17r–v, 24 September 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara. 22 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 35r–v, 13 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 23 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 88v–90r, 6 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Giulio Gonzaga. 24 ASMN, AG 1144, f. 123, 125, 16 February 1497, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga and Isabella d’Este. 25 For details, see Table 3.1 in my Chapter Three above.

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served together as co-godfathers to a Bentivoglio grandson in 1487; and della Rovere had served as godfather to another Bentivoglio grandchild in September 1489.26 Such close spiritual ties to Julius explain why the Bolognese referred to Giovanni II, Genevra and the pope as one another’s ‘compare’ and ‘comare’ (godfather and godmother, or intimate friend).27 On the other hand, the marchese was also tied by blood to the pope. In Urbino his daughter Eleonora Gonzaga was married to Julius’ favourite nephew: Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere;28 and Francesco Maria had been made the adopted heir of the duchy by Guidobaldo Montefeltro, a nephew of Genevra Sforza. In sum, the Bentivoglio, Gonzaga and della Rovere knew each other well, were related to one another in numerous fashions, and had functioned together for years on different levels. In late 1506 the marchese wrote many letters advising various members of his family, extended family and staff that if any Bentivoglio were to appear in Mantuan territory as a result of his expedition, they should be hosted and honoured and that they could stay for reasons of safety.29 In early October Isabella replied that if any Bentivoglio were to come her way, she would follow her natural instinct and gladly take them in.30 The marchese discussed the compassion he felt for the Bentivoglio who had always been his friends; he wrote multiple letters to his wife, his brother and to a son-in-law to make sure the Bentivoglio would be honoured and well received.31 He told the governor of Revere (a town within Gonzaga territory) to make Annibale II and his brothers comfortable and give them the Gonzaga palace there; he ordered his emissary to accept and to honour them in every way ‘because they deserved it’.32 The marchese again wrote his cardinal brother that if the Bentivoglio were to come to Mantua he should honour them as much as possible, procure good supplies for them, and find comfortable places for them to stay;33 he sharply continued that it would be honourable if Sigismondo were to give the Bentivoglio as much as he was using of theirs in Bologna.34 In the following month, 26 The two served Alessandro (di Giberto Pio & Eleonora Bentivoglio) born 26 October and baptised 18 November 1487; see AAB, Fonti battesimali, vol. 3, f. 159r. In July 1507 Julius would declare his godson a rebel of the Church; see Tuate, 22 July 1507 entry. 27 Tuate, f. 290r. 28 Shaw (1997), pp. 169, 184, 306. Shaw describes Francesco Maria as Julius II’s ‘major lay nipote’. 29 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 40r–v, 14 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Alberto Pio. 30 ASMN, AG 2116, fasc. 11.3, f. 259, 3 October 1506, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga. 31 See (original) ASMN, AG 2116, fasc. 10, ff. 177r–v, 14 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este; and (copy) ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, cc. 41v–42v, 14 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Alberto Pio; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 82r–v, 2 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 81r–v, 2 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 32 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 88r, 5 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Commissario Revere. 33 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 94r, 7 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 34 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 2r, 9 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga.

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the marchese wrote his wife again, telling her he prayed she was honouring the Bentivoglio.35 He told Annibale II directly that he and his family would always be honoured and loved by the Gonzaga and that he had always been regarded with love and respect.36 In their position as clients of the Gonzaga, the Bentivoglio had experienced mixed success with their requests and desires on the whole. But despite their status difference and some negated requests (outlined in Chapter Four above), by 1506 the marchese demonstrated outward compassion for them, helped lodge and save them and felt terrible about them losing everything they had created in Bologna. His 1506–1507 correspondence repeatedly proves that he really did want to help them. So, yes, the marchese personally led troops against the Bentivoglio and took their home and city from them—yet he cared for them and helped them within his own jurisdiction, offering them safe conduct to go anywhere within his state and to do as they pleased when there.37 The paradoxes become still more evident. The marchese stood as a friend, godfather, uncle, grandfather and patron of the Bentivoglio while he was also a servant or client of the king of France (Italy’s military overlord), the Holy Roman Emperor (his feudal overlord), and the pope (Christendom’s spiritual overlord). When the marchese admitted he could do nothing for the pope until plans were first cleared with King Louis XII, we understand that although the pope ranked as one of his patrons, in reality he stood subordinate to the king and emperor. In a letter addressed to Louis XII, the marchese openly declared his ambiguous position: although he [the king] and the emperor were his patrons, he had accepted the leadership of the campaign—specifying that neither he nor any other condottiere could refuse to support the pope—but he also declared that he would accept no other obligations so that he would be free to serve the king and remain at his complete disposition.38 In relation to a different papal mission, Christine Shaw speculates, ‘if it had not been for his [the marchese’s] relationship with Francesco Maria [the marchese’s son-in-law and Julius’ nephew, the duke of Urbino], and the strategic importance of his duchy of Mantua, it is doubtful whether Julius would have chosen him for his military abilities alone’.39 On the battleground, the marchese has been depicted as a treacherous, idle, incapable and pathetic condottiere whose fame rested on the 35 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 1v, 9 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. 36 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 5r–v, 11 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Annibale II. 37 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 90v, 5 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to de’ Consensu nostro. 38 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 31v–32r, 12 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to King Louis XII of France; and ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 32v–33r, 12 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Giulio Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2116, fasc. 11.3, f. 274r–v (original) and ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 19, ff. 89v–90v (copy), 26 October 1506, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga. 39 Shaw (1997), p. 262.

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outcome of one battle, Fornovo (1495); Shaw continues that Julius had been unable to choose decent condottieri or dependable legates throughout the course of his rule. 40 So, of all condottieri available in Christendom, Julius picked a militarily pitiful one with a clear understanding that he had never been a genius in the field. But Julius showed calculated brilliance in asking the marchese to lead the most important mission of his papacy: the marchese was actually the perfect candidate because his potential performance in the field would have little to do with the campaign. Julius had served as bishop in Bologna for nearly twenty years, he knew the Bolognese political climate well and understood that the Bentivoglio considered the marchese one of their most important allies. Julius’ actions in 1506 show his inside knowledge of both the Bentivoglio and Gonzaga families; and that knowledge allowed him to calculate, with pre-Machiavellian cunning, his attack. 41 Julius wished to enter Bologna peacefully and, as we will see, he would in fact wait outside Bologna until there would be no sign of armed resistance before he would make his approach into the city and on a feast day. With extreme authority, Julius had the luxury of choosing a condottiere with the understanding that there would probably be no fighting involved. A peaceful entry and change of government in Bologna would grant Julius more credibility and honour in the eyes of the Bolognese, whom he needed on his side. So he tested his client’s attitude and fidelity toward his own della Rovere family and toward the Bentivoglio. In these ways, the marchese was pushed into a most difficult position, one that in exasperation he would later describe as ‘impossibile’. 42 Julius did not trouble himself about the means to his end. He freed himself from the specifics of the campaign and forced its difficulties onto the marchese: he expected him to use his personal connections and bargaining skills to persuade Giovanni II to settle peacefully. De Benedictis describes Julius’ military strategy as a ‘guerra di parole’ (war of words) fought with spiritual arms such as interdicts and excommunications;43 but it was one that was also fought through calculated family relations and complicated family allegiances. Additionally, ‘fighting battles’ through the use of scheming ploys instead of weapons and violence was known by early moderns to be the Italian style of fighting. 44 Not coincidentally, in 1510 when Julius would again call on the marchese’s services to ‘fight’ Este Ferrara (Isabella’s hometown and family), the battle represented another ‘impossibile’

40 Shaw (1997), pp. 100, 185–187, 223, 262. 41 Shaw (1997), p. 150. 42 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 85v, 11 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Alberto Pio. 43 De Benedictis (2004), p. 69. 44 Contemporary Italians were aware of Italian-style rules in battle; Guicciardini discussed Italian methods in his Storia d’Italia, Chapters 73–74, as discussed in Clough, pp. 193–194.

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situation requiring strategies of compromise with his wife’s extended family that the marchese would be forced to design. 45

The Capitoli and Legal Matters In October 1506 as the papal camp approached Bologna from nearby localities such as Imola and Castel San Pietro, Giovanni II forwarded Julius a copy of the Capitoli, the governing contract between Bologna and Rome, as a reminder of their agreement. But when Julius received it, he was incensed at the sight of the document—in fury he reputedly tore it to shreds since he could not believe the arrogance behind sending him an account of what his position could or should be with Bologna. It went reported that he later had the pieces of the letter collected, put back together, and read to him. But after hearing what was written, Julius’ reaction did not falter: he remained infuriated with Bentivoglio disrespect. On 10 October he issued a bull of excommunication against Bologna, a bull the marchese described as more atrocious than the one issued against the Turks. 46 When Julius gained the papal throne in 1503, Bolognese ambassadors had been sent to Rome to present and to have confirmed the Capitoli, the seventeen-point contract outlining the governing relationship between Rome and Bologna. The sending of Bolognese ambassadors to a new pope for the confirmation of the contract had been standard practice through the reigns of eight popes and nearly sixty years of Bentivoglio rule. The Capitoli contract had first been negotiated under Sante Bentivoglio and instituted under Pope Nicholas V in August 1447; and since that time, it had been accepted. When he became pope, Julius agreed to and approved the Capitoli by signing the contract, and he renewed it again earlier in 1506.47 By planning a mission to regain Bologna, Julius was actually breaking the contract and thus the law, a law he himself had agreed upon with his own signatures and wax seals. Throughout the reigns of former popes, compromises and negotiations had been made between Rome and Bologna with regard to the Capitoli but no pope or any Bolognese had completely disregarded prior agreements. 48 The pope’s attitude and actions were discussed by Giovanni Crotto of Monferrato, a law professor at the University of Bologna. Crotto reasoned through opposing arguments before arriving at the conclusion that the pope could not change the contract 45 Shaw concludes in relation to the campaigns of 1506 and 1510 that the marchese was ‘more sympathetic to the enemy’; see Shaw (1997), p. 223; but she does not unravel the paradoxes behind his position. 46 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 38r–39v, 13 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. A copy of the bull of excommunication, dated 10 October 1506, is at ASFE, FB, Libro 22, no. 10, ff. 1–17. 47 De Benedictis (1995), p. 88. 48 De Benedictis (1995), pp. 137–164.

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without consent of the Bolognese, and that if he were to do so, the Bolognese could resist and fight for their rights. He concluded that any of the pope’s censures against Bologna due to such resistance would be invalid. 49 But Julius did not take such ‘technicalities’ into consideration. His explanation was that the Capitoli were laws he was not obliged to uphold since he claimed that the Bolognese under Bentivoglio rule had not maintained their terms of the agreement. Julius reinforced the first two Capitoli by adding that he would agree to the contract only as long as the Anziani, the Comune and the Popolo remained obedient to the Holy Roman Church.50 But it would have been impossible for Bologna to have been entirely obedient—yet at the same time agree to establish and maintain a series of negotiable laws. In the summer and early autumn of 1506, Giovanni II and the Bolognese did not appear before Julius because they had refused to appear as subjects (instead of representatives) of Bologna.51 Within each of the ambiguously worded Capitoli, there was ample room for interpretation on both sides of the relationship, and the ambiguity created a complex legalistic relationship.52 Julius never specified which additional points were not being upheld to satisfaction by the Bolognese government, and he never suggested how things could be modified to his liking.53 He had initially been open to compromise with Giovanni II—but after he disregarded the papal invitation to defend his government in Rome, allowing him to remain in Bologna became out of the question. Furthermore Julius claimed he had been forced against his will to agree to the Capitoli.54 Like Crotto, De Benedictis concludes that the Capitoli could not be broken by either the pope or the Bolognese and that it would have been licit for the Bolognese to take up arms for the defence of their state—since the pope was not upholding the Roman side of the agreement.55

The Wheel of Fortune Francesco Gonzaga reported that although the Bolognese expedition would be difficult, the pope would have honour in the end as a result of either an accord (or 49 De Benedictis, pp.170–187. Only in 1576 would Crotto’s commentaries be published. 50 De Benedictis (1995), p. 165. 51 De Benedictis (1995), p. 166. 52 For the Capitoli themselves as well as a technical discussion of the many loopholes in them, see De Benedictis (1995), pp. 107–136. 53 Shaw debates several points about the Bentivoglio administration that must have infuriated Julius, whether or not they were explicitly part of certain Capitoli. See Shaw (1997) pp. 140–159; De Benedictis (1995), p. 137. 54 Shaw (1997), pp. 151–152, 159. 55 De Benedictis (1995), pp. 176, 181.

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force) since the pope had the king of France on his side.56 Until late October, the marchese complained that he could do nothing until the French arrived because King Louis XII would decide everything.57 The marchese reported to his brother that he felt that the Bolognese government was demonstrating great contumacy towards the pope; on the same day, he specified to Isabella that the cardinals were unsatisfied due to Giovanni II’s disrespect.58 It was believed that Giovanni II would agree to Julius’ ideas regarding change in Bologna, i.e. that the Sedici would double in size and that some aspects of political offices would be reformed.59 Giovanni II and Annibale II twice sent their chancellor to speak with the marchese;60 we have no record of how discussions went. On 18 October, during a time of incredible uncertainty, the faithful in Bologna searched for guidance as they brought down the Madonna of San Luca from her sanctuary atop Monte della Guardia; this madonna had successfully interceded on behalf of the Bolognese in the past, most notably from 1433 when she miraculously stopped destructive rainfall from destroying harvests. However, by 22 October Giovanni Gonzaga reported Giovanni II’s life to be in the hands of fortune. Chroniclers exclaimed that Giovanni II was living at the height of the ‘rota della fortuna’ (‘wheel of fortune’).61 Giovanni Gonzaga mentioned there was much talk in Bologna about what would come of the Bentivoglio—but that he could not put it in writing.62 The same day and the next, Giovanni II begged the marchese and five different cardinals to help him in his predicament.63 On 24 October, the marchese reported to his wife that the Bentivoglio planned a hard resistance and had fortified themselves in Bologna; meanwhile, he wrote to Gonzaga secretaries that he believed Giovanni II would compromise.64 As the papal army approached, Giovanni II and the Sedici seemed willing to compromise and communicate. They wrote several missives to the pope and sent them through the marchese, begging him to give them to Julius.65 56 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 32v–33r, 12 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Giulio Gonzaga. 57 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 57v–58r, 24 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 58v–60r, 24 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Giulio Gonzaga and Gemetto. 58 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 35r–v, 13 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 38r–39v, 13 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. 59 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 40r–v, 14 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Alberto Pio. 60 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 335r, 4 October 1506, Annibale II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1146, f. 336r, 12 October 1506, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. 61 Anon., ms. B79, Cronica Bianchini, 1506 entry; Ubaldini, 18 October 1506 entry. 62 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 242, 22 October 1506, Giovanni Gonzaga to Carlo [in Mantua]. 63 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 338, 22 October 1506, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga; see ASMN, AG, 1146, f. 339, 23 October 1506, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. 64 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 57v–58r, 24 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 58v–60r, 24 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Giulio Gonzaga and Gemetto. 65 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 340r, 25 October 1506, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1146, f. 342r, 30 October 1506, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga.

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Little did Giovanni II know that the mission against him was unsure on many levels. The marchese expressed his tactical worries to Alberto Pio, explaining that even though the papal army had captured many small fortresses leading into Bolognese territory, failing to capture Budrio could ruin the entire mission since it would not be prudent to leave enemies behind who could encircle him and ‘ruin everything’.66 The marchese complained to his wife that he could still not do anything until the French army arrived; he showed concern about his few troops and noted that any adverse plans could alter his position.67 He admitted to Giulio Gonzaga that all of his faith and hope was in the French army since the king would decide his every action.68 That day he also complained directly to the pope that he needed more soldiers and again to Alberto Pio that without more soldiers something really embarrassing could happen to him at any minute.69 As late as 31 October he told the pope that he needed supplies and that the papal operation and his honour were in danger.70 The same day he told his wife he would be cautiously approaching Bologna, a city fortified with many armed men who sometimes seemed to give in but at other times seemed to resist strongly.71 The lives of the Bentivoglio family, their future in Bologna, the reputation of the marchese and the pope’s campaign to reclaim a rebel city all rested in the hands of fortune—or rather in decisions to be made by the king of France, on whom all parties relied. Isabella d’Este reminded her husband not to forget his debt to the pope. She offered her current opinion towards the Bentivoglio: they did well to remind the Gonzaga of the good memories and positive relations so as to convert their necessity into virtue. Although it is clear she somewhat doubted Bentivoglio goodwill and intentions, she never worked against the will of her husband who repeatedly invited the Bentivoglio to take asylum honourably within their territory. She concluded her thoughts by announcing that in the end everything would proceed by the will of God and destiny.72 Isabella was apt in her judgment of the Bentivoglio. An example stands out from correspondence earlier in the year when Giovanni II changed his attitude toward the marchese when in need. Giovanni II repeatedly tried to be repaid for a loan of 3000 ducats made to the marchese but in the spring 66 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 48v–49r, 18 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Alberto Pio. For more on Budrio, see ASMN, AG 1914, Lib. 193, ff. 80v–81r, 31 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Julius II. 67 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 57v–58v, 24 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. 68 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 58v–60r, 24 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Giulio Gonzaga. 69 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 60r–v, 24 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Julius II; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 61v, 25 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Alberto Pio. 70 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 80v–81r, 31 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Julius II. 71 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 76v–77r, 31 October 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. 72 ASMN, AG 2116, fasc. 11.3, f. 274r–v (original) and ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 19, ff. 89v–90v (copy), 26 October 1506, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga.

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of 1506, after eagerly awaiting repayment for fifteen years, Giovanni II suddenly announced he would pardon the loan, claiming it had been part of his daughter Laura’s dowry and most especially as recompense for the marchese’s immense and natural ‘liberalitade’ (generosity) in all he had given Laura.73 With that grant made just a few months before the expedition, it is clear Giovanni II had felt trouble coming his way.

Bentivoglio Departures The mere approach of papal troops from Castel San Pietro—no matter how few they were, how little ammunition they carried, and whether or not Budrio had submitted—was enough to scare the Bentivoglio men. They fled in the dark on the evening of 1 November along with dozens of partisans, decisively with little honour.74 The Bolognese people could be heard shouting ‘Ghiexia, Ghiexia’ (‘Church, Church’). Citizens prepared for the worst by taking their daughters to be kept safe within convents and burying money, rings and other jewellery since no one knew what would happen next.75 Although many partisans fled alongside Giovanni II and his sons, none of the Sedici did. It is unclear why members of the Sedici did not leave since those men were the oligarchic government, the alleged object of Julius’ wrath. Shouldn’t men who had upheld Bentivoglio leadership have been considered partisans? The marchese formally entered the city on Wednesday 4 November at 4 hore di notte, or around 9 p.m. After his initial announcement that everyone loved his magnificent jewelled hat when he took over Bologna, he declared that fortuna had won over. He proclaimed his entry into Bologna was testimony of ‘how various and mutable this miserable life is’ and ‘how vague and voluble fortuna is’.76 Isabella’s reply to her husband was congratulatory. She was ecstatic that her husband had reduced Bologna to obedience, which she understood would grant him perpetual fame and glory. She added that she was sad about the ruin of the Bentivoglio and agreed that their story was a true example of fortuna.77 The pope would not enter 73 ASMN, AG, 1146, f. 319r, 23 March 1506, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. 74 According to one source, 135 partisans fled with Giovanni II, see Anon., Cronica Bianchini, f. 265r; Ubaldini listed 72 by name plus ‘many others’, see Ubaldini, 2 November 1506 entry; by mid-January, only 65 men were known to have fled, see Ubaldini, 18 January 1507 entry. 75 Ubaldini, 31 October–1 November 1506 entry. 76 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 82r–v, 2 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. 77 ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 19, ff. 93v–94r, 3 November 1506, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga; she continued her praise for her husband’s glory in a letter the following week; see ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 19, f. 95r–v, 9 November 1506, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga.

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until the Bolognese put down their arms—but the Bolognese would not do it until the heavily armed and skilled French army left the area since they feared a sacking.78 So there was another standoff. Where was Genevra Sforza during these important changes related to her family and her city? Throughout the summer and autumn of 1506, she awaited the outcome of these political and military events from her apartment within Palazzo Bentivoglio. Then finally, after the arrival of the papal army, French captain Monsieur Chaumont made ‘everyone’ in Bologna understand that no one in any way was to bother Genevra who was in her home; he stated that she had full rights to remain there in safety and in peace.79 The marchese and his closest officials lodged in Palazzo Bentivoglio along with Genevra, other Bentivoglio women, and some of the children, grandchildren and servants. Genevra and the other women were reportedly glad the marchese stayed there with them due to their constant fear of being sacked. Although he had been employed to takeover Bologna and oust the Bentivoglio, Francesco Gonzaga now lived with many Bentivoglio within their palace and worked to console Genevra and other women who were there in misfortune.80 Meanwhile, male Bentivoglio reached Mantua. Some were staying at the court of Giovanni Gonzaga and Laura while others were reportedly at the osteria of Giorgio Panaza.81 Their presence in Gonzaga territory caused Julius to issue an interdict against the city of Mantua. Isabella complained about it and told her husband that if he wanted the Bentivoglio to stay at their court or in their territory, he would have to obtain pardon for them from the pope as soon as possible.82 The marchese further discussed the case of Genevra Sforza with the French captain. They noted that Genevra did not have to leave her home or Bologna against her will, although the papal legate had been trying to persuade her to do so. Just as the marchese had been giving the French power over events throughout the mission, the French were given the final decision about Genevra’s acceptable place of residence. The marchese proclaimed that the king’s will regarding Genevra’s residence would be the law.83 Giovanni Gonzaga, like his brother, was personally entangled in both sides of the story; he spent time in Palazzo Bentivoglio with Genevra and the other women 78 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 88v–90r, 6 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Giulio Gonzaga. For helping the pope, France was rewarded with the confirmation of three new French cardinals; see Shaw, p. 212. 79 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 220, 3 November 1506, Alessandro de Gablonens to Francesco Gonzaga. 80 ASMN, AG 2116, fasc. 10, ff. 179r–180v (original) and ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, ff. 91r–93r (copy), 6 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. 81 See their expense accounts from the osteria now filed at ASMN, AG 1146, f. 458, 4 November 1506; and ASMN, AG 1146, f. 459, 6 November 1506. 82 ASMN, AG 2116, fasc. 11.3, f. 282r (original) and ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 19, ff. 94v–95r (copy), 6 November 1506, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga. 83 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 1r, 8 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Gran Mestre of Milan.

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and tried to make the women understand that the marchese did not hold anything against them personally and that he cared very much about the family.84 No further ruling about the right to stay or the necessity to depart regarding Genevra was recorded. There is no evidence Genevra requested advice or help from anyone. We do not know what she did with her time or how she felt during those days. She could perhaps have entered the convent of Corpus Domini; but such a choice would have necessitated her asking Julius for an entry bull.85 Genevra probably did not want to have to make such a request of him, which would have given him the satisfaction of controlling her whereabouts; it is also possible that he could have refused such a bull, which would have been even more humiliating. Genevra probably considered a move to Sforza territory, either to Pesaro or Milan. But Pesaro was part of Julius’ same mission aimed at controlling rebellious states more closely, so she would have been entering an equally risky and unstable situation.86 Sforza Milan could have been an attractive option in earlier years but from when King Charles VIII of France arrived in Milan (1494), the political future was unsure. From 1499 Duke Lodovico il Moro had been taken prisoner in France, and by late 1506 the city remained in the hands of King Louis XII. Urbino, where Genevra’s sister Duchess Battista Sforza had reigned alongside Duke Federico of Montefeltro, had since changed political affiliation too: Genevra’s nephew, Guidobaldo, son of Battista and Federigo, had adopted Francesco Maria della Rovere, a nephew of Julius, as heir to the duchy. Based on the ongoing friendship with the Medici, Florence could have been an earlier option; but after the descent of Charles VIII, the Medici were exiled (and would not return until 1512). Ferrara, too, could have been an option as a nearby city closely tied to the Bentivoglio through the marriage of Annibale II; but it was out of the question since Duke Alfonso d’Este set up a strict formal policy (that he followed) allowing no Bentivoglio males in his territory. He even banned Bentivoglio women, including his half-sister Lucrezia who had become one.87 Other small courts in towns into which Bentivoglio children married (e.g. Mirandola, Carpi, Sassuolo) could have served as emergency havens but they offered little because they were small and their ruling families suffered civil strife. Finally, 84 ASMN, AG 1146, ff. 246r–247v, 9 November 1506, Giovanni Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga. 85 Although there was usually no need to obtain a papal bull in order to enter a convent, sometimes permission was requested by aristocratic houses in order to control who could enter. That may have been the case with Corpus Domini, which explains Genevra’s previous (and multiple) entry permits. I am grateful to Silvia Evangelisti for these clarifications. 86 Reports of fighting and disorder (between 1504 and 1506) survive in Pesaro, Imola, Spoleto, Foligno, Ascoli, Ancona, Jesi, Forlì, Rieti, Fano, Terracina, Todi, Cesena, Rocca Antica, Civita Castellana, Viterbo, Trevi, Norcia, Gallese and Otricoli. Julius II wished to pacify those towns in order to stabilize the Papal State, see Shaw (1997), p. 140. 87 Lucrezia d’Este attempted to return home on several occasions, unsuccessfully. See original request letters at ASMO, also published in Dallari; see especially letters nos. 628–640 and footnote 133.

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Mantua, an important and large court in a city ruled by friends who had become family seems to have been Genevra’s best option—and perhaps her only realistic option. Although Genevra and Giovanni II produced multitudinous children (and even more grandchildren) and used them in strategic alliances far and wide as a form of insurance in the face of unstable politics, by late 1506 the couple really had only one acceptable option of residence. From correspondence dated 9 November, we see that Genevra had all of the beds in her home prepared for Julius and his entourage. By 10 November she handed over the keys to the bedrooms, grain rooms, stables and other areas of her palace.88 Genevra concentrated on details relating to keys and food rather than the bigger changing political picture and the survival of her family within it. She showed particular concern about the family’s grain supply and hoped the marchese would pretend he had bought it from her family for his own family’s use—or else she feared it would be given away. The marchese discussed the Bentivoglio grain stored within the palace and reported that there was enough grain, wine, wood and other supplies to last one year.89 In Genevra’s last days in Bologna, her strong resentment toward Julius can be detected when she was recorded as having told the marchese, with a touch of bitter sarcasm, to tell the pope that he should be glad he could stay in the Palazzo Bentivoglio because staying in any other home would have required his paying rent.90 The remark shows us that Genevra, although she had made full provision for the pope’s entourage, did not refrain from making a caustic observation at least indirectly. Only after Genevra and her family had been thoroughly humiliated, and only after a lifetime of courtly courtesies, it is noteworthy that Genevra permitted herself this moment of self-expression. The consignment of keys and the preparation of ‘all’ the beds implied that Genevra and the remaining Bentivoglio women planned to leave imminently. On the day the French left for Castelfranco, the Bolognese put down their arms. The pope could now enter the city in peace, as he had desired.91 On 9 November, the marchese reported that ‘everyone’ wanted to loot Palazzo Bentivoglio. He wrote Isabella that if he and his men had not been inside the palace to defend it, it would have been sacked ‘ten times’.92 Writing in secret code, Giovanni Gonzaga reported rumours that he had heard ‘from reliable sources’ about how the Malvezzi and 88 ASMN, AG 1146, ff. 246r–247v, 9 November 1506, Giovanni Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga; see ASMN, AG 1146, f. 187, 10 November 1506, Nicola to Francesco Gonzaga. 89 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 187, 10 November 1506, Nicola to Francesco Gonzaga. See ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 2r, 9 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 90 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 187, 10 November 1506, Nicola to Francesco Gonzaga. 91 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 1v, 9 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. 92 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 1v, 9 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este.

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Marescotti wanted to kill the Bentivoglio.93 Lucrezia, her daughters and servants felt that danger and fled, without even alerting Annibale II.94 Next, in contradiction to what had been previously established, the marchese declared that all of the Bentivoglio women must now leave because when the pope was to enter, they could no longer be there.95 That statement was enough to make Genevra prepare for departure along with her remaining female kin, their young children and servants. Genevra prepared herself all evening and left in the early morning before dawn, between 4 and 5 a.m. She passed freely through the fields surrounding the city since the king of France protected her and her family group. Nobody recorded that Genevra asked for any explanations or compromises from anyone—not from the marchese, the French, the legate, the pope or anyone else. In the dark and without resistance, Genevra and the women vanished from Bologna.96

Italian Exile Practices Was theirs a typical exile story?97 First, the Bentivoglio family was never exiled. They left Bologna by their own decision, even if under extreme pressure. Had the Bentivoglio been exiled, someone in a position of power would have set terms for the exile, in the form of length or location. Voluntary exile, the type that applies to this story, took place when one party felt a rival party was about to take political control; and no terms of exile would be set other than an unwritten one: those who left would not return until another change of government had taken place. The duration of absence and location of residence for the ‘exiled’ Bentivoglio would therefore remain unspecified. When Julius entered Bologna, he brought with him members of his Roman court who represented the change in government, and he enabled the return of many exiled Bolognese including men from the Malvezzi and Marescotti families who appeared after exactly seventeen years, two months and 93 Giovanni Gonzaga did not know which Bentivoglio they wished to kill; see ASMN, AG 1146, ff. 283r–284r, 10 December 1506, Giovanni Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga. 94 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f.1v, 9 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este; ASMN, AG 1146, f. 343, 9 November 1506, Annibale II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. 95 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 1v, 9 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este; see Tuate, f. 290. 96 Tuate, f. 290. 97 For Renaissance Italian exile see Shaw (2000); Smith; Brown; Ganz; Foster Baxendale; Laurent; Fabbri; Tomas. Despite much literature on the exile of partisans, there is little published about the female kin of exiled rulers. In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Bologna, grave factional problems persisted and were solved through the institution of exile. Although Milani has published an excellent work on exile based on late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Bologna, and despite a wealth of contemporary early modern material available, a major study of exile and its effects within a fifteenth-century Bolognese context is lacking.

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seventeen days—as citizens calculated.98 The papal entry, therefore, represented not only direct intervention from distant Rome but also a change on the local factional level, featuring a return of Bentivoglio enemies. In recent literature about early modern exile, it has been shown that women experienced a variety of possibilities. When families were exiled, sometimes the women were free to remain behind in their homes (in their husbands’ homes and cities) since they were considered politically insignificant, unthreatening to the government.99 Shaw notes that women were regarded as hostages in order to keep their husbands on good behaviour when away, rather than as dangerous collaborators working for their families.100 Sometimes the women of the politically exiled voluntarily left their homes in order to join their husbands elsewhere but that seems to have occurred in cases in which there was no important family property involved. In Florence, partisans’ wives and children were encouraged to remain in the city to protect family property and pay taxes owed to the city.101 When Piero II de’ Medici and his male relatives were exiled from Florence, his wife Alfonsina Orsini and the other Medici women remained in town and were counted on to run family affairs until they succeeded at negotiating the return of the Medici men, in 1512.102 But in nearby Siena, wives and daughters could be banished alongside the men of the families;103 in one Sienese case, an exiled man’s wife was not allowed to leave the city without governmental permission.104 From the work of Margery Ganz and Susan Foster Baxendale, we see that partisans’ women tended to stay in their homes and cities not only in order to maintain their husbands’ family property but also to arrange marriages for their children, to represent the family in its legal and business affairs, and to attempt to help their men return as quickly as possible. With so many responsibilities, Ganz suggests that women paid a much greater price for a family’s political failure.105 Because women whose families suffered 98 Ubaldini, 10 November 1506 entry. 99 Foster Baxendale, p. 728; Ganz, p. 244. Ganz cites the case of only one individual woman who was sent into exile for having broken a law. 100 Shaw (2000), pp. 152–153. 101 Brown, p. 358; Ganz, p. 242. 102 Tomas (2000), pp. 70–90; Tomas, (2003), pp. 105–123. For the Medici staying in Bianca Bentivoglio and Niccolò Rangoni’s Bolognese home (property confiscated from the exiled Malvezzi), see Ubaldini, 30 September 1513 entry. For more on the Baglioni family and interesting parallels with the Bentivoglio (but without a discussion of the fates of their women), see Black; the situation of the female Baglioni could be examined and compared to that of the female Bentivoglio. 103 Shaw (2000), pp. 53, 122. Shaw discusses the effects of the 1494 French invasion (including the exile of rulers in Milan, Naples and Florence) and the effects of Borgia’s 1503 conquests but does not include discussions about the women whose men were in exile. 104 Shaw (2000), p. 123, for the case of Leonardo Bellanti’s wife, Angelina. 105 Ganz, pp. 237–238; Foster Baxendale, pp. 730–738.

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exile were treated in such diverse ways, exile for females seems to have been tied to the whims of specific circumstances and the government of each particular city. Considering the Bentivoglio’s significant property holdings across Bologna, it is unlikely that the women would have abandoned the city without good cause. In the Bentivoglio case, the women did not remain in Bologna for any significant time after the men left, so they did not have to care for (or rather they were not allowed to care for) family property; they were burdened with none of the other responsibilities mentioned above. Genevra and the Bentivoglio women left town due to the danger of their home being sacked and the danger of being killed. They were not comfortable in Bologna because Julius’ mission was directed against all of the Bentivoglio, male and female. To have allowed Genevra and other Bentivoglio wives to stay in Bologna could have been interpreted by the Bentivoglio men (and other citizens) that the Bentivoglio men would someday return to Bologna. Julius did not want to convey that idea—in fact, he did not want Giovanni II to return to Bologna for as long as he lived.106 Although the Bentivoglio men followed by the women are said to have gone into exile, some did not leave the city. Which Bentivoglio stayed, and who constituted ‘the Bentivoglio women’ so often cited as a group in contemporary materials? Giovanni II, his legitimate and illegitimate sons (including the religious) left town: Annibale II, AntonGaleazzo, Alessandro and Ermes, and illegitimates Ascanio, Carlo, Sigismondo, Leone, Rinaldo and Ottaviano (and possibly others). The Bentivoglio women who eventually departed included the wives of the legitimate males, i.e. Genevra Sforza, Lucrezia d’Este, Ippolita Sforza and Giacoma Orsini. Young male and female children who were Bentivoglio by blood and name left together with their mothers and were part of the group known as ‘the Bentivoglio women’. Giovanni II and Genevra’s married daughters who were alive in 1506 (Bianca, Eleonora, Violante and Laura) may have been present in Palazzo Bentivoglio or elsewhere in town until the departure of the Bentivoglio women. They eventually escaped to their husbands’ cities of origin (respectively Modena, Sassuolo, Rimini and Vescovato). At least three of them kept independent homes in Bologna in the early years of the sixteenth century but they were compelled to vacate them for Julius’ cardinals who were housed in them.107 Some Bentivoglio were allowed to remain in Bologna including the cloistered daughters Camilla and Isotta, as well as Sante’s granddaughter, Ginevra, all considered ‘insignificant’. They could freely remain in the city albeit behind the tall brick walls of a convent. Nobody seems to have questioned the presence of Giovanni 106 Shaw (1997), p. 152. 107 For the cardinals and their housing assignments, see many chronicles, including Anon., Cronica di Bologna, ms. 356, no.1, entry at 4 November 1506; Ghirardacci, pp. 356–357.

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II’s illegitimate married daughters either: Isabetta, Griselda and Lucia. Isabetta Bentivoglio Bargellini remained in town—we can see the place of origin recorded in her letters sent to Isabella d’Este.108 The wives of Giovanni II’s illegitimate boys were also allowed to remain in Bologna—but at their own risk. For example, the unnamed wife of Leone Bentivoglio remained for a couple of months without problems but by January 1507, she too wished to leave and needed help to be saved and accompanied to a safe place.109 Thus cloistered nuns, illegitimate daughters married into other families, and wives of illegitimate boys (but only temporarily) were politically insignificant enough to remain safely in town.110 The other side of this dual-branched Bentivoglio clan, including the large and politically active (yet politically conservative) line of the family later became known as the ‘Bentivoglio senatoriale’ also remained in Bologna (whereas Giovanni II’s side of the family was deemed the ‘Bentivoglio dominante’). After 1506, the submissive senatorial branch pledged allegiance to Julius and the new government. They added his last name, ‘della Rovere’, to theirs, and they crossed the sega on their heraldic emblem together with the oak trees from the pope’s coat of arms. In this fashion they became accepted members of the new Bolognese Senate.

The Pope at Palazzo Bentivoglio On the afternoon of the autumn feast day dedicated to San Martino, representing the end of the harvest (11 November), Pope Julius II solemnly and metaphorically entered the city in this new season of Bolognese history. He headed to Palazzo Bentivoglio, although he would be officially lodging in the Palazzo Grande facing Piazza Maggiore.111 His procession lasted about four hours in the late afternoon until the sun set. Francesco Gonzaga described the event to his wife as disorderly 108 An example is ASMN, AG 1147, ff. 147r–148r, 15 August 1509, Isabetta Bentivoglio Bargellini to Isabella d’Este. 109 ASMN, AG 1368, 14 January 1507, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. 110 When Bianca Bentivoglio Rangoni and some of her children wished to visit Bologna in December 1510, they needed papal permission to enter the city, and license was granted. She and her children lodged in the convent of Corpus Domini where her sister Camilla (and possibly still Isotta) and her niece Ginevra resided. Bianca reportedly visited with them and many Bolognese citizens and women. Ubaldini recorded that the Bolognese did not want her in town and had her sent away since the Bentivoglio were still considered enemies of the Church; see Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 880. She made a more successful visit to Bologna in September 1513 (after the Bentivoglio had been expelled a second time) when she stayed for about two weeks at the home of her half-sister, Isabetta Bentivoglio Bargellini; see Ubaldini, f. 981. 111 The Palazzo Grande was simultaneously referred to as Palazzo dei Signori, Palazzo dei Signori Anziani, Palazzo della Città, Palazzo del Comune, Palazzo del Legato and/or Palazzo del Governatore.

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but magnificent. He noted the poorly constructed arches placed around the city for which the Bolognese excused themselves, claiming they did not have enough time to make them as they should have been made. He described the women’s clothing as more gallant than beautiful. He reported that recent heavy rain caused lots of mud to remain in the streets so many men left their best clothes at home, so as not to soil them. He noted how the special money coined for the entry was thrown to the people, causing much confusion. Inside his letter, Francesco placed four samples of the new one-ducat coin, one each for Isabella, two of their children, and Cardinal Sigismondo.112 Desiderius Erasmus also happened to view the entry; he focused on its pretentious pomp but did not distinguish it from other entries in which Julius participated.113 On that same triumphant day, the pope lifted the interdict over Mantua simply by making a sign of the cross. When Francesco Gonzaga asked for the absolution in writing, Julius replied that his gesture had been worth ‘1000 bulls’. The marchese then wrote to Annibale II, laying down guilt when he described how the weight of the Bentivoglio’s disgrace had fallen on the Gonzaga, more than on any other family, before relaying that the interdict had been lifted through his personal work.114 Julius soon decided he would lodge within Palazzo Bentivoglio, against the wishes of many others and against the plans of the marchese who had already made specific arrangements for his brother Cardinal Sigismondo and his entourage to stay there. Instead, Julius decided that his thirty-five-year-old nephew, Galeotto Franciotti della Rovere Cardinal of San Pietro ad Vincula, would reside with him there; he also planned to unite the cancelleria (Apostolic Chancery), camera apostolica (Papal Treasury), registro (Records Office) and rota (Roman Rota or Apostolic Tribunal) all there under the same roof.115 Because Palazzo Bentivoglio was the largest building in the city, it was the only solution grand enough for all of those needs. Julius reported he had felt imprisoned within his small quarters in the Palazzo Grande and that he needed a larger palace, somewhere where he could entertain important guests such as the imperial rector. The enormous Bentivoglio palace was also where Julius’ young cardinal legate nephew Galeotto invited at least one other cardinal and archbishop (Francesco Guglielmo de Clermont) to meet with a courtesan; once after they went missing, they were later found to have

112 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 6r–8r, 11 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. 113 Erasmus, pp. 83–84. 114 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 5r–v, 11 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Annibale II Bentivoglio. 115 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 218, 17 November 1506, Hieronymus Arsugus (?) to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1146, f. 250, 17 November 1506, Giovanni Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1146, f. 380, 20 November 1506, Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1146, f. 382, 21 November 1506, Giovanni Antonio Fraxeti Corigiensis to Francesco Gonzaga.

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been ‘secretly busy’ for an entire day with a lady named Magdalena da Vignone ‘a piacere’ (for pleasure).116 Julius felt it was his right to occupy Palazzo Bentivoglio, a property built with his subjects’ tax money—but he also needed to take over and dominate it so that the Bolognese would have concrete evidence of the change in their government. When the pope appropriated Bentivoglio sites, including the family’s country villa at Ponte Poledrano (later ‘Bentivoglio’), he occupied and controlled Bentivoglio psychological and charismatic space.117 In that way Julius inserted himself directly into the civic-religious fabric of the city as he turned Palazzo Bentivoglio into a surrogate Vatican.118 Other Bentivoglio properties were physically and psychologically sequestered as they were used to house six (of twenty-six) cardinals and their Roman retinues. The home of Eleonora Bentivoglio Pio was given to Cardinal Friderigo da Sanseverino and that of Griselda Bentivoglio Guidotti to Cardinal Carlo Conetti. The extended Bentivoglio family also gave up their properties: Cardinal Santorio Fazio da Viterbo lodged in a home of Ovidio Bargellini, and Cardinal Giuliano Cesarino il giovane stayed in the home of Alessandro Bargellini; Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona moved into the home of Giovanni Felicini. The spectacular Palazzo Sanuti, which the Bentivoglio had also come to possess, was given to Giovanni di Bernardino Rosso Gozzadini, Julius’ datario (grantor of indults, dispensations, rescripts, benefices and favours). And as noted above, Cardinal Galeotto Franciotti della Rovere housed with Julius directly within Palazzo Bentivoglio.119 Despite the political position of the marchese as a client of the pope, as a friend and relative he continuously helped the Bentivoglio. He invited them to his territory, he suggested they send their possessions to him for safekeeping, and he generously and honourably provided them with first-rate hospitality. The marchese, the Gonzaga, and the city of Mantua suffered extended papal oppression in the form of four papal interdicts for helping an excommunicated family.120 Giovanni Gonzaga was also restricted as he was not allowed to come and go freely to Bologna.121 Julius further punished him and other Gonzaga by not calling on them: he refused to socialise with them—although he did so regularly with many other men of similar station in Bologna.122 116 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 285r–v, 11 December 1506, Giovanni Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga. 117 For more on the appropriation of Bentivoglio symbols by Julius II, see Terpstra, pp. 191–192. 118 Bologna would be ‘Romanised’ again in February 1530 with the triumphal entry and coronation of Charles V as emperor by Pope Clement VII; see Eisenbichler. 119 For some details of cardinals’ lodgings, see Ghirardacci, pp. 356–357. 120 Interdicts date from ca. 6 to 11 November 1506; ca. 6 to 25 March 1507; 13 to 14 April 1507; and 9 June to late June 1507. 121 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 262 r, 1 December 1506, Giovanni Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga. 122 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 35v–36r, 11 December 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Giovanni Gonzaga.

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Genevra Sforza Hounded in Mantua After Genevra departed from Bologna along with thirty ‘bocche’ (mouths, i.e. relatives and servants) and ten horses, she joined members of her family who had already found refuge in Gonzaga territory. The marchese granted Genevra tax-free entry into his territory with her essential belongings.123 How many carriages or carts did she have with her? And assuming that she and many others rode away in carriages pulled by horses, what could she have taken from an enormous palace with the help of a total of ten horses? Since we have no inventory of her possessions, we do not know what she chose to salvage, or if she could salvage much of anything beyond a few possessions or personal items and foodstuffs for the road ahead. Homeless and powerless, Genevra once again had been thrown into the hands of fortune—i.e. a series of powerful men. Genevra lodged in Mantua within the Gonzaga palace where her daughter-in-law, Lucrezia, and her nine small children (some of Genevra’s many grandchildren) and their servants were living as guests of Isabella d’Este, Lucrezia’s half-sister. The marchese’s reechoed wishes about helping the Bentivoglio family were carried out, and we have lots more proof of it. Genevra’s daughter-in-law Ippolita Sforza and her entourage stayed for a few weeks at Borgoforte (a fortified village along the Po, ca. 15 km south of Mantua) but sometime before the end of November she (and the others) continued their journey to join Alessandro in Milan.124 Genevra’s sons Annibale II and Ermes, along with their crew of 110 bocche and seventy-five horses (and travelling with water, grain, wine, meat, salt, cheese, and other foodstuffs) resided at Revere (on the Po, ca. 35 km southeast of Mantua) where honourable Gonzaga palace housing had been awaiting them since 5 November.125 Other Bentivoglio stayed just beyond Mantuan territory: Giovanni II and AntonGaleazzo spent the winter in Pallavicino territory at Borgo San Donnino (Fidenza) conveniently 123 On 19 December 1506 a license was issued by Francesco Gonzaga to Genevra Bentivoglio and all of her party and to Eleonora Bentivoglio Pio and her party and for their persons and for everything essential they carried; see MIBA, VN 34, envelope 6. Genevra’s license included her safe conduct for 30 bocche and ten horses, and for that of her sons, Annibale and Ermes with their 110 bocche and 75 horses, and for some of their possessions including water, grain, wine, meat, salt, cheese, and other goods. The license is also listed in Fiorina, 5. (6.) and 5. (16.). 124 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 345, 22 November 1506, Ippolita Sforza to Francesco Gonzaga; see also ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 194, f. 28r, 23 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Ippolita Sforza. ASMN, AG 1146, f. 345r, 22 November 1506, Ippolita Sforza Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga. The whereabouts of Genevra’s daughter-in-law, Giacoma Orsini, remain unknown. 125 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 343, 9 November 1506, Annibale Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 193, f. 88r, 5 November 1506, Francesco Gonzaga to Commissario Revere. See ASMN, AG 1146, ff. 458–459 for their 4 November 1506 expense list from the osteria di Giorgio Panaza, where they had stayed for a few nights before arriving at Revere.

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located along the Via Emilia.126 By spring of 1507, Giovanni II had moved as far north as Milan where Alessandro and his family were; 127 and sometime in late 1507, AntonGaleazzo moved on to Cremona (Venetian territory) for a few months before making his way to Rome.128 Four months after the Bentivoglio fled Bologna, Julius set exile terms for them. Bishop Angelo Leonini of Tivoli was sent to Mantua to dictate the punishment: the Bentivoglio were to be expelled from Mantuan territory and were not to be found within one hundred miles of Bologna.129 Although the terms suggested that the Bentivoglio were within Gonzaga territory, the marchese claimed he did not know where they were and that he never saw them. Although he may not have ‘seen’ them, the continuing Bentivoglio presence in Mantuan territory can be detected in the form of locations overtly recorded on letters by the Bentivoglio that were sent from Gonzaga territory. Their presence can also be verified from information in other letters (sent after March 1507) written by the Gonzaga that mention them there: in April, AntonGaleazzo spoke in person about Genevra’s health with the marchese; and in May, we know that the marchese invited AntonGaleazzo to a horse race in Mantua.130 A year later the marchese agreed to serve as godfather to a Bentivoglio nipote (6 April 1508).131 In that time of Bentivoglio ‘exile’ from Mantuan territory, when the marchese was not even supposed to see the Bentivoglio, he not only hosted them but he also socialised with them and did favours for them. The families remained on friendly terms, continuing their complex relationship as before. 126 Giovanni II’s letters sent from Borgo San Donnino are at ASMN, AG 1368, dated between 25 November 1506 and 8 March 1507; all are addressed to Francesco Gonzaga. 127 By spring 1507, Giovanni II was in Lombardy. See ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, f. 44r–v, 22 April 1507, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga. 128 ASMN, AG 1637 and 1638; AntonGaleazzo’s letters were sent from Cremona between 26 December 1507 and May 1508. 129 The ‘miglio’ that Julius II proposed may or may not have measured up to the 1000 ‘passi’ of the Roman mile. 130 ASMN, AG 1793, 13 March 1508, Annibale II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga (from Vescovato); ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 197, ff. 1r–2r, 14 April 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este (about how AntonGaleazzo spoke in person with the marchese about Genevra’s health); see ASMN, AG 1638, 31 May 1508, AntonGaleazzo Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga (written from Cremona but including an invitation to see him in Mantua for a horse race). The families seem to have been in close and continuous contact throughout the Bentivoglio exile period and into their restoration in Bologna (22 May 1511). From the very evening of their return to Bologna, close correspondence picked up among Annibale II, his wife Lucrezia d’Este, and the Gonzaga in Mantua. Their letters sent to Mantua throughout their year as rulers in Bologna can be seen within ASMN, AG 1147 and AG 1368. Laura Bentivoglio Gonzaga and Giovanni Gonzaga also returned to enjoy power in Bologna alongside Lucrezia and Annibale II; see Ubaldini, 27 June 1511 entry. 131 ASMN, AG 2915, Lib. 200, f. 14v, 6 April 1508, Francesco Gonzaga to Alessandro and Angela Pio of Sassuolo.

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Cardinal Ippolito d’Este was also caught on both sides of the conflict. Julius threatened his benef ices and cardinal hat if he did not f ind men from Ferrara and Modena to fight against the Bentivoglio.132 Julius forced Ippolito to be more loyal to Rome than to his half-sister Lucrezia and her Bentivoglio children, his own nieces and nephews. Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga was also tested. Although he was godfather to at least one Bentivoglio grandson and uncle to many half-Bentivoglio children, he openly counteracted against the marchese (his own brother) and the Bentivoglio.133 The marchese eventually wrote him a harsh letter reminding him that he had made him cardinal in the first place, at his own great expense, and that he should stop being ungrateful toward him; he sarcastically suggested that Sigismondo move to the French court, from where he could learn about courtesy.134 The marchese allowed the Bentivoglio to hide out in Mantuan territory for years. While helping the Bentivoglio, he was continuously accused of collaboration with them and for allegedly helping them work against Julius.135 Francesco even had to go to Rome in an attempt to clear himself of such accusations.136 Although in the past Francesco had scolded the Bentivoglio, attempting to make their subordinate place clear to them, he had been their friend and relation for years. He declared to the French that he could endure the papal persecution and the inconveniences due to his blood ties with the Bentivoglio.137 He declared that he ‘loved’ the Bentivoglio and had instructed his brother Giovanni to tell that to the Bentivoglio women in their time of crisis (November 1506). He would later describe the Bentivoglio family’s preparation for departure from their home as ‘touching’.138 The marchese considered his papal contract concluded after he had successfully led the mission 132 Dallari, letter no. 631, p. 233. 133 See especially ASMN, AG 1146, ff. 503r–505r, 9 February 1507, Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1146, f. 517r, 22 February 1507, Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 197, ff. 27v–29r, 12 May 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 197, ff. 94v–95v, 9 October 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga had earlier served as godfather to at least one Bentivoglio grandson, Alfonso di Annibale II and Lucrezia d’Este, born 22 September and baptised 16 December 1490; see AAB, Fonti battesimali, vol. 4, f. 90v. 134 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 197, ff. 27v–29r, 12 May 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 135 Francesco Gonzaga covered for the Bentivoglio through 1508 (and probably until 1511). A wide variety of letters sent about the question of the Bentivoglio in Mantuan territory survive; see over 50 related letters at ASMN dispersed throughout AG 1146, 1147, 1368, 2914, 2915, and 2994. 136 ASMN, AG 2915, Lib. 199, f. 78r–v, 28 February 1508, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 137 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 76v–77r, 5 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Gran Mestre of Milan; Ubaldini, Cronica, 1 May 1507 entry. 138 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 90r–91v, 25 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Legate Antonio Ferreri of San Vitale.

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against Bologna—culminating in the triumphal papal entry into the city. Julius, however, assumed the marchese’s continued cooperation after the campaign. When it became widely known that the Bentivoglio lived in Mantuan territory, and that while there they might be planning a return to Bologna, the pope attempted to force additional penalties onto both families. But the marchese invented excuses in order to keep helping them, e.g. claiming he would have to report and discuss Julius’ wishes with King Louis XII for French approval before applying any of the pope’s demands onto the Bentivoglio—sometimes referred to in the letters as the ‘Maltivoglio’; and the marchese creatively altered some of the pope’s orders and invented his own punishments, compromises and excuses in order to keep helping.139 For example, he proclaimed a gendered division with regard to Bentivoglio exile terms, declaring that only the men would have to follow the 100-mile distance set for the exile—but the women could remain.140 At another point he covered for himself claiming that he had been the first to want to expel the Bentivoglio from his territory, even before the pope considered it.141 Covering for the Bentivoglio was a major topic of conversation for the Gonzaga, and the marchese proclaimed that he received little honour for helping ruined people.142 His excuses to the pope were not related to pretended bouts of gout or syphilis, which he used to explain his inaction in enterprises elsewhere.143 His Bentivoglio excuses were based on sympathy toward those whom he considered his friends and relatives and on his desire to satisfy Isabella by allowing the Bentivoglio women (Genevra, and especially Lucrezia) to stay with her in Mantua. The situation in Mantua infuriated Julius, leading to more suspicion and punishments. The Bentivoglio suffered unusual punishments. They were excommunicated, and they had prices put on their heads. The pope promised plenary indulgences to anyone who could render any of them dead or alive.144 After the 1506 exile, illegitimates Ascanio, Leone, Antonio, Ottaviano, Sigismondo and Carlo all carried 139 ASFE, FB, Libro 22, no. 22, 7 March 1507, Zambeccari to Pope (this letter is a long report against the Maltivoglio, the Gonzaga and others who were supposedly helping them). See also AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 82v–83r, 11 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Pope Julius II; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 86r, 16 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Legate Antonio Ferreri of San Vitale; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, f. 87v, 17 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Alberto Pio; ASMN, AG, 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 88v–89r, 23 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Gran Mestre of Milan. 140 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 78r–79r, 6 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 141 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 197, ff. 26v–26r, 12 May 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Vigo de Campo San Pietro. 142 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 91v–92r, 25 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 71v–72v, 23 February 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Gemetto. 143 Shaw (1997), p. 262. 144 For the 26 October 1506 head prices, see De Benedictis (1995), p. 168; for the March 1507 head prices see Anelle, 24 March 1507 entry.

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a taglia (head price) of 400 ducats alive or 200 dead, exactly 1/10th of the head price held over the legitimate Bentivoglio sons, worth 4000 ducats alive or 2000 dead.145 No prices were ever set for the heads of any Bentivoglio women. In early March 1507 Julius sent Bishop Angelo Leonini back to Mantua to make sure the Bentivoglio had left the area and had moved beyond one hundred miles of Bologna.146 News from France about a decision regarding the future of the Bentivoglio family also arrived, in late March. King Louis XII decided the Bentivoglio must leave Mantua and that the Bentivoglio and Gonzaga could no longer see one another. Even the king’s sentence was only somewhat accepted by the marchese who again cleverly interpreted and negotiated the terms in favour of his extended family: he gave them fifteen days of safe passage before deciding that any Bentivoglio who could ride a horse must leave. Many others could not—so they did not leave, including Genevra and Lucrezia, her children and their servants. Bishop Leonini was yet again sent to Mantua, to guarantee that the Bentivoglio were removed. He did not believe the story that at least two of the women, Genevra and Lucrezia, could not leave because of their health. He therefore had a doctor visit them to ascertain the truth.147 It went recorded that Genevra was suffering a ‘miraculous flow of menstrual blood’ twenty-five years after she had gone into menopause, and Lucrezia was declared pregnant.148 After the bishop discussed the matter with the legate and the pope, a papal bull was issued (10 April). The bull allowed Lucrezia to remain in Mantua until the birth of her baby but did not grant any delay to the departure of Genevra.149 By 12 April the legate said he would have been glad to absolve Mantua from the interdict, but only after Genevra left the city.150 By the next day Genevra had her belongings packed and was ready to leave. She was sick with a fever, bleeding, and her life was in danger. Isabella’s court doctor, Antonio da Grado, warned that forcing her to leave would kill her. Isabella wrote a letter begging the legate in Bologna to let her stay for ten more days until her condition stabilised. Isabella told him that if he did not believe her or her court doctor, he should have a doctor of his own 145 For the first taglie, see Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 792. By 1512, after the family’s second exile from Bologna, the taglia on the illegitimates was the same as that placed on the legitimates: 4000 ducats alive, 2000 dead; see Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 981. 146 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 78r–79r, 6 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 147 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 90r–91v, 25 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Legate Antonio Ferreri of San Vitale. 148 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 90r–91v, 25 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Legate Antonio Ferreri of San Vitale and ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 195, ff. 91v–92r, 25 March 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 149 A copy of the papal bull is at ASMN, AG 1146, 10 April 1507. 150 ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, ff. 34v–36r, 12 April 1507, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga.

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choice sent to examine Genevra for himself. Genevra was reported as having said she appreciated the comforts and benefits she received in Mantua and that she did not want to be a disturbance there any longer, but that at the same time she did not want to die. Isabella wrote to her husband to beg him to write to Bologna and Rome to prolong Genevra’s stay for ten more days. Isabella referred to Genevra as ‘la poveretta de Madonna Zenevra’ and ‘la povera donna’ (the poor woman).151 Genevra’s son AntonGaleazzo also spoke in person about his mother’s situation with Francesco and Isabella.152 Thanks to Gonzaga pressure, the legate agreed to allow Genevra one more week in Mantua until the day of the feast of San Giorgio (23 April).153 Isabella reported that Genevra did not want to disturb anyone and was planning an immediate departure.154 Genevra heard the discussions regarding her presence in Mantua; and it went reported that she agreed to leave as soon as possible.155 On 21 April Genevra sent her belongings by boat towards the ‘volta de parmesana’, the bend in the Po River near Parma.156 On the morning of 22 April, one day before San Giorgio, Genevra departed in spite of her terrible health. Isabella recorded that she was probably headed to Lombardy to join her husband.157 She stopped about 60 km later, not quite halfway there, at the Pallavicino court in Busseto (north of the Via Emilia, mid-way between Parma and Piacenza) where she tried to recover. During her convalescence, surely she received word from Bologna that over 200 Bentivoglio enemies were looting Palazzo Bentivoglio—beginning on 3 May and lasting throughout the month. The bell from the family’s recently constructed tower that had once summoned rebellious Bentivoglio partisans was considered a political weapon and would be confiscated, punished and forever silenced. Julius II had it melted down and recast (by Michelangelo Buonarroti) into a statue of himself to be placed over the Porta Magna (the central main portal) of the Basilica of San Petronio in Piazza Maggiore—the most prominent position in the city for a symbolic work of art, a place where everyone would see the image of Julius II and understand who was their overlord.158 There was so much to take, dismantle and 151 ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, f. 37r–v, 13 April 1507, Isabella d’Este to Cardinal Legate Antonio Ferreri. See also ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, ff. 37v–38r, 13 April 1507, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga. 152 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 197, ff. 1r–2r, 14 April 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. 153 ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, ff. 39r–40r, 16 April 1507, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga; see also ASMN, AG 1146, f. 575r, 18 April 1507, Cardinal Legate Antonio Ferreri of San Vitale to Francesco Gonzaga. 154 ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, ff. 39r–40r, 16 April 1507, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga. 155 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 197, ff. 15v–16r, 20 April 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 156 ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, ff. 42v–43r, 21 April 1507, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga. 157 ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, f. 44r–v, 22 April 1507, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga. See ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, f. 45r–v, 22 April 1507, Isabella d’Este to Cardinal Legate Antonio Ferreri of San Vitale. 158 Some details about the bell and its tower were gathered from an RSA Zoom presentation made by Francesco Ceccarelli, April 2021.

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destroy from the Bentivoglio palace that it would take weeks to do so; and many lost their lives in the spoiling before the place was turned into a pile of rubble, un guasto.159 Surely news about her home, a palace that Genevra had spent her entire adult life creating did not help her feel better. In fact, it probably crushed her spirit and especially that of her husband because like all significant Renaissance Italian palaces, it had been built as a potentially everlasting public monument attesting to the greatness of the family as well as to that of the city in which it was built.160 Without their magnificent palace, the Bentivoglio had no external representative shell in Bologna—their civic material legacy was deconstructed by enemies in order to destroy their power base, image, reputation and future in Bologna.161 It is unclear however why the pope developed a personal animus against Genevra. Her treatment could be directly compared with that of Lucrezia d’Este—as both women were politically inactive by implication of their gender, and neither was Bentivoglio by blood, although they were married to legitimate Bentivoglio male leaders of their generation. Both were living in exile, something that already went against custom for most wives of exiled men. Lucrezia’s husband was in the prime of his manhood and would eventually be involved in retaking Bologna (1511–1512). He was seen as a rebel and obviously would have been a greater risk than his elderly father. In fact, Giovanni II was considered an old man and was never reported as having gathered troops or making plans to seize Bologna.162 Both Genevra and Lucrezia were mothers to many legitimate Bentivoglio children. Genevra had borne eighteen but only two (Annibale II and Ermes) were active militarily. By 1507 Lucrezia had borne ten children, and five were boys. Although they were young at the time, at least a couple of them would have been inclined to work as condottieri and should have been seen as growing threats to the Papal State. Both Genevra and Lucrezia had physical conditions that impeded their activity and movement: Genevra was in her sixties and on her deathbed while Lucrezia was young and 159 The palace destruction was initially led by Ercole Marescotti and Camillo Gozzadini. Several years earlier some Marescotti brothers had been killed by a group of young Bolognese patricians, allegedly led by Ermes Bentivoglio, which probably fuelled Ercole to lead the destruction; see Tuate, Historia di Bologna, f. 304. For descriptions of the Palazzo Bentivoglio, see Wallace; James; Antonelli and Poli; Billings Licciardello, pp. 201–203. Despite the destroyed palace and all it symbolised, the family did briefly return to power in Bologna (1511–1512); but then they only served as pawns used by French King Louis XII as part of a strategy to harass Julius II. For the Bentivoglio as tools of Louis XII, see Shaw (1997), p. 216. The palace destruction will be discussed again in Chapter Six here. 160 This common idea is present in the writings of Leon Battista Alberti, Giovanni Pontano, Giovanni Rucellai, and many others. 161 For a similar discussion of the meaning of the destruction of Girolamo Riario’s palace in Forlì, see De Vries, p. 101. 162 Giovanni II discussed the malediction his sons gave him when they were not obedient to him, see ASMN, AG, 1368, 8 March 1507, Giovanni II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga.

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healthy, steadily producing heirs (and giving Genevra ten more grandchildren) for the legitimate main line of the next Bentivoglio generation. Considering those points, it is unclear why Genevra’s presence was considered more disruptive and dangerous than even that of Lucrezia. As the elderly matriarch of an enormous rebel family, Genevra was apparently considered a long-standing symbolic root of a problem to be eradicated. Genevra stayed in Busseto under the protection of Galeazzo Pallavicino, a kinsman of hers married to her niece, Elisabetta di Tristano Sforza. The Pallavicino State was known to offer asylum to exiles from different places—and Galeazzo had already hosted Giovanni II and AntonGaleazzo for a few months after they fled Bologna. Galeazzo had actually first accompanied Francesco Gonzaga on the papal campaign to Bologna before accompanying the Bentivoglio out of Bologna.163 Galeazzo simultaneously served as a client of the king of France and the pope—as well as a friend, relative and military colleague of the Gonzaga, Sforza and Bentivoglio. He, too, would suffer persecution from Julius who threatened to take his state from him for hosting the Bentivoglio and who called him to Rome to justify his actions with them.164 Although moribund, Genevra must have made a positive impact on the Pallavicini because at least three marriages were soon thereafter contracted between her grandchildren and members of Galeazzo’s family: Manfredo Pallavicino (d. 1521) married Ginevra Bentivoglio, a granddaughter of Genevra’s; Barbara di Rolando Pallavicino (d. 1539) married one of Genevra’s grandsons, Lodovico Rangoni; and Argentina di Federico Pallavicino di Zibello (1502–1550) married another of Genevra’s grandsons, Guido Rangoni (d. 1518).165 Although her presence in Busseto would be brief due to her rapidly declining health, Genevra served, until the very last days of her life, as a political nexus for the development of peaceful familial alliances. Less than one month later, news arrived in Mantua that Genevra was dead. She reportedly left this world on 17 May, hore 9, ca. 5 a.m.166 Annibale II, AntonGaleazzo and Ermes were by her side. Perhaps Giovanni II and others stayed away for fear of the exile terms? Did she ever see Giovanni II again, after the November night when he fled Bologna? Had they been in touch during these months? What became of Genevra’s household of thirty bocche, ten horses and personal possessions? Many questions remain unanswered. Thanks to contemporary medical insight based on her recorded symptoms found within the correspondence that were shared with a contemporary Bolognese gynaecologist, we can understand today that Genevra 163 Anon., Cronica Bianchini, f. 246v. 164 Seletti, pp. 297–298, 314. 165 Seletti, p. 217; see also Boschetti, fasc. 27 ‘Rangoni di Modena’. 166 ASMN, AG 1368, 18 May 1507, Annibale, AntonGaleazzo and Ermes Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 1368, 18 May 1507, Annibale, AntonGaleazzo and Ermes Bentivoglio to Isabella d’Este.

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likely died from an advanced tumour located in the neck of her uterus, unrelated to the number of children she had borne, but instead caused by a sexually-transmitted virus, most likely passed to her from Giovanni II years earlier.167 Genevra was buried in Busseto at the Franciscan Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, part of a monastery complex built by Marchese Pallavicino Pallavicini.168 Although there was apparently never a marker made for her grave there, her body was likely placed in the Pallavicini family sepulchre within their chapel dedicated to Santa Maria delle Grazie. After Genevra’s death, papal persecution shifted to Lucrezia and her one-month old son. From April to June, Lucrezia wrote to relatives in Ferrara begging for compassion—but none would mediate to help her, neither the duke nor the cardinal, her half-brothers, apparently fearing the interdict even though she reminded them that it did not apply to women.169 Mantua received another interdict since she and her newborn had not left town.170 Isabella wrote to many on behalf of Lucrezia who was finally allowed to stay until 15 July, and thanks to further requests, until the end of July. The Gonzaga eventually succeeded in convincing the legate in Bologna to let Lucrezia stay several months longer, now until Isabella’s childbirth.171 But even so, the pope watched Lucrezia. In October of that year he had her compile a list of names of those who stayed with her in order to have them known and approved by the legate. The Bentivoglio chancellor, a member of Lucrezia’s household in Mantua, was specifically excluded from her list of servants because his presence in Mantua was considered too controversial for papal acceptance.172 The marchese eventually told Julius that, despite the interdict, Lucrezia simply could not leave Mantua

167 Laura Canedi, doctor of gynaecology at Bologna’s Poliambulatorio San Camillo, made the diagnosis (June 2004). 168 Cronaca di Cremona dall’anno 1494 al 1525, published in Bibliotheca historica italica cura Societatis Longobardicae, vol. 1, p. 202 as seen in Seletti, p. 297. 169 See ASMO letters as seen in Dallari; Letter 628 (3 April 1507), Lucrezia d’Este to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este; Letter 629 (8 April 1507), Alfonso d’Este to Lucrezia d’Este; Letter 630 (1 May 1507), Annibale II Bentivoglio to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este; Letter 631 (9 May 1507), Annibale II and AntonGaleazzo Bentivoglio to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este; Letter 633 (18 June 1507), Lucrezia d’Este to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este; see also Letters 634–640 for continuous requests, including recuperating grain from Bologna. 170 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 197, f. 37r, 9 June 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Legate Antonio Ferreri of San Vitale. 171 ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, ff. 57v–58v, 19 June 1507, Isabella d’Este to Cardinal Legate Antonio Ferreri of San Vitale; ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, ff. 58v–59r, 19 June 1507, Isabella d’Este to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este; ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, ff. 59v–60r, 23 June 1507, Isabella d’Este to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este; ASMN, AG 1146, f. 580r, 15 July 1507, Governatore de Flisco [Lorenzo Fieschi] to Francesco Gonzaga; ASMN, AG 2915, Lib. 200, f. 35v, 26 May 1508, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 172 ASMN, AG 2915, Lib. 203, f. 21v, 7 October 1508, Francesco Gonzaga to Lucrezia d’Este Bentivoglio; ASMN, AG 2915, Lib. 203, f. 27v, 11 October 1508, Francesco Gonzaga to Lucrezia d’Este Bentivoglio.

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because she was the only sister his wife had.173 It is odd that Laura Bentivoglio and her family were never considered disruptive or subjected to papal punishments or interdicts—and their case does not shed much light on why Genevra and Lucrezia were not allowed honourable asylum. Laura lived in Gonzaga territory at Vescovato but neither she nor any of her half-Bentivoglio children were disturbed. She had become Gonzaga through marriage, and although her children were Gonzaga by name, they too were all Genevra’s and Giovanni II’s grandchildren by blood.

Partisans Back in Bologna Many Bolognese suffered because of the Bentivoglio, and punishments were harsh for them too. Suspected partisans were searched out, and many were tortured and killed for mentioning the Bentivoglio or for yelling ‘sega’. It became illegal at the risk of being beheaded to write to the Bentivoglio or receive letters from them.174 Napoleone Malvasia had his home searched to check whether or not he was holding Bentivoglio property—presumably because he and the Bentivoglio were spiritual kin; but if authorities had been searching for Bolognese tied through godparentage to the Bentivoglio, it would have been difficult to search out literally hundreds of homes.175 And if their spiritual kin were true partisans, why hadn’t these families fled alongside the Bentivoglio? In February 1507, three patrician men and others were hanged including Costantino Bonbardero because he had gone to Mantua and had spoken with the Bentivoglio about a return to Bologna.176 In April, over twenty citizens were exiled as suspected friends of the Bentivoglio.177 In May, Isabella d’Este was writing to her husband about a Bolognese plot to poison the pope.178 In June an eighty-year-old man called Nicolo tintore was captured and tortured in Piazza Maggiore for having predicted a return of the Bentivoglio: his tongue was pierced, and through it he was chained between two poles in the piazza for three hours; in

173 ASMN, AG 2915, Lib. 200, f. 35v, 26 May 1508, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 174 ASMN, AG 1146, ff. 258r–259r, 24 November 1506, Giovanni Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga; Ubaldini, vol. 2, f. 755, 22 November 1506. 175 Napoleone Malvasia’s safes were searched to see if he held silver for Annibale II, see ASMN, AG 1146, ff. 262r–265r, 1 December 1506, Giovanni Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga. In September 1494, Alessandro Bentivoglio served as godfather to Ermes Malvasia, Napoleone’s son, see Carrati, Battesimi, ms. B851, f. 134. For hundreds of Bolognese with spiritual ties to the Bentivoglio, see Table 3.3 in Chapter Three above. 176 Anelle, Diario, 22 February 1507 entry; Anon., Cronica Bianchini, f. 262v; Ubaldini, 26 February 1507 entry. 177 Ubaldini, 28 April 1507 entry. 178 ASMN, AG 2117, fasc. II, cc. 102r.–103r., p.s. c. 104, 29 May 1507, Isabella d’Este to Francesco Gonzaga as seen at http://idealetters.web.unc.edu/ (accessed 21 November 2018).

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his chronicle, Tuate includes a graphic sketch of his punishment.179 Righo del Peltro and other men were hanged in July for having spoken in favour of the family.180 Punishments continued into 1508. In January and February Matio dali Bano and seven others were hanged for friendship with the Bentivoglio. After many months of being spied upon by papal intelligence, and after having received many letters of accusation, the marchese complained that he seemed to hear of ‘nothing but the Bentivoglio’.181 In August fifteen more were hanged for the same reasons.182 As late as August 1514 people in Bologna were reportedly still being hanged or having their tongues cut off for carrying letters to Bologna from the Bentivoglio or for having spoken about the family; ‘speaking’ about the Bentivoglio included naming them, praising them or sending anything to them.183 Margery Ganz concludes that it was usually legal to write to exiled partisan men but to visit them would normally require official permission.184 In Bologna, it was also against the law to wear on one’s body or to keep on one’s home any of the Bentivoglio family symbols including the sega.185 The idea was to eradicate Bentivoglio sentiment and erase the Bentivoglio image from Bolognese memory, and in order to be effective, the damnatio memoriae campaign (or more precisely the abolitio memoriae or abolitio nominis campaign—the abolition of one’s memory or name—instead of just the condemnation of it) had to be harsh. Despite their physical absence and the continuous killing of their partisans, the Bentivoglio were not forgotten. In fact they were remembered on a spiritual, mythical level by some. In mid-July 1507 a frescoed image of the Madonna painted on a wall was seen crying in AntonGaleazzo’s former apartment within the semi-destroyed Bentivoglio palace ruins. After a Bolognese mother and daughter witnessed the miracle, ‘all of Bologna’ reportedly came to see it. Many brought candles and tasseli (small commemorative items) to the site to honour and decorate the sacred appearance of Mary and to be into contact with a supernatural presence within Bentivoglio space. However, in an attempt to negate the power of this holy apparition linked to the Bentivoglio, the cardinal legate and the Bolognese government declared that the image did not work miracles and had it removed. Despite their attempt at denying its miraculous nature, on 21 July the image was cut from the wall and placed over the altar of San Nicola (across the street within San Giacomo), and 179 Tuate, f. 306. 180 Anelle, 31 July 1507 entry; Ubaldini, 31 July 1507 entry. 181 ASMN, AG 2915, Lib. 199, ff. 61v–63v, undated January 1508, Francesco Gonzaga to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga. 182 Ubaldini, 16 January 1508 entry, 16 February entry, 30 August entry. 183 Anelle, 3 January 1513 entry; Ubaldini, 27 April 1513 entry, 21 May 1513 entry, 8 August 1514 entry. 184 Ganz, p. 244. 185 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 272 r–v, 4 December 1506, Giovanni Gonzaga to Francesco Gonzaga.

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the surrounding chapel was repainted for the occasion.186 Although the portrait of Giovanni II was later defaced on Lorenzo Costa’s Bentivoglio family painting within that same church, it seems incredible that the exquisite Bentivoglio chapel was not further damaged. Giovanni II’s face in that portrait was later ‘fortemente ritoccato’ (heavily retouched) with oil paint over the original tempera presumably as a result of its once defaced nature—so his present characterisation as an unshaven brute is not contemporary.187 The fact that only Giovanni II’s face was destroyed, and not Genevra’s or any others, demonstrates that there was popular antipathy towards him, if anyone, and not towards Genevra or their children. And although the legate, the pope, the local government and the people of Bologna allowed the Bentivoglio palace to be looted and destroyed as part of the damnatio memoriae, nobody destroyed the decorated sacred space belonging to the Bentivoglio just metres away within San Giacomo.

Conclusions From the mid-fifteenth century, the Bentivoglio and the papacy established certain rules of dyarchal government. Nonetheless, Pope Julius planned a major mission to recoup and reunify the Papal State, with the recapture of Bologna as his main goal. When he headed north, the Bentivoglio found themselves in an ambiguous and dangerous situation. Their political miscalculations in their dealings with Julius forced them to flee their city in disgrace and move where they could survive. Within that story, Genevra Sforza found herself in a difficult position, in the middle of a controversy between the Bentivoglio, the Gonzaga, the d’Este, the king of France and the pope. Although she did not participate in the political or military affairs of her state, and despite her old age and ill health, she was considered an important symbol of her family. While some of her family hid out in various parts of the marchese’s territory, Genevra stayed in Mantua at the main court, and her presence was publicly known. Because Genevra was matriarch of the enormous and rebellious Bentivoglio family, Genevra’s departure was enforced. Julius’ insistence on her expulsion was an example he wished to establish for all Bentivoglio. Genevra survived where she could in the framework of what the pope, his legate, her family, France, the Gonzaga and Pallavicini decided for her. Some scholars have observed a new sort of a more tolerant exile practice that came about in the 186 Ubaldini, f. 775, 19–21 July 1507 entries. 187 Ottavio Nonfarmale, who restored the painting in 1981, mentioned this point in his discussion of the restoration of that portrait at the conference celebrating the restoration of another portrait of Giovanni II, held at BUB, July 2003.

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fifteenth century: the exiled were no longer treated as harshly as before, the length of exile became shorter, and the places of exile were considered more acceptable.188 In contrast, from an examination of the case of Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio, we see that she was treated harshly and that her death was hastened as a result. The Bentivoglio and their many Bolognese partisans, too, suffered particularly harsh repercussions. Giampiero Baglioni, otherwise known as the ruthless condottiere tyrant of Perugia, knew more about when to demonstrate submission. He made promises to Julius and in that way maintained their relationship and his position in his city. Baglioni appeared when requested, offered to help Julius in his campaign against Bologna, allowed exiled Perugians to return to town and surrendered his fortresses to the pope. Although he would be forced out of Perugia in the same 1506 mission, he would later return and his family would remain in power in that city until 1540.189 Had the Bentivoglio changed their attitude earlier, they probably could have returned to their city too. The Bentivoglio lost as a result of bad timing as they were unwilling to submit to Julius at the moment when he had been willing to offer them certain conditions.190 Only after the Bentivoglio fled, did Annibale II ask for help, naively communicating that his family desired pardon and restoration as rulers in Bologna. He had little concept of the larger political picture, how angry Julius was with the Bentivoglio as rebels, and how his family fit into the picture Julius had planned for the renewed Papal State.191 For their political miscalculations, the Bentivoglio lost everything they had worked hard for over the course of the fifteenth century. They lost their position and their income through taxation; and as a consequence of factional fighting, the splendid Bentivoglio palace built and decorated over the course of decades would be looted and later reduced to a pile of rubble. Homeless and without any source of income, the Bentivoglio would be forced to survive in someone else’s territory and on someone else’s goodwill and offerings. Unlike the Medici who controlled a banking business, because the Bentivoglio’s income had been linked to civic taxation, Giovanni II and his sons would be left with no capacity to maintain the family and staff or procure new housing. It is easy to understand why at least two of Giovanni II’s sons later felt they had little to lose in their attempts to recapture their lost city. Luckily the Bentivoglio had secured for themselves at least a form of stability through the development, over the course of decades, of an intricate patron-client, friend-relative, spiritual-material relationship with many families, 188 Brown, p. 343. 189 For more on Baglioni, see Shaw, p. 151, and Patrizi Sacchetti, p. 124. 190 Shaw (1997), pp. 154–155. 191 ASMN, AG 1146, f. 343r, 9 November 1506, Annibale II Bentivoglio to Francesco Gonzaga.

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including the Gonzaga. Bentivoglio calculations with Mantua and their investment in that multifaceted relationship truly paid off. Although the marchese did sacrifice the Bentivoglio’s position to appease Rome as well as for his own glory, he went out of his way to care for the Bentivoglio, and he preserved their lives, some of their honour, and their portable possessions at considerable risk to himself. After the family’s exile, it was declared illegal to talk about the Bentivoglio or to say their name in Bologna. Even so, soon after Genevra’s death in May 1507, word reached Bologna that she had died in Busseto, and people talked about her. Not having set eyes on her in months and unaware of the details surrounding her death, Bolognese chroniclers gossiped about her and explained the event in their writings as a result of the loss of her magnificent home; and they commented on the fortuna (i.e. ‘misfortune’) that governed the end of her days. Fileno dalle Tuate devoted an entire page to the concept of fortuna as it applied to Genevra’s case; and he noted how, had she died one year earlier, she would have died happy and would have remained intelligent, beautiful, rich, healthy, eloquent, with a wonderful family, and more honoured than the wife of a king.192 The marchese of Mantua also discussed Bentivoglio luck when writing to Genevra’s sons about how she had been like a mother to him and that her worth, virtue, and praiseworthy merits would live on.193 Undoubtedly because of the Bentivoglio exile at the time of her death, and presumably because she had never been wife of any de jure ruler, no funeral orations were written or said for her in Bologna.194 From an examination of surviving traces related to Genevra’s last months of life, she continues to remain an enigma on many levels. Other than the details expanded upon in this chapter, nobody around her recorded how she spent her time, what she thought or felt about her dispersed family or her destroyed home, how she lived with her hosts, how she saw the political changes associated with Julius’ arrival, etc. And she left no will because she owned no property, money or objects in her own name—prerequisites for the writing of a will (and final proof she had no dowry). 192 Tuate, f. 305 r–v. 193 ASMN, AG 2914, Lib. 196, f. 12r, 24 May 1507, Francesco Gonzaga to AntonGaleazzo Bentivoglio and his brothers. Isabella d’Este composed a personal and highly praiseworthy letter to the Bentivoglio after the death of Giovanni II, whom she referred to as the Gonzaga’s primo amico in the world; see ASMN, AG 2994, Lib. 20, ff. 90v–91r, 18 February 1508, Isabella d’Este to Alessandro Bentivoglio. The consolatory letter sent by the marquis to Genevra’s sons is similar to that composed by Leonardo Bruni upon the death of Bice de’ Medici in 1434, which was sent to her son Nicola di Vieri de’ Medici; Bruni’s letter focused on Bice’s exceptional qualities as a Medici wife; see Tomas, p. 14. 194 For courtly Italian women of Genevra’s circle for whom funerary orations were penned (including Eleonora d’Aragona, Battista Sforza, Elisabetta Malatesta, Margherita Gonzaga, Bianca Maria Visconti, Beatrice d’Aragona, Gentile Brancaleone, Barbara Gonzaga, Medea Palaeologa, Beatrice Sforza, Ippolita Maria Sforza, Margherita Simonetta, Costanza da Varano, Caterina Visconti) see McManamon, pp. 249–292.

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Those who wrote about Genevra at the end of her life, like those who recorded her throughout her life in chronicles and in other contemporary sources, have left us with a general picture of her as a benign, magnanimous woman. There is no trace in contemporary documentation that Genevra gathered an army or urged her sons to recapture Bologna. There is no sign she was seen as the cause of the destruction of her family’s palace or of her family’s social downfall. There is no sign she died of a heart attack as a result of having heard about the destruction of her Bolognese palace—as so many legends have repeated over the centuries. Having seen throughout the past five chapters how thoroughly Genevra fit the model of the honest and honourable consort intent on building up the family into which she married, we will now turn to the posthumous legends that cast her as a model of a transgressive and power-hungry virago who destroyed the Bentivoglio and Renaissance Bologna.

Bibliography Archival Sources AAB Archivio Arcivescovile, Bologna (FB = Fonti battesimali) ASMN Archivio di Stato di Mantova, AG (Archivio Gonzaga) fondi 2116, 2117, 1146, 1147, 2192, 2913, 2914, 2915, 2994, 2995, 2996, 1368, 1637, 1639, 1640, 1793, and others. ASMO Archivio di Stato, Modena ASFE Archivio di Stato, Ferrara, FB (Fondo Bentivoglio) MIBA Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana

Manuscript Sources Anonymous. Cronica Bianchini. BCB, ms. B79. Anonymous. Cronica di Bologna. BCB, ms. 356. Anelle, Antonio delle (or dalle). Diario delle cose notabili successe in Bologna [1401 al 1513]. BCB, ms. B427 II. For similar copies, see Anelle, BUB, ms. 581, part 3; Anelle, BUB, ms. 486. Carrati, Baldassare Antonio Maria. Battesimi. BCB, ms. B849–852. Tuate, Fileno dalle [or della Tuata or dalla Tuata or delle Tuate]. Sustanziosa narrazione dell’origine della città di Bologna e suo vario stato dall’anno 305 all’anno 1521, composta da Fileno dalle Tuate, nobile bolognese. BUB, ms. 1438. Tuate, Fileno dalle. Historia di Bologna, dalle origini al 1511. 3 vols. BUB, ms. 1439. Ubaldini, Friano deli. Originale della cronaca di Friano deli Ubaldini Bolognese, dalla creazione del mondo et arriva sino al 1513. BUB, ms. 430.

Published Manuscript Sources Dallari, Umberto. Carteggio tra i Bentivoglio e gli Estensi, dal 1401 al 1542 esistente nell’Archivio di Stato in Modena in AMR, series 3, vol. 18 e 19. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1902.

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D’Este, Isabella. Deanna Shemek, ed. and trans., Selected Letters. Toronto: Iter Press, 2017. See also http:// isabelladeste.web.unc.edu/ (accessed 21 November 2018). Erasmus, Desiderious. Paul Pascal, trans. and J. Kelly Sowards, ed., The Julius Exclusus of Erasmus. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968.

Published Sources Ady, Cecilia M. The Bentivoglio of Bologna: A Study in Despotism. London: Oxford University Press, 1937. Antonelli, Armando and Marco Poli. Il Palazzo dei Bentivoglio: nelle fonti del tempo. Venice: Marsilio, 2006. Bellettini, Athos. La populazione di Bologna del secolo XV all’unificazione italiana. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1961. Billings Licciardello, Gertrude. Notes on the Architectural Patronage in Bologna of the Bentivoglio. Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1990. Black, Christopher F. ‘The Baglioni as Tyrants of Perugia, 1488–1540’ in English Historical Review, vol. 85 (1970): 245–281. Boschetti, Anton Ferrante. Famiglie celebri italiane. Milano: Ferrerio, 1833. Brown, Alison. ‘Insiders and Outsiders: The Changing Boundaries of Exile’ in William J. Connell, ed., Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 337–383. Clough, Cecil H. ‘The Romagna Campaign of 1494: A Significant Military Encounter’ in David Abulafia, ed., The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–95 (Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, Vt: Ashgate, 1995, pp. 191–215), pp. 193–194. De Benedictis, Angela. Repubblica per contratto. Bologna: Una città europea nello Stato della Chiesa. Bologna: Il mulino, 1995. De Benedictis, Angela. Una guerra d’Italia, una resistenza di popolo: Bologna 1506. Bologna: Il mulino, 2004. Dean and Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, 1300–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Eisenbichler, Konrad. ‘Charles V in Bologna: The Self-Fashioning of a Man and a City’ in Nicholas Terpstra, ed., Renaissance Studies (Special Issue): Civic Self-Fashioning in Renaissance Bologna, vol. 13, no. 4 (1999): 430–439. Fabbri, Lorenzo. ‘The Memory of Exiled Families: The Case of the Strozzi’ in Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia Lee Rubin, eds., Art, Memory and Family in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 253–261. Fiorina, Ugo. Inventario dell’Archivio Falcò Pio di Savoia. Vicenza: Grafica & stampa, 1980. Foster Baxendale, Susannah. ‘Exile in Practice. The Alberti Family in and out of Florence 1401–1428’ in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4, (1991): 720–756. Ganz, Margery A. ‘Paying the Price for Political Failure: Florentine Women in the Aftermath of 1466’ in Rinascimento, ser. 2, 34 (1994): 237–257. Ghirardacci, Cherubino. Albano Sorbelli, ed. Della Historia di Bologna, parte terza in Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, tomo 33, parte 1. Gozzadini, Giovanni. ‘Di alcuni avvenimenti in Bologna, 1506–11’ in AMR, series 3, no. 4 (1886): 67–176, and no. 7 (1889): 161–267. James, Carolyn. ‘The Palazzo Bentivoglio in 1487’ in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, vol. 41, nos. 1–2 (1997): 188–194. Laurent, Jane K. ‘The Exiles and the Signory: The Case of Ferrara’ in Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 11 (1981): 281–297. McManamon, John M. Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism. London and Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Milani, Giuliano. L’esclusione dal comune: conflitti e bandi politici a Bologna e in altre città italiane tra XII e XIV secolo. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 2003.

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Patrizi Sacchetti, Raffaella. ‘La caduta dei Bentivoglio e il ritorno di Bologna al dominio della Chiesa’ in AMR, n.s., no. 2, (1950–1951): 109–156. Robertson, Ian. Tyranny Under the Mantle of Saint Peter: Pope Paul II and Bologna. Turnhout: Brepols, 2002. Seletti, Emilio. La città di Busseto capitale un tempo dello Stato Pallavicino: Memorie Storiche. Milano: Tipografia Bortolotti di Dal Bono, 1883. Shaw, Christine. Julius II: The Warrior Pope. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. Shaw, Christine. The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Smith, Jamie. Navigating Absence: Law and Family in Genoa, 1380–1420. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2007. Tomas, Natalie. ‘Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici and the “Problem” of a Female Ruler in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence’ in Renaissance Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (2000): 70–90. Tomas, Natalie. The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Terpstra, Nicholas. Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Wallace, William E. ‘The Bentivoglio Palace: Lost and Reconstructed’ in Sixteenth Century Journal, vol 10, no. 3 (1979): 97–114.

6. Making and Dispelling Fake History Genevra Sforza and Her ‘Black Legends’ (1506–present) Abstract: For over 500 years Genevra Sforza has been known in the historiographical tradition through a series of misogynistic stories that explain the ruin of the Bentivoglio and the downfall of Renaissance Bologna. Devised as part of a Roman damnatio memoriae campaign, legends have portrayed her as an evil genius who arranged killings, manipulated her husbands and sons and ruined the Bentivoglio. The circulation and credibility of such stories in the concordant historiography (that historians have been forced to rely on) shielded Genevra from investigation while facts about her were left unexplored in contemporary materials. Finally, the story of Genevra’s ‘black legends’ is compared to those of other unaccepted women of power including Lucrezia Borgia, Caterina Sforza, Alfonsina Orsini, and Catherine de’ Medici. Keywords: Genevra Sforza de’ Bentivoglio, Bologna history, Renaissance Italy, damnatio memoriae, historical social justice, Italian women’s history

Introduction So far this book has focused on contemporary facts uncovered in numerous archives, libraries and museums that have been woven together, set in context, and analysed in an attempt to create a vibrant and historically accurate biographical sketch of an early modern Italian woman, Genevra Sforza (ca. 1441–1507), who until now has never been studied in an academic fashion. Born to an unknown mother yet recognised as a child of Alessandro Sforza, Genevra was placed at a young age with no dowry but in a position of immense privilege in Bologna as consort to two successive Bentivoglio de facto signori. In a nutshell, Genevra dedicated her long life to the development of the Bentivoglio family into which she married, conducting herself as a courteous court-like woman who followed traditional societal and gendered norms practiced by ruling-class females across fifteenth-century Italy. Her prolific style of motherhood distinguished her—and

Bernhardt, E.L., Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726849_ch06

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her actions and reputation during her lifetime were linked to the promotion of her large family. Despite such truths related to Genevra’s long and traditional life, after her death she quickly became the subject of a steadily expanding ‘black legend’ developed first by anti-bentivoleschi and then by many subsequent non-contemporaries—and their stories about her have grown in diverse directions and have been recycled in many creative ways, repeating themselves and feeding off of one another in the historiography now for over 500 years. Negative tales about her first developed in early sixteenth-century Bologna in a time of great local political change when over six decades of direct Bentivoglio rule (and over one century of Bentivoglio dominance) ended with a return to more direct control from Rome. The change included the exile and dispersal of the Bentivoglio family and their possessions (from November 1506), the violent looting and destruction of their magnificent palace (May 1507), the deaths, within a short time, of Genevra Sforza (Busseto, May 1507) and Giovanni II Bentivoglio (Milan, February 1508), and ultimately a change in the size of the Bolognese Senate (significantly enlarging the ruling class thus spreading power among many more families answering much more directly to Rome than what the Sedici had practiced)—thus forever after nullifying Bologna’s special semi-autonomous contractual relationship with Rome.1 The complex socio-political reasons that had been building for decades behind this ultimately radical change in government cannot be boiled down to one explanation or explained through the role of one person—yet the ‘one man’ explanation is the one that has carried into our times through the use of the character of one woman: Genevra Sforza. With the expulsion of the Bentivoglio and the symbolic destruction of their home base, Bologna essentially fell in submission to Rome, losing its hope of regaining libertas (political freedom) as imagined through the rule of a local family. Accounts of these complex political changes initially made by speculative Bolognese were later expanded and manipulated as writers copied elements of one another’s works in a city that had turned hostile to the Bentivoglio—but a city that would ultimately manifest contradictory feelings about the family’s position and leadership role. Secondhand suppositional accounts quickly developed about Genevra’s role in the government that explained the change, and these legends snowballed through the centuries while the ‘historical’ Genevra, encountered in the previous five chapters of this book, became obscured because historians and other authors did not undertake archival research into her life. Next, due to centuries of concordant historiography related to the Genevra legends, it became nearly impossible for historians of Bologna to question the stories. Due to the strength of the historiography, the questions that

1

For detailed analyses of changes in Bolognese governments, see Robertson; Duranti.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

historians did not ask and the research they did not carry out has ensured that a false characterisation of Genevra has carried on into the present.

The Earliest Stories Early versions of black legends fabricated about Genevra stem from writings produced from the time of the exile of the Bentivoglio, the destruction of their palace and Genevra’s death in Busseto—events that took place in a brief 6 ½ month period, between early November 1506 and mid-May 1507. Although some bentivoleschi partisans did not flee alongside the Bentivoglio, many were searched out and tortured or killed; who remained in Bologna after the Bentivoglio fled were by definition anti-bentivoleschi, pro-Rome, or perhaps uninterested in involving themselves in dangerous factional politics. Whether writing with a need for explanations to complex political changes, as detractors of the Bentivoglio and/or supporters of the new form of government brought by Pope Julius II, with the intention of maligning a ‘foreign’ woman or the Sforza clan, or as Bentivoglio supporters upset at the change in government, some early sixteenth-century Bolognese wrote about these major changes, and several included speculative information in their writings related to Genevra Sforza. They found in her a scapegoat flexible enough to account for change they saw and experienced—but could not otherwise adequately explain. Later sixteenth-century writers repeated the initial stories and embellished them. In the period immediately following the Bentivoglio exile, at least three chroniclers (Antonio delle Anelle, Giacomo Zili (or Gigli) and the anonymous author of the Cronica Bianchini) described Genevra as someone who stepped beyond her gendered limits when she allegedly wished to speak about her family directly with Julius II, immediately after the Bentivoglio men had fled Bologna, between 2 and 10 November 1506.2 Although it was common for women to remain in the family home while men suffered exile, those Bolognese who did not understand Genevra’s (and the other Bentivoglio women’s) presence in the city could only speculate about why Genevra stayed. Early modern women of power were often shunned or despised for overstepping their bounds into the male political arena—so while this story about Genevra’s behaviour might at first appear subtle, it implies crossing acceptable gendered boundaries. Such early stories introduced the theme of Genevra’s audacity and arrogance regarding her unwillingness to understand or accept the limits imposed on her sex. Other early sixteenth-century chroniclers, who seem to have been reliable in their reports of what they had witnessed about Genevra while she and the rest of 2

Anelle, f. 92r; Zili, f. 25v; Anon., Cronica Bianchini, f. 253r.

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her family were still in Bologna, began to record different kinds of stories about her, beginning at the time of her death in Busseto—far from Bologna. Fileno dalle Tuate discussed the end of Genevra’s life based on second-hand news that had filtered back to him in Bologna: he explained that it was the loss of her palace that caused her death. His story goes that Genevra, hopeless after she heard about the ruin of her home, died without speaking. Because Tuate lived during the years of the building and the splendour of Palazzo Bentivoglio, he knew first-hand of its magnificence—and he could have actually believed or imagined stories about how its destruction affected Genevra. Furthermore, Tuate mentioned he had heard that Julius II told the Pallavicini to have her body thrown into the nettle bushes, that she could go ‘al diavolo’ (‘to hell’) and that the religious who had participated in her burial would be punished by losing their rights to say mass for seven years;3 losing such rights was the punishment for those who assisted enemies of the Church, implying Genevra had been excommunicated, as some Bolognese imagined. Tuate’s explanations about what killed Genevra emphasised her greed and materialism, her break with the Church, and the desecration of her body. His inclusion of such accounts in his massive chronicle of news orally exchanged in a public forum (e.g. among men in Piazza Maggiore) demonstrates that these kinds of stories circulated in Bologna. Former Bentivoglio treasurer and partisan Sebastiano delle Agocchie knew the Bentivoglio well and invented a number of stories about them once he established himself in Rome to work for his new patron, Julius II. Agocchie had also experienced a financial falling out with Giovanni II (over 2500 ducats owed him that he did not recoup during his lifetime), so it is understandable how he became a turncoat, creating his version of a history of Bologna that he dedicated to Julius II. Although most of his accounts were about the family in general, highlighting Giovanni II’s arrogance and his sons’ homicides, Agocchie introduced the claim that Sante Bentivoglio had not died of natural causes but had been poisoned by ‘i suoi più propinqui’ (‘those closest to him’). 4 Poisoning was considered a female method of killing since women prepared and served food and drink.5 Though he did not mention Genevra by name, Agocchie implicated her and expanded her image to be one of an evil, disloyal and ruthless woman. Other Bolognese recorded their thoughts regarding change in their government in the form of satiric verses, anonymously posted in public. Copies can be found in various collections of Bentivoglio material in Bologna’s manuscript collections, in the family’s archive in Ferrara, and as reproduced in later published materials. A 3 Tuate, Historia, f. 305r. 4 Agocchie, f. 15r. 5 Kruse, p. 145.

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satirical Latin epitaph had Genevra name her own faults, including her impious, avaricious, wicked, bristling and terrifying nature (‘impia, avara, tenax, horrida, terribilis’) while an Italian sonnet similarly described her as impious, maligning, avaricious and wicked (‘empia, maligna, avara, scellerata’).

Epitaph: Iam patrona potens, sed plus quam femina posset Impia, avara, tenax, horrida, terribilis, Hic iaceo, infelix, sancto privata sepulchro, Cui nulla Ecclesiae sacra dedere Patres. Juniperi mihi nomen erat, sed spina remansit, Ut fuerat multis aspera vita mihi. Contempsi superos, qui me sprevere, tyranni, Optima ab exemplo discite quaeque meo. Quis neget esse Deos hominum, qui facta rependant? Quae fuerint vitae praemia mors docuit.

Now I am a powerful patroness, but even more an impious, greedy, wicked, bristling, terrifying woman, Here I lie, ill-fated, deprived of a holy tomb, (a woman) to whom the Church fathers have granted no sacred rites. My name was ‘Juniper’ but the thorn has remained, Since my life has been embittered in many ways. I have despised the Gods above, tyrants who scorned me, Every good woman must learn from my example Who can deny that there are Gods who weigh men’s deeds in the balance? Death has taught (us) what the rewards of life shall be.

Sonnet: Se fui nel mondo carca d’ogni vizio Empia, maligna, avara e scellerata, Or son nel Stigio Regno incatenata Ove d’ogni fallir porto supplizio.

If the world were full of every vice impious, maligning, greedy and wicked, Now I am chained in the Stygian Kingdom Where from every failing I carry anguish.

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Se il corpo in fra l’ortiche ha fatto ospizio, Ciò avvien perchè d’Ebrea madre son nata. Ma più mi duol che l’alma ho tormentata Fra mille pene e posta in precipizio. Voi altri Ebrei lasciate ogni male fare, Pigliate esempio da mia acerba morte E come e quale or mi convien purgare. E tu protervo vecchio mio consorte Siccome fosti meco a rapinare Così t’aspetto in le tartaree porte.

If my body found a hospice in the nettles, That is because I was born of a Jewish mother. But it pains me more that I have tormented my soul Among a thousand pains and placed on a precipice. You other Jews leave all evils to do, Take my example from my bitter death It would be in my best interest now to purge myself. And you my arrogant old spouse As if you were here to rob with me In that way I await you at the Tartarian doors.6

Because neither the epitaph nor the sonnet referred to specific events from her life, they made attempts to tarnish Genevra’s overall image. They claimed Genevra had been deprived of a holy grave because she was born of a Jewish mother; and in the epitaph, she warned other women to fear God. In the sonnet she let others know she would have been grateful to have been Christian so as to have been granted a proper burial. Although many Bolognese presumably knew Genevra had been an illegitimate daughter of Alessandro Sforza, reference to a Jewish mother perhaps stems from the concern that Genevra’s mother had never been known in Bologna and that she could have been anyone. The authors of these verses might have chosen to associate Genevra with Jews since the Bentivoglio family had sheltered and profited from Jewish bankers. Since early modern Italian Jews were negatively associated with money and usury, overall the story meshed well with others related to Genevra’s materialism and greed, especially the one surrounding her death that occurred upon her hearing of the destruction of Palazzo Bentivoglio. Important local men of culture contributed to a posthumous downfall of Genevra’s reputation for their own reasons. One of the first major chroniclers of the 6 Anon., Per la morte, ff. 93–94; Anon., Versi latini, no. 42; Anon., Diverse memorie. N.B. Some pages on Genevra are noted as missing from this file; the epitaph is in Ghirardacci, pp. 374–375; for the sonnet, see Ricci and Bacchi della Lega (1888), pp. xviii–xix; BCB, ms. B3635, part 12, ff. 96–98; a copy of Giovanni II’s Anima Iohannis Bentivoli is transcribed in BCB, ms. B3635, part 16, f. 102; see also ASFE, FB, Libro 21, no. 2; and Frati.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

post-Bentivoglio era was Dominican friar Leandro Alberti (1479–1552) who wrote his Historie di Bologna on commission from the new Bolognese Senate—that answered to Rome.7 Alberti’s work covers many topics, and notes in the manuscript indicate it was written between 1540 and 1543 (more than three decades after Genevra’s death). He mentions Genevra often although he did not know many factual details about her (for example, he mistook her father for her brother).8 From his 1501 entry onward, however, Alberti becomes more negative: he wrote that Genevra alone (i.e., without her husband’s knowledge since she doubted he would approve) had convinced their son Ermes to kill the Marescotti brothers who were being held prisoners in the Camera di paradiso for having leaked political information to Cesare Borgia.9 Oddly, nobody writing in Genevra’s time had reported that she had incited Ermes and approximately twenty of his patrician friends to slaughter those brothers. Alberti misrepresented events, selectively laying blame not on virile Ermes or his powerful companions but on an elderly grandmother. Stories about Genevra’s involvement in the Marescotti slayings offered an occasion to free her son, his Bentivoglio bloodline, and other young Bolognese male patricians from responsibility in the vendetta. Genevra would continue to be blamed for having a violent, bloodthirsty character in other situations. Alberti also seems to have been the source of one of the key ‘texts’ in the development of the black legend: a ‘letter’ blaming Genevra for the downfall of the Bentivoglio due to her uncontrollably emotional behaviour. Quoting from a primary source would lend credit to an explanation—and the letter he includes in his chronicle was supposedly composed by Giovanni II just after the destruction of Palazzo Bentivoglio. Alberti’s letter shifted blame for the family’s downfall from the men to a single disruptive woman. But oddly, this important letter had already ‘disappeared’ by the time that Alberti wrote his history—and no later person has since been able to find it. Yet from Alberti onward and into our times, scholars have continued to refer to this mysterious letter. Due to its mysterious ‘disappearance’, when citing it, Alberti could only claim that it was of a certain nature (‘di tal tenore’), similar to one he composed and offered in substitution for it. The letter Alberti wrote reads: It is commonly said that a wise person does things with the advice of the wise and of interested people who can help a person reach a desired goal; but a person guided by emotions and appetites will not take advice, seeing one’s own to be the best advice. Therefore, commanded and misled by such impassioned emotions, 7 Alberti. 8 Alberti, ms. 97, vol. 3, f. 165r. For more on Genevra within Alberti, see Historie, ms. 97, vol. 3, ff. 69r, 83r, 113r, 130r, 142r, 155v, 160r–v, 177r, 180r. 9 Alberti, ms. 97, vol. 3, f. 200r.

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one throws oneself into the abyss that one has hated so much. This situation now applies to you as you did not take advice from the wise, and led by emotion, you had me and the others thrown into ruin and put in prison. Alessandro was taken by the king and only three [of our family members] are in Bolognese territory while many are in the dukedom of Ferrara—all with great shame. Many people, along with the legate of Bologna, began to destroy our palace and this all happened since you let yourself be guided by your emotions; such [ruins] are the fruits of impassioned people.10

Upon news of the palace destruction, Alberti explained how Madonna Genevra was seized with pain, held her head with her two hands, and without talking, threw herself on her bed and no longer spoke. It is strange that the evident serious cause of her death (that Genevra was hemorrhaging and mortally ill in old age) should be passed over in favour of a fictitious histrionic emotional scene. Alberti reported that the female attendants at her side tried to console her but that she did not respond; he claimed she died of pain and was buried excommunicated since she had not obeyed the pope’s order to stay 100 miles beyond Bologna. Alberti said such was the end of the woman who had commanded and governed the city with much liberty for many years. He specified that it had been Genevra who had governed—while Giovanni II had only followed ‘all of her advice’. For good measure in the development of this new character, Alberti included the satiric verses about Genevra that had circulated from late 1506.11 Alberti attempted to teach a lesson to his readers: in Bologna no woman should have political power. Writing around the same time as Alberti, the erudite author Giuseppe Betussi of Bassano (ca. 1512–1573) wrote the exception to the rule with regard to sixteenthcentury Genevra legends. Genevra’s biography was one of fifty lives added to his own translation of Boccaccio’s pioneering collection of the vite of famous women, De mulieribus claris (1361–1362). Although Betussi’s one-page biography of Genevra Sforza was not always entirely factual, it was positive. Without offering specific examples of Genevra’s behaviour, Betussi described her as a light and a mirror for every virtue in all of Italy and with a flurry of positive adjectives: magnificent, splendid, liberal, generous, invincible, considerate, shrewd, pleasant and joyous—and this positivity reflects the earlier attitude of Arienti and other fifteenth-century people toward Genevra. Betussi’s work was dedicated to the marchesa of Corte Maggiore, Camilla Pallavicini, a leading member of the family that had offered hospitality to Genevra in a dramatic moment at the end of her life. As Betussi’s additions to the Boccaccio text included many women close to Genevra from the Sforza, Gonzaga 10 Alberti, ms. 97, vol. 4, f. 165v. The translation of the letter into English is my own. 11 Alberti, ms. 97, vol. 4, ff. 165r–166r.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

and Pallavicino families, it seems that at least within her extended familial circles, Genevra’s name remained protected from the propaganda that had been spreading among writers in Bologna. And in fact Betussi wrote from the Veneto and published in Venice so he did not retail the biases of those who lived in Bologna under the pope’s government. A few decades later, a Bolognese historian named Pompeo Vizzani (1540–1607) added new elements to the Genevra character within his Dieci libri delle historie della sua patria (1596).12 Vizzani turned to fifteenth-century sources for some of his information but other points were invented and embellished. Ignoring the complex struggles over the politically motivated marriage that had been dictated by Duke Sforza in Milan, Vizzani can be credited for having invented a simple yet catchy explanation for Genevra’s and Giovanni’s match (and something that remains in circulation today): Genevra had been in love with Giovanni before they married. Hinting at Genevra’s adultery before Sante’s death, Vizzani could then question her chastity and her honour as a female.13 It is important to note that the long strain of stories about Genevra’s alleged adulterous relationship with Giovanni carries no conviction in the face of extensive exchanges of letters and diplomatic missions. As examined in Chapter Two (above), it was not romantic love but political subordination to Milan that both experienced in their marriage arrangement. Furthermore, Vizzani repeated the accusations that Genevra had personally prompted Ermes to slay the Marescotti without Giovanni II’s knowledge; and Vizzani put words into Giovanni II’s mouth, claiming that Giovanni II declared that it would be the ruin of the Bentivoglio. Vizzani explained that by killing the Marescotti, Ermes sowed hate among men, and since he had been put up to it by his mother, Genevra was the cause of civil strife in Bologna.14 In this text Genevra corrupted a son and set about to ruin her entire family and peaceful social relations across Bologna, exculpating Ermes and Giovanni II from wrongdoing. Following the chronological development of these legends, the next writer to expand and promote false information was Augustinian friar Cherubino Ghirardacci (1524–1598)—associated with the Church of San Giacomo and the parish of Santa Cecilia. He wrote from a studio inside the complex of San Giacomo—a monastery and church once patronised by the Bentivoglio and located in the heart of former bentivolesco territory. With rubble piles of the destroyed Bentivoglio palace still located just across a narrow street from where he worked, Ghirardacci must have been constantly reminded of the Bentivoglio; and he apparently imagined their 12 Both manuscript and printed versions are available in Bologna; see Vizzani. 13 Vizzani (1602), p. 400. 14 Vizzani (1602), pp. 442–443.

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fall often as he helped set into stone a canon of black legends based on multiple stories about Genevra, several of which he himself created. Although Ghirardacci examined a wide variety of fifteenth-century sources to compile his massive Historia di Bologna (covering 1426–1510 and compiled in the late 1590s), his work is dominated by writings made after the Bentivoglio exile so many of his sources (and his ideas about them) were not contemporary with regard to events related to the life of Genevra Sforza.15 And although Ghirardacci wrote about ninety years after the Bentivoglio exile and Genevra’s death, he is often cited by later historians as a reliable and contemporary primary source regarding Bolognese matters. Ghirardacci read widely—collecting information from all of the authors previously mentioned in this chapter; he then meshed those histories together, and at least in relation to his characterisation of Genevra, often elaborating on them. His corpus of early tales repeated and developed Vizzani’s invention: Genevra had been in love with Giovanni while Sante’s wife. Ghirardacci added that Sante wished to send Giovanni to Naples to separate them because Giovanni in turn loved Genevra.16 Ghirardacci later retold the story that Genevra had convinced Ermes to kill the Marescotti without Giovanni II’s knowledge.17 In relation to the end of Bentivoglio rule, Ghirardacci’s version was that it had been Genevra who had dissuaded Giovanni II from going to Rome to justify his actions to the pope. Ghirardacci explained that Genevra secretly left her home to discuss her family’s future with Julius II’s emissary in the Annunziata Church and that Genevra wished to speak directly to Julius II who refused to hear her.18 Overall, he claimed it was Genevra who had been the true governor of Bologna while Giovanni II carried out everything she dictated. He included transcripts of the circulating satiric verses.19 He continued that from Busseto Genevra incited Annibale II and Ermes to retake Bologna and made a contribution of 16,000 ducats to be used to gather an army, all contrary to Giovanni II’s will, since she was ‘impetuous in everything’; he perpetuated the account that Genevra was not allowed burial in a sacred place because she had been excommunicated and that her body had been thrown into the nettle bushes.20 In his work there was a strict gender division of evil and innocence: female Genevra manipulated her husband and their sons—and no Bentivoglio man had the capacity to stop her. He explained that the men around her had been blindly compelled to follow her evil ways. Although there is no clue from Ghirardacci’s work that he otherwise wrote against women or ever positioned himself in opposition 15 16 17 18 19 20

See Ghirardacci. Ghirardacci, pp. 180, 183. Ghirardacci, pp. 302–305. Ghirardacci, pp 344–345, 353–354. Ghirardacci, pp. 374–375. Ghirardacci, pp. 368–369, 373–374.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

to Bentivoglio rule, he seems to be guilty of having collected and whole-heartedly expanded Genevra legends found elsewhere, perhaps in an attempt to render his enormous history volumes more interesting. It is also possible that Ghirardacci might have also been making assumptions that Genevra acted something like her infamous cousin in nearby Imola, Caterina Sforza, a woman who was known to have raised armies and push gendered boundaries.21 Another example of how Ghirardacci worked comes from how he repeated Alberti’s story of the mysterious ‘letter’ Genevra allegedly received from her husband. Ghirardacci’s ‘transcription’ of that lost letter (which he too admitted that he never actually found—although he researched Bolognese historical materials for decades in order to compile his master chronicle) differs from that of Alberti even though Alberti was his source. Ghirardacci’s version of the same lost ‘letter’ was longer, embellished, and focused more on addressing Genevra and her uncontrollable nature.22 Finally, volume III of Ghirardacci’s Historia could not be printed for over 300 years because an assertion in the text had been contested by Marchese Guido Bentivoglio, a descendent of the main line of the family in Ferrara.23 Ghirardacci had included an account that Annibale I Bentivoglio had been illegitimate—implying the consequential illegitimacy of the entire family line. This detail dishonoured and thus infuriated Guido who was successful at blocking the book’s distribution by having 1059 of the 1060 printed copies destroyed (in 1758). Guido kept the one surviving printed copy that eventually made its way into the collection of the Archiginnasio (and ultimately to another publishing press—but not until the twentieth century). Guido’s complaint about the book focused exclusively on the characterisation of Annibale—but Guido did not lament any of the appalling stories told about Genevra who had also been his direct ancestor. Exaggerations and malicious lies about her 21 De Vries, p. 2. 22 Giovanni II allegedly wrote ‘una lettera di questo tenore’: ‘Sogliono dire i savi huomini di questo mondo, che la persona prudente tutte le sue cose fa col consiglio degl’huomini savi et che non habbino il cuore circondato da varie passioni, affinchè il bramato fine possa conseguire; ma l’animo appassionato et che fugge i consigli de’ prudenti, in tutto quello che fa, lo fa in proprio danno e vergogna; perchè condotta dagl’appetiti appassionati, operando trabocca nella voragine di ogni pericolo. Cosi è avvenuto a te, o incauta Ginevra, che sprezzando i consigli degl’huomini, et seguitando la tua propria passione, et tu, et altri con essi te, hai fatto cadere nel trabocco di ogni male. Ecco che per la tua cagione sono stato longo tempo prigione, et hora conduco anche la mia vita non al tutto libera et colma di affanni et di cordoglio, et Alessandro in Genova nelle mani del re si sta della vita in forse; ma gli altri tuoi et miei figlioli come stanno, condotti dal tuo poco prudente consiglio? Fuore della propria patria, banditi dal paese di Ferrara et in disgrazie di tutto il mondo. Ma quello che è peggio, et che insino al vivo cuore mi apporta maggior dolore, è che il nostro palazzo in Bologna quasi tutto è per terra, et pure di tutti questi mali ne sei tu, o donna, principale cagione; questi sono i frutti de’tuoi consigli et delle tue proprie passioni. Datti pace al meglio che puoi. Addio’; see Ghirardacci, pp. 373–374. 23 Sorbelli (1933), pp. lxii–cxvii; Fasoli (1969), pp. 79–82.

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were not an issue for him nor for Bentivoglio descendants—nor for members of the Bolognese Senate nor for ecclesiastical authorities who censored the works of Bolognese historians.24 Negative talk about Bentivoglio men and their legitimacy was one thing—but miscellaneous slander of a foreign Sforza female was fair game. One f inal early modern yet posthumous chronicler, Alamanno Bianchetti (1521–1599), in his enormous Cronica explains how Genevra was found dead in Busseto: among money, jewels and ‘robba’ (things) worth 50,000 ducats before her body was thrown in the nettles.25 Regarding this initial ‘quantification’ of her material objects makes her appear not only wealthy but also money-hungry and greedy; and he made it appear that she died alone in a sinful, evil fashion. Combined, the black legends developed during the early sixteenth century succeeded at blaming Genevra for the ruin of the Bentivoglio. By the later sixteenth century, because little was remembered about Genevra’s real life, her character was the more readily maligned. Exaggerations and inventions about Genevra covered all of the bases of stereotypical feminine evil (arrogance, materialism, greed, wickedness, inappropriate behaviour, illegitimacy, irreligion, violence, unchastity and sexual dishonour). Although it was known to some that within Palazzo Bentivoglio Francesco Francia had been commissioned to paint a wall-size fresco of Judith decapitating Holofernes, a subject clearly underlining a woman’s psychological strength parlayed into violent murder, no parallels were drawn between the commission and Genevra; legends could have expanded further beyond the limits they had already reached based on facts behind the subject of this commission with Francia, had facts been known or had they been the goal. At any rate, within one century, a strict division had been set up early between Genevra’s behaviour and that of the innocent Bentivoglio men whom she allegedly manipulated. In those same years Giovanni II’s image was salvaged—or actually elevated—from what it had been during his lifetime. Oddly, he was never emasculated due to his wife’s reputedly uncontrollable behaviour as chroniclers did not address what their tales should have implied for Giovanni II’s image and honour.

Genevra and Other Early Modern Bolognese Women Late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Bolognese did not see many females associated with politics or public life. As wife of two consecutive Bentivoglio de 24 When the Bolognese Senate finally decided it wanted an official record of the city’s past, Achille Bocchi, Leandro Alberti, Carlo Sigonio and Ghirardacci each attempted to write a history—but none succeeded at producing one f it for their publication standards; see Fasoli (1969), pp. 69–91; McCuaig, pp. 251–290; Sorbelli (1933), pp. lxii–cxvii. 25 Bianchetti, f. 818.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

facto signori, Genevra came closer to politics than any other local woman, and she was also attacked like no other woman in town. At least two other semi-public Bolognese females also suffered injustice due to their gender. Nicolosa Castellani Sanuti (1430–1505), for example, served as the focal point of Arienti’s Le porrettane as the beautiful wife of Niccolò Sanuti, count of Porretta. Although Nicolosa was an honourably married aristocratic woman, she wrote a treatise in Latin in reaction to sumptuary legislation that imposed a dress code on Bolognese women according to the six social ranks established by Cardinal Legate Giovanni Bessarione (1453).26 Nicolosa argued that women were worthy and respectable members of society, sparking a debate among humanists about the topic of women’s dress and worth including Matteo Bosso (a pupil of Timoteo Maffei who had inspired Bessarione’s original legislation), the famous Guarino da Verona, local notary Cesare Nappi, and the Brescian female writer and scholar Laura Cereta.27 Nicolosa’s writing is considered the first contribution by an Italian woman to the querelle des femmes, the debate about the proper place of women in society.28 Many years later, upon Nicolosa’s death, someone reported: ‘morì da puttana con biaxemo di tuta Bologna’ (‘she died a whore blasphemed by all of Bologna’).29 Although those words in early modern handwriting were written in Tuate’s chronicle, they were not penned by his same hand. Since this characterisation of Nicolosa appears in only one chronicle and at the time of her death, this point of view was probably not widely held—although the person who wrote it claimed that ‘everyone’ in Bologna thought of Nicolosa in those terms. Alongside Genevra and Nicolosa, sculptress Properzia de’ Rossi (1490–1530) was another Bolognese female known to the public. She studied under a well-known etcher and printer, Marcantonio Raimondi, and became a sculptress and remains the only female stone carver known by name in her era. She was also the only female artist to have had a vita included in Giorgio Vasari’s quintessentially famous Vite collection.30 Despite the typically male upper-body strength necessary to carve marble and the many years of guidance and practice that it took in order to master the craft, Properzia excelled at it, fulfilling public commissions for the most important Bolognese house of worship, the Basilica of San Petronio, as well as for the Church of the Madonna del Barracano—evidence of the legitimacy and the high artistic quality of her work. Because of Properzia’s unusual participation and success in an otherwise all-male field, she was criticised and referred to as 26 Kovesi Killerby, (1994), p. 124. For Sanuti’s treatise, see Kovesi Killerby (1999), pp. 255–282; Frati (1928), pp. 251–262; Muzzarelli (2003). 27 Kovesi Killerby (1994), pp. 130–132. 28 Kovesi Killerby, (1999), pp. 272. 29 Tuate, Sustanziosa, 11 December 1505 entry. 30 Vasari, ff. 171–173.

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a prostitute—i.e., the classic insult thrown at females overstepping gendered norms.31 Exaggerated stories lived on about her into the nineteenth century when a Romantic tragedy was published about her.32 In Bologna, Genevra, Nicolosa and Properzia were questioned as part of a widerranging Italian and European debate about the proper role of women in society, and their absence in certain Bolognese materials is noteworthy. For example, sixteenth-century aristocratic Bolognese men composed collections of praises about their illustrious female Bolognese counterparts: ‘laude delle donne bolognesi’, a genre that made early modern Bolognese women known for enjoying allegedly superior social status and more freedoms than other Italian women.33 Based on such texts that uplifted many, Caroline P. Murphy discusses how Bologna came closest to Christine de Pisan’s ideal city for women.34 In the laude however, Bolognese women were praised for their glamour and charm, for running homes effectively while their husbands travelled, or for managing and hosting magnificent parties; they were placed in the spotlight for ‘talents’ including their beauty, blood, social standing, apparel, presentation, charm, conduct, intelligence, grace and virtue.35 But there seems to have been little space in the genre for women who were involved in the power structure—or for females living (or even imagined as living) beyond that status quo, e.g. Genevra, Nicolosa and Properzia. Traditional aristocratic male writers preferred to exalt traditional aristocratic women, and in that fashion, these Bolognese men transformed some of the varieties of famous women found in Plutarch, Boccaccio and Arienti into what their fellow Bolognese felt comfortable with: collections of local women known predominantly for their beauty and bloodlines. Apart from its fame as an avant-garde place for some women, sixteenth-century Bologna seems to have been a city in which the reputations of conservative women also flourished.36 It is ironic that the first text, i.e. the prototype of the Bolognese laude delle donne genre, had been Arienti’s Gynevera de le clare donne dedicated to Genevra Sforza. It had been our Genevra who had inspired the development of a local genre and who stood at its core; but due to political changes after 1506, Genevra would lose her place in the related emerging body of literature. Ironically, over the course of the sixteenth century, the development of the laude delle donne grew alongside the development of the Genevra legends—and both new genres seemed to have 31 See Greer. 32 See Costa. 33 See Murphy. 34 Murphy, p. 454. 35 Murphy, pp. 440–441, 453–454. 36 For rising political conservatism from the turn of the century, at least in the case of Arienti’s literary actions in Bologna, see Kolsky, pp. 39–40.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

fed off of one another. It is no coincidence that an allegedly politically powerful female evil genius remained absent from the entire corpus of sixteenth-century Bolognese laude texts—or that Genevra’s negative image increasingly escalated during the century in which the traditional laude progressively flourished.37 Genevra, the original leading conservative family-oriented female of Bologna’s first fifteenth-century vite collection, had been made into the antithesis of the ideal laude woman.

More Modern Histories and Legends For several hundred more years, historians and writers remained interested in the development of the character of Genevra Sforza. Her ‘fault’ for the dramatic fall of the Bentivoglio, the loss of Bologna’s most lavish private palace, nostalgia related to Bologna’s lost Renaissance Golden Age and a sense of lost libertas continued to appeal. Through the next four centuries, the Genevra of legend retained most of the broad base of negative characteristics developed during the sixteenth century while new versions of old stories and some new stories were introduced. Some worked the legends into hyperbolic dramatic accounts, using Genevra as a cruel figure in a play or as a character in popular Romantic fiction with a Renaissance backdrop. Others contributed to a semi-factual rendition of Genevra’s life by undertaking some archival research or by publishing some contemporary primary source material related to her life; but then by mixing contemporary facts with the strong legend tradition, writers allowed the colourful legends to dominate, creating confusing mélanges of history and fiction. One new account of Genevra worked its way into a book about a popular Renaissance preacher: Dominican historian Pacifico Burlamacchi in his Vita del P.F. Girolamo Savonarola (1764) recounted an episode of Girolamo Savonarola 37 Famous laude works were written by Ercole Marescotti, Dell’eccellenza della donna [1589]; Giulio Cesare Croce, La gloria delle donne [1590]; Alessandro Griffoni, Discorso…sopra la bellezza d’alcune honorassisime gentildonne bolognesi [undated]; Ercole Fontana, Amorose fiamme…Lode delle donne bolognesi [1574]; Anon., Ritratti delle bellezze et valore di alcune delle più nobili et più leggiadre donne di Bologna [1567]; Anon., Poesie in lode di varie dame Bolognesi [ca.1580]; and Giovanni Battista Bombello, Lo specchio della honesta e virtuosa gentildonna [undated]—as seen in Murphy, pp. 440–444. A few learned women (Latin scholars, legal scholars, philosophers, poets, etc.) were known to the Bolognese and associated with lore of the city’s famous university, including: Bettista Gozzadini, Novella d’Andrea, Bettina Calderini, Milanzia dall’Ospedale, Giovanna Bianchetti, Dorotea Bocchi, Costanza Bocchi, Maddalena Buonsignori and Barbara Arienti; none of those learned women held public positions that could have threatened males or caused fear or scorn by fellow Bolognese. Despite so much accomplishment, it was only in 1678 that an Italian female, Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (1646–1684), first earned a university degree in Padua after having studied privately in Venice.

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speaking at San Petronio in Bologna. During Lent of 1493, Genevra and a group of women supposedly came to hear him preach but they arrived late, causing great disturbance. Genevra, described as ‘superbissima’ (‘extremely arrogant’), reportedly always arrived late to mass. On the third day of Genevra’s discourteous tardiness, Savonarola declared that she was the devil who had come to disturb the word of God (‘Ecco il demonio ecco il demonio, che viene a perturbare il verbo di Dio’). When Genevra heard him say those words, she supposedly became infuriated and sent two men to kill him—but God stopped it. Still furious, she sent other men to kill Savonarola, at which time he returned to Florence.38 Elements from this new tale emphasised Genevra’s rudeness, arrogance, inappropriateness, overreaction, disrespect for the Church and murderous violence. Perhaps most shockingly, the story was said to have taken place during Lent, a time set aside for modesty and abstinence. Though without any foundation, the Savonarola tale seems to recall something about Genevra’s 1454 wedding celebration when she and her party were turned away from San Petronio for having surpassed sumptuary limits set by Cardinal Bessarione. This type of anecdotal story fits well into a ‘history’ book about Savonarola—as Genevra, a rich, powerful elite woman who was known to have broken sumptuary laws—was exactly the kind of person Savonarola spent his energies attacking. Nicola Ratti (ca. 1764–ca. 1842), a Pesarese historian who published Della famiglia Sforza (1794) also helped spread a mixed image of Genevra.39 He included Genevra as one of the eighteen most illustrious women of the Sforza family, and his biography of Genevra is the longest in his collection. He praises her specifically for her piety, education and magnificence and notes her primary position in Bologna.40 But Ratti also succumbs to legends, discussing the early love between Genevra and Giovanni II as the explanation for their marriage.41 He recalls how Genevra was recorded in an important public inscription placed at the base of her family’s tower—describing her as an exemplar for married women (‘decus matronarum’)—before turning to discuss her in terms of the psychological power she held over her husband. He judged her in relation to the killing of Galeotto Manfredi in Faenza, her reputed violent 38 Burlamacchi, pp. 26–27. 39 See Ratti. 40 Ratti, tomo 2, pp. 145–164; his eighteen praiseworthy Sforza women were: Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza (duchess of Milan), Ippolita Maria Sforza (duchess of Calabria), Bona di Savoia Sforza (duchess of Milan), Bianca Maria Sforza (emperess), Caterina Sforza (signora of Imola), Isabella d’Aragona Sforza (duchess of Milan), Bona Sforza (queen of Poland), Cristierna Sforza of Denmark (duchess of Milan), Ippolita Sforza, Costanza Varano Sforza (signora of Pesaro), Sveva di Montefeltro Sforza (signora of Pesaro), Battista Sforza (countess of Urbino), Ginevra Sforza (signora of Bologna), Camilla Marzano d’Aragona Sforza (signora of Pesaro), Isabella Sforza, Caterina de’ Nobili Sforza (countess of Santa Fiore), Fulvia Conti Sforza (signora of Segni and Valmontone and countess of Santa Fiora), and Duchess Livia Cesarini Sforza. 41 Ratti, pp. 147–148.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

reaction to the Malvezzi conspiracy and her unyielding behaviour with the arrival of Julius II. 42 Ultimately Ratti was torn about how to characterise Genevra as she had undoubtedly been one of the most famous women from his hometown. A few decades later, Count Pompeo Litta (1781–1852), best known for his enormous early nineteenth-century compilations of genealogical charts for dozens of important Italian families, did not hesitate to judge Genevra either. Working with very small type, he managed to include all of the major elements of Genevra’s legends in his Bentivoglio family tree. 43 The popularity and vast circulation of his genealogical trees gave much life to her invented image. Next, a Bolognese patrician, museum director, senator and archaeologisthistorian, Giovanni Gozzadini (1810–1887), penned an immense scholarly work on Giovanni II: Memorie per la vita di Giovanni II Bentivoglio (1839), which remains widely consulted. One of Gozzadini’s sixteenth-century ancestors (also named Giovanni Gozzadini) worked for Pope Julius II and received from him the stunning Palazzo Sanuti (also previously conf iscated from the Bentivoglio), personally linking the author to both the Bentivoglio and the pope. Because of the printing problem that Ghirardacci’s sixteenth-century work faced, it would be Gozzadini’s volume that first allowed the canon of the Genevra legends to circulate widely in published form. Gozzadini included the standard Genevra stories but added a few new twists: he explained that while Giovanni II knew how to win the love of his people, Genevra’s pride was one of the principal causes of the Malvezzi conspiracy and that Genevra forced Giovanni II to take particularly harsh measures in the vendetta against his cousins. 44 Gozzadini explained that when Genevra had been forced to flee Bologna, she took with her 600,000 lire (or 500,000 ducats) worth of jewels; and because of her indignation, ambition, impetuousness, and while working against Giovanni II’s will, she had her sons attempt to retake Bologna. Like many others, Gozzadini included the infamous ‘letter’ sent from Giovanni II, and he also included the satiric verses—which would become standard legend fare. 45 With such stories, Gozzadini highlighted a variety of negative rumours and continued to promote the idea of Genevra’s gendered wickedness as a manipulator of men. Over 300 years later, Genevra’s materialism was again ‘quantified’ with alleged details of the exact worth of the many jewels she carried with her when she escaped—a number stemming from Bianchetti’s originally invented ‘50,000 ducat’ estimate and multiplied by ten. And just like the other authors noted above, Gozzadini failed to include source citations to any contemporary historical documentation. 42 43 44 45

Ratti, pp. 147–152. See Litta. Gozzadini, pp. 7–8, 66, 75. Gozzadini, pp. 123, 154, 156, 163, 231, 243.

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Further development of a wicked image for Genevra appeared in the late nineteenth century thanks to the publications of prolific historians Corrado Ricci (1858–1934) and Alberto Bacchi della Lega (1848–1924), cultural icons of their day. 46 First, as editors they contributed to the elevation of Genevra Sforza’s image (as well as to eminent images of many females) by transcribing and publishing Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti’s Gynevera de le clare donne, which had been dedicated to and compiled in honour of Genevra Sforza. 47 In 1888 they brought to print what is still the only available edition of this original collection of women’s lives that had survived in manuscript form alone from the 1490s. On one hand, their publication of Gynevera represented a moment of triumph for the restoration of a contemporary image of Genevra but on the other, Ricci and Bacchi della Lega’s introduction to the text began by questioning Arienti’s sincerity—since the editors had researched Genevra in the works of Alberti, Ghirardacci and Gozzadini and found that the stories did not match up with those of Arienti. The co-authors then decided to embellish stories from the historiography even further, claiming that after Genevra’s wedding to Sante, she began to manifest her restless disposition toward insatiable greed and ferocity. 48 They explain that five years into her marriage, she began to lament the poverty of the Bentivoglio home and to persuade Sante to build another palace. 49 They claim Genevra ardently loved Giovanni while the wife of Sante and gave herself to Giovanni after Sante died without respecting the proper period of mourning.50 They continue along these melodramatic lines for a long while still: Genevra’s children in the San Giacomo portrait have ugly and mean faces; Giovanni II’s face is inexpressive and without energy; Genevra’s face shows the resoluteness and sadness of her soul; with time Genevra became more cruel, pushing her children to undertake horrible vendettas as a manifestation of her love of blood and her superstitious fury.51 They conclude that Giovanni II had been forced to allow Genevra anything she wanted—and that Genevra enraged all of the Bolognese. They published the alleged ‘letter’ that Giovanni II wrote, explaining that Genevra died of a broken heart after reading it—although they also suggest that she could have been strangled. They repeat that her dead body had been 46 Ricci worked as an historian, art historian, musicologist, and senator involved in hundreds of publications on history, art, music, poetry, psychology, legends, operas and dramas. Bacchi della Lega widely published on art history, history, ornithology, linguistics and travel. Together the two transcribed and published another highly significant fifteenth-century Bolognese manuscript: Gaspare Nadi’s Diario (1886). 47 See Ricci (1888). 48 Ricci (1888), p. viii. 49 Ricci (1888), p. ix. 50 Ricci (1888), pp. x–xi. 51 Ricci (1888), pp. xi–xv, xi–xix.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

thrown into the nettles and her mother had been a Jew. These exaggerated stories highlighted Genevra’s physical and material lust and her malicious psychological characteristics—in high contrast to their development of Giovanni II, portrayed as an innocent victim of his wife’s machinations. Another curiosity relates to Ricci’s and Bacchi della Lega’s text. Of the thirtythree biographies written by Arienti in his Gynevera, only six have been chosen for individual publication (Joan of Arc, Beata Caterina of Bologna, Diana Saliceto Bentivoglio, Battista Sforza, Giovanna Bentivoglio and Francesca Bruni).52 Despite Genevra’s primary position in the volume, her individual vita has remained untouched by printers. It is odd that the central figure and dedicatee of Arienti’s collection did not make it out of manuscript form until the entire collection reached publication nearly 400 years later. Genevra’s exclusion could be explained by how Arienti had depicted her—as an illustrious woman, highlighting her conservative female merits. And because Arienti’s positive biography of Genevra stood in such sharp contradiction to other published materials in circulation about her, it would have made little sense to an ‘educated’ public interested in reading about anything but the alternative Genevra they had come to know. The public interest in the evil Genevra led to her starring roles in at least three nineteenth-century dramatic works written by playwrights Luca Vivarelli (Giovanni II Bentivoglio: tragedia [1850, 1869]), Serafino Giannini (Giovanni Bentivoglio: dramma in cinque atti [1857]), and Giuseppe Amati (Giovanni Bentivoglio: dramma in cinque atti [1863]).53 Vivarelli’s work mixes historical facts, legends and literary inventions. He opens his play within Palazzo Bentivoglio in 1506 with Genevra speaking to the public in a crafty and ironic tone. Giovanni II accuses Genevra of inciting their children while announcing he has been a weak father and complaining how Bologna hated him.54 Vivarelli then turns to make the Bentivoglio story echo elements from the tale of Romeo and Juliet: Ermes Bentivoglio is in love with Virginia Malvezzi, and their love is meant to stop the hatred between their two fighting families.55 A Lucio Malvezzi discusses how Giovanni II was not a blood-loving tyrant but how Genevra and the children have undertaken terrible killings—as Virginia attests.56 As the story develops, Genevra works against Ermes’ and Virginia’s love, declaring she will not become mother-in-law to a Malvezzi girl who should instead be her slave. Genevra closes Act II and III with soliloquies, swearing that Ermes will not marry a Malvezzi and announcing that her vendetta will be certain.57 Ermes 52 53 54 55 56 57

Ricci (1888), pp. xxxv–xl. See Vivarelli (1850); Vivarelli (1869); Giannini; Amati. Vivarelli (1850), Act I, Sc. 1, pp. 1–13. Vivarelli (1850), Act I, Sc. 5, pp. 18–19. Vivarelli (1850), Act II, Sc. 2, pp. 26–29. Vivarelli (1850), Act II, Sc. 3, pp. 33–36; see Act II, Sc. 5, p. 42; Act III, Sc. 8, p. 61.

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begs Genevra not to destroy his hope to be with Virginia while complaining that his mother’s fury is ruining his relationship; and Giovanni II warns Genevra that she must become humble for the good of Bologna.58 In the final scene, Virginia dies after having been poisoned.59 In sum, Vivarelli created a Genevra character without sentiment—someone who nullified her son’s feelings, aggravated a historical vendetta between two families, and poisoned an innocent young woman. The play entertained audiences by showing a version of the world ‘turned upside down’: an evil woman dominates and commands while a weak and innocent husband is forced to follow his wife’s lead. Genevra had become a stock evil character in Romantic literature. In 1911, in order to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Italy with Rome as its capital city, a national exposition was held as a quest to express ‘italianità’, described as the essence of Italian identity and a synthesis of national genius. As part of this important fair that attracted over seven million visitors from across Italy and around the globe, a version of the Bentivoglio palace was rebuilt in Piazza d’Armi (now part of the Prati neighbourhood, adjacent to the Vatican).60 The rebuilt palace was part of a new ‘Italian’ monument, representative of the region of Emilia, featuring a hybrid fantasia made up of elements from Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna, the Castello Estense in Ferrara, and the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini—considered the most important regional structures of all time and well as representative of national genius. And among those three top choices, it is noteworthy that Palazzo Bentivoglio is the central structure of the representation—see Figures 6.1 and 6.2 below. And of the three structures, only Palazzo Bentivoglio represents something Bolognese, something built by mere de facto rulers (and ultimately rebel rulers) within Emilia, and it is the only structure that has been lost. It is difficult to imagine what the Bentivoglio or what Pope Julius II would have thought about its reconstruction on Roman territory as the most important building ever created in Bologna and basically the most important structure of Emilia. The choice of the lost palace is also incredible because besides Gaspare Nadi’s quick sketch of it in the small margins of his hand-sized diary, there remains no contemporary visual depiction of the place. It seems mind-boggling to imagine that twentieth-century Italians so clearly remembered it and could even consider a lost Renaissance-era palace as representative of the essence of their new national Italianness. Its recreation in Rome for this event is twentieth-century material proof that despite its complete destruction in 1507 that the palace and what it represented was far from forgotten. 58 Vivarelli (1850), Act IV, Sc. 5, p. 78; Act V, Sc. 2, pp. 82–84. 59 Vivarelli (1850), Act V, Sc. 4, p. 88, and Act V, Sc. 5, pp. 88–89. 60 See Courtenay.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

Figures 6.1 and 6.2: These two 1911 postcards feature the hybrid reconstruction of Palazzo Bentivoglio at the Emilia pavilion built for the Esposizione nazionale in Rome. The top card features the front entry side of the building while the card below shows the structure from the backside. (Please note that the images on the cards themselves are fuzzy; the muddiness in these representations stems from the original cards themselves, not from photographs taken of them.)

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After the exposition ended, and although many petitioned to maintain the many buildings of the exhibit and turn the various monuments of Italianness into part of a permanent Roman neighbourhood, everything was torn down and redeveloped—so Palazzo Bentivoglio ended up coming down again. The fact that it had lived on in people’s memories and its overall importance in relation to Bologna’s identity helps explain how someone still must have been considered responsible for its tragic loss—and that guilty someone remained Genevra Sforza. To return to the literature, Corrado Ricci comes back into the picture. During the thirty years following his initial work on Gynevera, Ricci continued to hold major civic and political positions across the peninsula—he earned a law degree, directed the Brera in Milan, the Uffizi in Florence, and the Antichità e Belle Arti in Rome and became a senator—yet he continued to return to Genevra Sforza. Alongside many professional endeavours, he had been keeping busy writing a Romantic work based on the histories of the four most ‘damned souls’ of Bologna’s past, Anime dannate (published 1918; and due to popularity, reprinted 1919 and 1929).61 Genevra became the subject of his first chapter—the top of his list of the accursed. In forty pages Ricci embellishes every tale he had come across to create a portrait that could be considered the most distant from any real depiction of the historical Genevra Sforza. What inspired him to return to write about Genevra in this fashion we do not know—but it seems that he felt true disgust for her. At one point he describes Genevra’s efforts metaphorically: she was a termite who slowly gnawed at and eroded the main beam upholding her home until it broke down, crushed and buried her.62 He continues by declaring that Genevra never loved Sante, she was not chaste while with him, and after his death she triumphed by marrying the man she loved.63 Giovanni II was depicted as one of the happiest princes in Italy—until Genevra began to destroy him and his family.64 Ricci returns to question Arienti’s sincerity in Gynevera, describing the biographies (that he and a colleague had transcribed, edited and published thirty years earlier), as ‘a collection of brazen lies’.65 Ricci spews hatred for Genevra throughout: Genevra’s religion was bigotry; she had an introverted character and did not like to have contact with the Bolognese people; at the famous 1470 tournament, Genevra was covered in jewels like a Byzantine empress, and her gestures alone commanded Giovanni II and the events of the day.66 Ricci criticises Genevra for having led her entire life within 61 For Genevra, see Ricci, pp. 3–40; the other three damned souls chosen by Ricci were the son of Cesare Borgia, Count Giuseppe Maria Felicini and Cristina Paleotti. 62 Ricci (1918), pp. 3, 18. 63 Ricci (1918), pp. 8–11. 64 Ricci (1918), p. 4. 65 Ricci (1918), p. 11. 66 Ricci (1918), pp. 11–15.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

her palace, which she constantly embellished with art and beautiful things. He criticises her as a mother who raised her family with the energy of a lion, not with the tenderness of a woman. He reasons that since Genevra’s children had been nourished by her, they grew up ferociously.67 Ricci also dedicates much to a reshaping of the image of Giovanni II as someone who loved peace and who tried to content others with favours and generous gifts, doing his best to maintain the affection of his people with festivities and charity. Ricci recalls how Giovanni II transformed his city by providing his people with grain in time of famine and helping private citizens when they were in need.68 Ricci continues about how Giovanni II claimed Genevra’s actions would ruin his family as she dreamed only of conspiracies and vendette.69 He writes about how when Julius II came to Bologna that Genevra fled with all of her riches, treasures, tapestries and jewels and how she had them sent away atop eighty carriages led by 140 mules. He continues on about how she refused to allow Giovanni II to speak to the pope while she tried to speak directly to him but was forced to leave for Lombardy.70 Ricci then describes how, from the first days of their exile, the differences between Giovanni II and Genevra became clear: Giovanni II sent a messenger to the pope to ask for pardon, to supplicate him to put the Bentivoglio in good grace—while Genevra spent money preparing an army and weapons to recapture the city.71 Ricci does not include references to provide evidence for where he found any of this information. It is also unclear how Ricci chose the most damned Bolognese for this collection. Ricci’s rich professional career yields no clues as to why he spent so much time thinking about how to destroy the image of a fifteenth-century woman while idealising her husband. Apparently Ricci wished to justify Bologna’s Renaissance losses by blaming a foreign woman for them while glorifying a local leader, Bologna’s prime Renaissance family and a Golden Age of his natal city. In 1936, a young medieval historian, Gina Fasoli (1905–1992), published a wellillustrated and highly readable book on the Bentivoglio family intended for a popular audience (also without citations but with a then-current bibliography on the family).72 While presenting much factual information in an accessible and elegant fashion, Fasoli adds a version of the early love story between Genevra and Giovanni II as the basis of their unusual marriage and the sermon in San Petronio in which Savonarola called Genevra the devil. She characterises Genevra as ambitious, averse, coy, haughty, cruel and without the Bolognese good nature 67 68 69 70 71 72

Ricci (1918), pp. 15, 18. Ricci (1918), p. 16–17. Ricci (1918), p. 21, 23, 24. Ricci (1918), p. 31. Ricci (1918), p. 35–36. Fasoli (1936); see especially pp. 30, 49–54.

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(‘bonarietà petroniana’) of Giovanni II. But after leading her readers into acceptance of the Genevra legends, Fasoli steps back to comment, ‘now we know that she was not any more guilty [of the ruin of the Bentivoglio] than Giovanni II and his children’.73 It is not clear how she or ‘we’ should have known that; Fasoli does not cite evidence nor suggest other episodes in which Genevra, Giovanni II and their children had together participated in events leading to the fall of the family. Fasoli may have doubted something about the stories, perhaps for the first time in the Bentivoglio historiography, but she left her doubts in that one enigmatic phrase. Dismissing her own critique, Fasoli reverts to completing her portrait of the Bentivoglio with an embellishment of how Genevra remained in Bologna in late 1506 in order to throw herself at the feet of Julius II to beg for pardon for her family.74 Fasoli poetically discusses Genevra’s proud sforzesco boiling blood that made her push her children into recapturing Bologna while Giovanni II was tired, sick and indifferent;75 ironically (as examined in Chapter Five above), it had been Genevra who at that time had been tired, sick and literally on her deathbed. Fasoli concludes by describing how Genevra dropped dead after having read the infamous (and still-missing) ‘letter’.76 At the same moment in time, two more female writers chose to focus on Genevra: popular historian Titina Strano (ca. 1902–ca. 1954) and academic historian Cecilia M. Ady (1881–1958) who both coincidentally published monographs in 1937. Strano produced the only work to-date dedicated exclusively to Genevra Sforza, a highly dramatic narrative entitled Ginevra Bentivoglio e la fine di una signoria (published by the same press as Ricci’s Anime Dannate); and Ady published The Bentivoglio Of Bologna, the first academic general history in English of the Bentivoglio and still a key text.77 Strano does not include reference citations and in over 250 pages recycles legends about her subject. Not much is new except for a few details: Genevra hated the Bolognese people while Giovanni II led a calm domestic existence, a ‘calma vita casalinga’; and the night before fleeing Bologna Genevra drafted an inventory of her possessions in semi-infantile handwriting and knew the value of each object.78 73 Fasoli (1936), p. 51: ‘Tutti, dall’umile popolano ai colti umanisti, l’accusarono di essere stata rovina dei suoi; ora sappiamo che essa non ebbe colpe maggiori di quelle che ebbero Giovanni e i suoi figli’. 74 Fasoli (1936), p. 53. 75 Fasoli (1936), p. 53. 76 Fasoli (1936), p. 54. 77 See Strano and Ady; Strano also published several semi-historical texts including Margherita di Navarra (1932); the tragedy of Ekaterinemburg (1934); Isabella d’Este (1937); San Francesco d’Assisi (1945); Leonardo da Vinci (1953). 78 From Strano: Genevra dreamed of a palace, p. 10; Genevra loved Giovanni from the start, p. 30; Genevra married Giovanni too soon after Sante’s death, p. 34; Genevra had a strong, dominating ‘sforzesco’ character, p. 35; after Sante’s death, Genevra was violent, haughty, cruel, p. 35; Genevra’s goal was to dominate, pp. 37–38; Genevra did not like contact with people and had few friends, p. 39; Francesca had

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

A 1939 book review, published in the official periodical of Bologna’s civic library, L’Archiginnasio, praised Strano for having penetrated Genevra’s complex soul to yield a true portrait of one of the most troubled and strange characters in history.79 Cecilia M. Ady, professor of Italian Renaissance history at Oxford University and daughter of Renaissance historian Julia Cartwright (1851–1924), took a different approach. In an eloquent and readable yet scholarly fashion, Ady brilliantly wove together threads from a variety of primary and secondary sources, making sophisticated arguments about many aspects of the Bentivoglio family’s socio-political and military positions. Despite her major contributions to our field, in her treatment of Genevra Sforza, she was not as objective. Ady mixed the contemporary with the non-contemporary, further confusing the picture of Genevra. When discussing her for the first time in her book, Ady sets the stage for a mixes account, ‘the child-bride entered Bologna, where for fifty years she reigned as the bright star of the court and, as many would say, the evil genius of the Bentivoglio’.80 Ady analyses and cites much original archival information about Genevra from the Sforza-Bentivoglio correspondence that she had examined in Milan. She found traces of Genevra’s delight about Caterina Sforza’s political position in Forlì from 1488, information about Genevra’s attitude toward French-occupied Milan in 1494, and a story about Genevra’s wit and judgment when she spoke with Milanese ambassador Tranchedino about Giovanni II’s military contracts; however Ady also delves into legends when summing up her story, claiming, ‘it is not easy to recognise the young girl […] in the ambitious and relentless woman who was to dominate the Bentivoglio palace in later years’; and she relied fully on legends in her account of Genevra’s alleged early love for Giovanni, ‘Thwarted in love, Ginevra found consolation in the friendship of a saint [Abbess Caterina de’ Vigri]’.81 Although Ady contextualises and analyses facts that she had carefully uncovered in thousands of contemporary letters, she leaves readers with ambivalent conclusions based on published information not present in the actual correspondence that she had been examining. In sum, she does not give weight to her own primary source findings because she had been conditioned a cruel and jealous heart and murdered her husband, pp. 73–97; Giovanni II led a calm domestic life, p. 105; Genevra saw the Bolognese as her enemies, p. 105; Genevra was superstitious, aggressive, p. 107; Genevra was furious with the Marescotti, forcing Ermes to kill them, p. 138; Genevra showed savage love towards her children, p. 173; Genevra wished to speak directly with the legate, p. 190; the night before fleeing Bologna Genevra drafted an inventory of her possessions in semi-infantile handwriting and knew the value of each object, p. 200; Genevra sold all of her possessions for money, p. 227; Genevra was obsessed about repossessing her home in Bologna, p. 228; Genevra was proud, disappointed, unhappy, p. 241; Giovanni II wrote Genevra a letter blaming their losses in Bologna on her passions, p. 247. For more of Giovanni II’s positive characterisations, see pp. 105, 241, 247. 79 See S., F.B. 80 Ady, p. 44. 81 Ady, pp. 86–87, 117, 119, 129, 133, 136.

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by massive amounts of posthumous information circulating in published sources about an evil Genevra Sforza. Ady balances accounts of Genevra’s exemplary duties as wife and mother and her sadness over Costanza’s death in Mirandola with a discussion of Genevra as someone who cared more for things than people, whose passion was magnificence, and who schemed for Bentivoglio restoration before hearing of the destruction of her palace that broke her heart and killed her.82 Ady makes statements that turned Genevra into a virago: ‘For over forty years she was the moving spirit in the Bentivoglio palace’; or ‘Ginevra stands out as the central figure of the group and the presiding genius of the Bentivoglio palace. Chroniclers and diplomatists are at one in their estimate of the magnitude of her influence’.83 In her postscript, Ady again relies on legend with comments about Genevra’s impetuosity: against Giovanni II’s will, Genevra pushed Annibale II and Ermes into invading Bologna and ‘in so doing she proved, not for the first time in her life, the evil genius of her family’.84 After blaming Genevra for so much, Ady discusses the ‘bitter truth’ that appeared in the mysterious ‘lost letter’ Giovanni II reputedly wrote to Genevra. As Ady sums it up, ‘Giovanni’s weakness and Ginevra’s strength compassed the ruin of the Bentivoglio’.85 If a brilliant leading scholar of Renaissance Italy publishing at a major university had fallen for legends—since they had been so convincingly embedded in Bolognese historiography for over 400 years at that point—how could other historians or their readers sift fact from fiction? Ongoing publications about Genevra led to further interest in her story: Albano Sorbelli (1875–1944), a prolific writer and long-term director of Bologna’s Archiginnasio library, chose to focus on her too. In I Bentivoglio (completed pre–1944, published 1969) Sorbelli dedicates a five-page appendix to making a final judgement on her, literally a ‘Giudizio su Ginevra Sforza’.86 He suggests that Genevra was an affectionate and faithful bride since she and Giovanni II had been united ‘for love and only for love’.87 Sorbelli explains how Genevra was Giovanni II’s advisor, ‘even though she did not like to be seen as such’, and Giovanni II kept her from participating in all public events, unless her presence was absolutely necessary.88 Sorbelli notes that Genevra played an important role in maintaining friendships with the Sforza, the Medici, and the signori in the Romagna but that she kept up those friendships only secretly, since we do not have traces of her relationships 82 Ady, pp. 148–149. 83 Ady, pp. 139, 147. 84 Ady, p. 200. 85 Ady, pp. 199–201, 206. 86 Sorbelli (1969), pp. 209–213. He stated that he wished to ‘delineare con maggiore realtà e aderenza al vero la sua anima e la sua figura: con i suoi grandi difetti, ma anche con le sue forti qualità’. 87 Sorbelli (1969), p. 210. 88 Sorbelli (1969), p. 210.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

with them. He acknowledges that Genevra had written five letters but with regard to any of her other letters, ‘no trace remains’. 89 Sorbelli next turns to discuss Genevra’s economic independence. Despite Genevra having had no dowry and the fact that she was dependent financially on her husbands, Sorbelli concludes that Genevra had wisely spent her own money on the purchase of lands yielding rent and that it was her economic independence that allowed her to reinforce her ascendancy above the rest of her family.90 Sorbelli explains legends related to Genevra’s ferocity: although she worked hard for her family, she had been negative in the way she expressed herself and her love for them, adding an example that anyone who had ever tried to work against Giovanni II was restrained, fought against and poisoned by Genevra.91 Sorbelli references the alleged ‘letter’ composed by Alberti and revised by Ghirardacci before judging the anonymous epitaph as unjust on the basis that Genevra was in fact pious, not impious.92 Finally, following the tradition of glorifying Giovanni II, Sorbelli dedicates an eleven-page appendix to him in which he highlights how Giovanni II made Bologna beautiful by developing streets, promoting a variety of impressive architectural and artistic projects, and enhancing student life—in sum focusing on Giovanni II’s grand popularity.93 With such black-and-white assertions about the lives of Genevra and Giovanni II made by a scholar who was for decades director of Bologna’s prime civic library and who had relatively easy access to so much primary and secondary early modern historical material, Genevra’s real life would become nearly impossible to question. Over the course of several centuries, many remained interested in thinking about and writing about Genevra Sforza. Some focused on the development of stories with a potential for embellished and exciting historical explanations and all while very little research (or none at all) in contemporary sources took place. Those who did look to fifteenth-century documentation sometimes combined findings with posthumous legends to create hybrids of history and fiction—yet the colourful nature of the legends dominated facts. Meanwhile, as time marched on into the second half of the twentieth century, what was considered a proper social and public role for females remained debatable. One explanation behind the promulgation of the Genevra legends is that some authors interested in exploring and expressing their opinions regarding the proper place for women did so with the help of stories filtered through the character they called Genevra Sforza.

89 Sorbelli (1969), p. 211. Sorbelli outlined information found in five letters published by Rita Sorbelli before concluding that no other of Genevra’s letters survived. 90 Sorbelli (1969), pp. 211–212. 91 Sorbelli (1969), p. 212. 92 Sorbelli (1969), pp. 210–213. 93 Sorbelli (1969), pp. 215–225.

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Most Recent Academic Histories and Genevra Sforza (1950s–today) Dependant on the works of previously published authors, into our times scholars have been simply forced to accept the fundamental negative nature of Genevra based on this enormous, convincing and concordant body of Bolognese historiographical literature. Current accounts about Genevra sometimes seem even more believable because some engage in more nuanced arguments using cooler academic language and tones. Ongoing distortions have led not only to a continuation of inaccuracies about Genevra as an historical figure but also to misrepresentations of our understanding of fifteenth-century Bolognese and Italian women, the nature of fifteenth-century ruling couples, various points about Bentivoglio and Sforza family histories and other elements of Bologna’s Renaissance-era past, including reasons behind its turnover to more direct rule from Rome. For example, in a valuable and often cited academic article about the fall of the Bentivoglio (published 1951), Bologna’s political backdrop is explained within the framework of Giovanni II’s weak character—as opposed to the strong character of Genevra who loved to dominate with absolute power. Using academic prose and framing arguments based on the gists of legends, the end of Bentivoglio rule is promoted in ways that do not to correspond with contemporary sources.94 Another analysis comes from the work of a popular historian who included Genevra’s biography in a collection of lives of the eleven most famous women of the Romagna (1972).95 Although factual information is included about the early years of Genevra’s life, eventually stories are presented; after doing so, however, the author hypothesises that many of the negative images of Genevra came from malicious chroniclers and popular legends instead of historical facts.96 Despite this brief critique of the plight of Genevra’s historical reputation, the author never seems to have researched this insightful hunch. By the late 1970s an academic article on Palazzo Bentivoglio focuses on the building of the palace that had been ‘prompted by the complaint of [Sante’s] wife, Ginevra Sforza, who felt they lived in too meagre a dwelling’.97 It would be fascinating to learn of a contemporary source crediting Genevra with the idea behind the construction of the new Bentivoglio palace—but no citation is 94 Patrizi Sacchetti, pp. 118–119, 122, 131, 136; on these pages other legends appear, including how Giovanni II had not known it was Genevra who pushed Ermes to kill the Marescotti; Genevra prevented Giovanni II from going to Rome to speak with Julius II; Genevra stayed alone in her palace to meet with Julius II after the Bentivoglio men fled. 95 See Mazzeo; for Genevra Sforza’s biography, see pp. 67–78. The other ten women are Francesca da Rimini, Cia degli Ubaldini, Madonna Gentile de’ Manfredi, Parisina di Malatesta, Isotta da Rimini, Battista di Montefeltro, Caterina Sforza, Francesca Manfredi, Costanza Perticari and Teresa Guiccioli. 96 Mazzeo, pp. 67–71. 97 Wallace, p. 99.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

given; at another point in the same article, the story is repeated about how Genevra had been ruthless in her desire for vengeance with the Malvezzi, further instilling Genevra from legends.98 Into the 1980s, legends infiltrated a collection of academic articles dedicated to the study of the Bentivoglio, Bentivolorum magnificentia (1984).99 One article asserts that not much poetry or literature was produced under the Bentivoglio régime because the family did not have a cultural plan due to the nature of the ruling couple, i.e., Giovanni II’s and Genevra’s haughtiness and inconstancy. The lack of a programme is then explained as the result of Genevra—described as not unjustly labelled impious, maligning, avaricious and wicked—thus based on the four familiar adjectives from the anonymous sonnet of 1506.100 Within that same collection, another article on painting in the age of Giovanni II Bentivoglio opens with reference to the alleged ‘letter’ in which Genevra is blamed for the destruction of the family palace.101 And in another article focusing on literature, it is explained that it had been Genevra who wanted to have the family’s tower cut down in a ‘desperate’ attempt to survive after the 1505 earthquakes.102 The statement chosen to describe her behaviour succeeds at recalling legends: Genevra is understood to have acted independently of Giovanni II and based on emotions. A few years later, elements from the Genevra character fit into an article about women depicted in iconic terms within the Italian historiographical tradition (1987). Arienti’s Gynevera, which stresses certain moral qualities fit for womankind (modesty, chastity and submission), is explained in contrast to Genevra Sforza who is seen to have imperfectly displayed such female virtues in real life; Genevra is thus considered a virago famous for her vengeance, and she ‘maintained her power by throwing a chaste modesty to the winds’, interpreting Arienti’s Gynevera as a condemnation of Genevra.103 The strength of the black legend historiography continued into the 1990s. In a 1991 presentation (and publication), ‘Gynevera delle clare donne: frivolezze, austerità ed altro’, Arienti’s sincerity is further discredited as Genevra is accused of not having possessed the virtues that the other women in the collection possessed.104 98 Wallace, p. 106. 99 See Basile, ed. 100 Vecchi Galli, pp. 224–225 for the lack of their ‘salda politica culturale’ and the description of them as ‘una coppia altezzosa e scostante (e soprattutto Ginevra, che forse non del tutto immeritatamente fu chiamata empia, maligna, avara e scellerata)’. 101 Bacchi, p. 285. 102 Pezzarossa, p. 101. 103 Owen Hughes, pp. 27–30. 104 Fasoli (1993), pp. 103–108; the article is based on a March 1991 conference at Famèia bulgnèisa. Fasoli (1993), p. 104: ‘le virtù di tutte queste gentildonne, chiamate metaforicamente a rendere onore a Ginevra,

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But as this scholar had done in earlier work on the Bentivoglio (in 1936, as seen above), at a certain point she stops her argument in medias res to question the legends, ‘is it a true story or a malicious invention of writers?’ and later, ‘is it true or not, I leave it to my audience to decide’. Fifty-five years later this same author continues to plant specific analytical ideas about how the Genevra stories might indeed be legends, now placing the verdict on her audience—but before returning to a string of posthumous stories.105 Also in the 1990s, a popular historian found occasion to include information on Genevra in an article about women’s history financed by the Banca Popolare di Milano and dedicated to the study of women from Bologna and other Emilian cities (1993). Similar to the arguments of two of the other publications cited above, the article claims that only Arienti had depicted Genevra in a positive fashion.106 Genevra’s religious devotion is then described as having been streaked by fanaticism, superstition and belief in magic—but when the author refers to the infamous ‘letter’ causing Genevra to die, she questions whether blaming Genevra for the ruin of her family due to her limitless ambition seems excessive.107 Chronologically this piece appears as the third published text to question something about the Genevra legends—but the critique still did not lead to an investigation into contemporary materials. In the final example from the twentieth century, we see Genevra legends infiltrated the most important academic work on biographies of historically significant Italians, the Dizionario biografico degli italiani (1999). The entry on Giovanni II Bentivoglio includes his and Genevra’s early love for one another, how it served as the basis of their later marriage, and with reference to their ‘eccessiva dimestichezza’, i.e. their excessive familiarity with one another.108 Before repeating other legends, the entry discusses Sante’s death at a young age and at an extraordinarily opportune time for Giovanni II’s career, questioning why more people did not think Sante had been poisoned, subtly implicating Genevra again—as Agocchie had done centuries before—disregarding evidence about Sante’s fight with tuberculosis (examined in Chapter Two above).109 Into our century and going strong, the body of what has become ‘historical’ Genevra legends have only continued to serve as explanations to various issues sono proprio le virtù che lei non aveva’. Some arguments are similar to ones made by Owen Hughes (see above). 105 ‘Storia vera o invenzione maliziosa di letterati?’ and later, ‘Sarà o non sarà…lascio la cosa alle riflessioni dei miei ascoltatori’ in Fasoli (1993), pp.104–105, 108. 106 See Owen Hughes and Fasoli (above). 107 Zanasi, pp. 78–80. 108 De Caro, p. 623. 109 De Caro, p. 623. He also discusses how Genevra and her children pushed Giovanni II to resist Julius II’s entry into Bologna, how Genevra and the children did not tolerate exile as well as Giovanni II, and how Genevra pushed the children to recapture Bologna; pp. 626, 631–632.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

from Renaissance Bologna— since the strong concordant body of historiography has remained the same. The introduction to a collection of articles prepared for an exhibit based around a restored portrait of Giovanni II (2003), refers to the ‘letter’ sent to Genevra, noting how Giovanni II considered the loss of his palace to have been his greatest loss.110 In that same year, in an article published for the inauguration of the restored Bolognese convent of Santa Cristina della Fondazza, research into contemporary materials revealed that a Bolognese woman named Agostina Aliotti served an interim position as abbess after Genevra had pressed the prior to call in the substitute.111 However from Genevra’s first appearance in the article as the ‘discussa’ (‘much-discussed’), ‘dispotica’ (‘despotic’) and ‘ferrea’ (‘iron-willed’) signora di Bologna, she is characterised from legends that assume suspicion, leaving explanations open as to why Aliotti served.112 Finally, a broadly researched and superb master narrative of Julius II’s 1506 entry into Bologna considers many early sixteenth-century contemporary accounts of the pope’s mission but then some are mixed with the legend historiography: Genevra and Ermes had been responsible for the break with Julius II, and it had been Genevra alone who had had pushed Giovanni II and his friends to persecute the Malvezzi; although primary sources are referenced throughout the manuscript, the points related to Genevra do not include citations.113 As we approached the 500th anniversary milestone of the fall of the Bentivoglio, the Genevra character made its way into a group of works including a chroniclebased book related to the Bentivoglio palace, Il Palazzo Bentivoglio: nelle fonti del tempo (2006).114 Although the book title implies contemporary sources, Genevra is introduced with one adjective alone, ‘fiera’ (‘proud’), and two non-contemporary chronicle accounts (Guidotti and Vizzani) are included: one refers to the infamous ‘letter’, the other how Genevra never wanted to follow her husband’s advice. The secondhand (yet contemporary) account of Genevra’s death written by Tuate mentions how she died as a result of news of the palace destruction.115 Another article on chronicles within a second commemorative publication (sponsored by the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna and Ravenna and serving as a guide to three museum exhibits at the Fondazione del Monte, the Museo Civico Medievale and the Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio), also includes the contemporary yet secondhand 110 Fortunati, ed., pp. 9–10. 111 Foschi, pp. 185–199. 112 Foschi, pp.194, 196; to support the negative characterisation further, see p. 194: ‘si veda la discussione della sua figura fatta da A. Sorbelli’; for the ‘impoverished’ or ‘poor convent in need of reform’, see pp. 189, 194–195. 113 De Benedictis (2004), pp. 73, 97. 114 See Antonelli and Poli. 115 Antonelli and Poli, pp. 10, 93–95.

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passage by Tuate, claiming that soon after Genevra heard about the ruin of her home, she was so emotionally disturbed that she dropped dead.116 In that same popular year for Bentivoglio publications, Genevra appears in an important academic book about Savonarola published by Oxford University Press; she and her ‘shadowy entourage’ repeatedly interrupt Savonarola by arriving late to mass until he ‘snapped something like: ‘You see, here is the devil, here is the devil, come to interrupt the word of God’’—a quotation traceable directly to Burlamacchi’s 1794 account.117 The text concludes that although it is unlikely Genevra went as far as to have ordered Savonarola’s assassination, the rest of the account of their encounter ‘rings true’.118 2006 also saw the publication of a collection of academic articles about the most important Bentivoglio country estate at Ponte Poledrano. The introduction sets the stage for understanding Genevra in full legend form: Genevra smuggled money and jewels out of Bologna when she fled; she did not tolerate exile and pushed her sons to return to Bologna; Giovanni II had nothing to do with her plan, and she died after hearing about the destruction of her home.119 As an important and profitable agricultural estate, and as host to an innovative fresco cycle featuring La storia del pane (History of Bread Making), it would be fascinating to address Genevra’s gendered presence there. Anniversary markers aside, the Genevra character attracted a major early modern historian who discusses her in a chapter, ‘Self: The Individual as a Work of Art (1425–1525)’ within The Renaissance In Italy: A Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento (2014).120 Early modern Italian women are described as ‘among the most artfully created individuals of the day’, and Genevra is introduced as ‘the colorful (and according to some contemporaries, often too colorful), Ginevra Sforza’.121 A run-down of most of the Genevra legends appears before initially concluding, Beyond this virtually all-inclusive catalog of misogynist stereotypes against powerful women, it is difficult to know who Ginevra actually was, but it is clear that once again she had been constructed largely by males as a work of art—a cruel, evil, grasping work of art, but a work of art nonetheless.122

Genevra is seen in a new way—as a constructed work of (negative) art—a compelling way of critiquing and describing what has become of the Genevra character across 116 Poli, pp. 37–38. 117 Martines, p. 33. 118 Martines, p. 33. 119 Trombetti Budriesi, pp. 16–24. 120 See Ruggiero. 121 Ruggiero, pp. 370–372. 122 Ruggiero, p. 372.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

the historiography. Arienti’s description of Genevra is questioned next, following the lines of thinking of at least three historians who have considered Arienti’s biography to have been a satire of the true Genevra.123 In sum, Ginevra makes or breaks her city. She is wife, mother, councillor, and literally the image of the magnificence of her Bologna and Bentivoglio rule. Perhaps no real woman could live up to either this praise or the opposing criticism, but there was no doubt that this woman was imagined as a powerful and important individual to be reckoned with.124

It is fascinating to see that Genevra continues to be credited with so much and that her character made it into this book’s discussion about an example of a Renaissance woman created as a work of art. Genevra Sforza also caught the attention of a contemporary Bolognese author and publisher who opened his own publishing house and whose works sell at bookstores and newsstands across Bologna in order to deliver Bolognese history directly to the community. Il tempo dei Bentivoglio (2008) includes a chapter on Genevra: ‘Ginevra…telenovela rinascimentale’ (Genevra…Renaissance soap opera).125 And the commentaries, based on the above concordant historiography, include how Sante knew about Giovanni’s and Genevra’s love for one another, calling the story ‘gossip dei gossip’ (i.e. the best of gossip); it is also noted how opportune it had been for Sante, healthy and robust, to have died so unexpectedly—repeating questions about the nature of his death ranging from sixteenth-century Agocchie to twenty-first century DBI.126 Another recent popular historian chose to include Genevra in 101 Donne che hanno fatto grande Bologna (2012)—although it remains unclear how this version of Genevra (depicted as a thoroughly wicked woman) helped make Bologna ‘grande’.127 And another recent book refers to the un-documented love affair involving Genevra and Giovanni claiming that Sante died ‘cornuto’ (cuckolded) before claiming that Genevra and Giovanni II celebrated their wedding in a more splendid way than Genevra’s first wedding with Sante—even though documentation shows that the second wedding was not celebrated (see Chapter Two above).128 Two final examples come from academic articles (both 2018); one discusses the botched Malvezzi conspiracy based on an important investigation into contemporary sources, discovered to have been ‘an act of cooperation between 123 Ruggiero, p. 373; and as seen above in Ricci, Owen Hughes and Fasoli. 124 Ruggiero, p. 373. 125 Costa, p. 96. 126 Costa, pp. 86; 96–108; see http://www.costaeditore.it/ (accessed 22 September 2020). 127 Bersani, pp. 68–69. 128 Baffioni Venturi, pp. 83–103.

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the main Bolognese political and judicial authorities, conducted under the direct supervision of the Sedici’; however, the analysis then turns to Ghirardacci, ‘while Ginevra Sforza […] was identified as the instigator of the action, the involvement of Giovanni II himself was excluded by contemporary chroniclers’.129 The second example comes from a survey of the Bolognese political climate within a discussion of the grave dangers behind Cesare Borgia’s campaign in the Romagna paired with the internal Marescotti conspiracy; the Bentivoglio are said to have reacted with ‘unheard of violence (apparently instigated by Ginevra and their son Ermes, against the judgment of Giovanni)’.130 Given the complete lack of other available Bolognese scholarship, historians have simply been forced to rely on Ghirardacci (and so many others above) now for centuries. If a thorough investigation could be conducted into all published works relating to this story, more references to the Genevra legends and their effects could come forward as they have been mixed into so many publications related to Renaissance-era Bologna. It is also interesting to note the wide variety of the legends seen throughout the current literature: contemporary authors have not focused on only one or two legends but on a range of posthumous stories that have been passed down through various publications, from the early modern era into our own times. As the examples demonstrate, even scholars of the utmost rigour and achievement have been betrayed by the effectiveness of the damnatio memoriae campaign against Genevra. It has been difficult (indeed, impossible) for anyone interested in investigating early modern Bologna to question this enormous body of concordant historiography that sits before our fingertips in libraries and virtual information portals around the world. Furthermore, when visitors arrive in Bologna at the city’s main Tourist Information Centre in Piazza Maggiore, they are greeted with pamphlets published in multiple languages by the Comune di Bologna, including an English version of one that states: Differently from her husband, Ginevra never gave up hope and also for this reason she was considered a conspirator, the instigator of horrible murders and a mean person, as the chroniclers of the period depicted her. She died in 1507, abandoned by everyone, and excommunicated, and her body was thrown into a mass grave.131

Newcomers looking for historical or cultural information about Bologna immediately face Genevra promoted as a macabre tourist attraction—and in this fashion the 129 Cucini, pp. 133, 135. 130 Duranti, p. 280. 131 G.A.I.A., pp. 1–2.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

false word about her is instantly spread to even the most casual visitors. Genevra has also become the focus of a 75-minute 15-euro tour organised by Mutus Liber and sponsored by the Comune di Bologna and Bologna Estate called ‘Dalla Domus Aurea…Al Rogo della Strega: Ad esse saranno capaci di tutto’ (‘From the Domus Aurea…To the Witch’s Stake: They’ll be capable of anything’).132 Furthermore when contemporary citizens wish to become tour guides in Bologna, they must pass an exam based on published history books about Bologna, thus making it obligatory to know the legends as facts in order to work as licensed guides. Beyond the published information noted above, many also depend on virtual sources, and the internet helps promote misinformation. Web pages that range from showing Genevra as the subject of a middle school research project to biographical entries in Wikipedia (currently in seven different languages) to the Italian Renaissance Learning Resources pages for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation each highlight un-documented and un-documentable claims blaming Genevra for miscellaneous crimes leading to the downfall of Renaissance Bologna.133 In sum due to convincing concordant negative judgements repeated by eminent Italian and foreign historians that stem from accounts originally composed in the early sixteenth century and recycled into our own times, Genevra’s posthumous character devised by political enemies has succeeded at infiltrating our understanding of Renaissance Italy.

Genevra Sforza and Some Other Italian Victims of Renaissance Legends Genevra’s story immediately calls forth the case of Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519). Lucrezia was one of several illegitimate children born to Spanish Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia (later Pope Alexander VI) and his mistress Vanozza Catenei, and Lucrezia’s life story has been treated extensively.134 Over the course of the first part of her 132 As seen in a handout printed by Bologna Magica entitled ‘6 Donne in circa d’autore’ distributed at the main Tourist Information Centre in Piazza Maggiore (collected June 2022). 133 Genevra is blamed for the downfall of the Bentivoglio in an English version of the ‘letter’ written by ‘a contemporary historian of Bologna’ quoted from a presentation by Eleonora Luciano entitled ‘The Power of Princesses: Ginevra Sforza’ delivered at the symposium ‘Beauty Adorns Virtue: Renaissance Portraits of Women’ (5–6 October 2001) held at the National Gallery—and as seen in the National Gallery of Art Italian Renaissance Learning Resources pages (see pp. 2, 9); see also Wikipedia entries in Brezhoneg, Bulgarian, English, French, Italian, Polish and Russian; some other internet sites about Genevra are listed in the Bibliography below. 134 See Nicolai Rubinstein, Lucrezia Borgia (Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1971); Maria Bellonci, Lucrezia Borgia: la sua vita e i suoi tempi (Milan: Mondadori, 1939); Maria Bellonci, The Life And Times Of Lucrezia Borgia, Bernard and Barbara Wall, trans. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953); Ferdinand

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life in Rome, Lucrezia was seen as one more corrupt member of her notorious Spanish family. The Borgias epitomised unethical politics, and Lucrezia served her father’s machinations as an instrument in alliance making schemes in five different marriage arrangements: one of her engagements was cancelled (to Don Cherubin de Centelles); one husband was murdered (some legends credited Lucrezia with having killed Alfonso of Aragon duke of Bisceglie); and two were annulled (to Don Gasparo de Procida, later to Giovanni Sforza) before she finally married (Duke Alfonso d’Este). Before moving to Ferrara as a bride, Lucrezia acted as an unofficial regent to the papacy when her father was absent from Rome, and about that powerful position for a young woman, Roman imagination went wild. Stories reported Lucrezia’s love affair with Spanish messenger Pedro Caldes who was said to have fathered Lucrezia’s son Rodrigo. When Pedro later disappeared, it was said that he had been murdered by Lucrezia’s brother, Cesare.135 Other stories reported incest: Lucrezia had given birth to a secret child fathered by her own father.136 It was believed by some that Lucrezia had non-platonic love affairs with poets Ercole Strozzi and Pietro Bembo; and when Strozzi was murdered in Ferrara, Lucrezia was said to have killed him out of jealousy due to his interest in another woman.137 Contemporary and non-contemporary fabrications about Lucrezia focused on her life in Rome and specifically on unethical marriage arrangements, sexual immorality, political corruption, cruelty and homicide. Finally, in 1502, Lucrezia found peace in her marriage to Duke Alfonso d’Este in Ferrara.138 After her move north, contemporaries saw her in a different light over the course of the second half of her life, led far from Rome and into another era after the death of Alexander VI (1503). Genevra Sforza and Lucrezia Borgia shared many similarities. They lived in the same time period, knew one another, and were related through their large families. Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia secondo documenti e carteggi del tempo, Raffaele Mariani, trans. (Florence: Le Monnier, 1874); Rachel Erlanger, Lucrezia Borgia: A Biography (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1978); Massimo Grillandi, Lucrezia Borgia (Milan: Rusconi, 1984); G. Campori, ‘Una vittima della storia: Lucrezia Borgia’ in Nuova antologia, vol. Aug. (1866): 628–638; see also the recent popular title: Sarah Bradford, Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (New York: Viking, 2004). For treatment of her legends, see Marco Felloni, ‘Lucrezia tra mito e storia’ in Il mito di Lucrezia Borgia nell’età contemporanea: atti del convegno nazionale di studi (Ferrara: Liberty House, 2003), pp. 55–66; see also the entire compilation of articles in that collection; Gianna Vancini, Lucrezia Borgia nell’opera di cronisti, letterati e poeti suoi contemporanei alla corte di Ferrara: studi nel V centenario delle nozze di Lucrezia Borgia e don Alfonso d’Este (Ferrara: Este, 2002); for more on Lucrezia’s ‘second’ life in Ferrara, see Laura Laureati, ‘Da Borgia a Este: due vite in quarant’anni’ in Laura Laureati, ed., Lucrezia Borgia (Ferrara: Ferrara arte, 2002), pp. 19–76. 135 Bellonci (1953), pp. 98–99, 157. 136 Bellonci (1953), pp. 155–156. 137 Bellonci (1953), pp. 197–199, 211, 239, 271–277. 138 Bellonci (1953), pp. 26–35, 81, 92–98, 101–103, 111–114, 133–140, 148.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

Both women were betrothed and married more than once. One of each of their husbands died prematurely and the participation of both of them in that husband’s death was questioned. Both Genevra’s and Lucrezia’s chastity and fidelity were doubted: Genevra’s in relation to Giovanni, and Lucrezia’s three times in relation to two lovers and her father. Both women were subjects of tragedies and operas but while Genevra appeared in local productions, Lucrezia became an international anti-heroine, thanks especially to the work of Victor Hugo (1802–1885).139 Not coincidentally, the black legends of both women reached their heights with the Romantic mentality of the nineteenth century. While Lucrezia’s name became synonymous with female evil and immorality due to her membership in an infamous family, Genevra as an evil female character existed independently within an otherwise respected family. The greater scale of Lucrezia’s negative image can be explained in part by the fact that while Lucrezia and Genevra were both born into the Italian ruling class, within that class they existed on opposite extremes of the social scale. Although Lucrezia too had been born illegitimate, she came into the world as daughter of a cardinal who would soon become pope, and through her ultimate marriage, Lucrezia became part of an ancient, aristocratic family as well as a duchess. Genevra had been born illegitimate too, but to a man from a lesser-known branch of an only recently important condottiere family, and through marriage Genevra became the wife of a mere de facto signore who technically held only citizen status. In the second part of her life Lucrezia presided over a Renaissance cultural mecca with internationally famous literati (Ludovico Ariosto, Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, Ercole Strozzi and Pietro Bembo) and master painters (Titian and Dosso Dossi)—while Genevra’s court included the sporadic presence of one relatively minor poet (Arienti) and lesser known painters (Francesco Francia, Ercole de’ Roberti and Lorenzo Costa). Lucrezia commissioned books from the famous Venetian printer of classical texts, Aldus Manutius, while Genevra’s name was associated with a local printer, Ercole Nanni. On each point, Lucrezia was more well-known compared to Genevra, and so along with that higher profile came greater and more notorious legends. The enormity of Lucrezia’s black legends was what made them stand out—historians noticed them earlier, and they addressed and corrected them with more ease. It has also simply been easier to examine Lucrezia in comparison to Genevra 139 Victor Hugo, Lucrèce Borgia [1833] in Claude Schumacher, ed., Four Plays (London: Methuen Drama, 2004); Gaetano Donizetti and Felice Romano, Lucrezia Borgia (Milan: Ricordi, 1833); Alexandre Dumas, Les Borgia (Paris: Librairie internationale, 1865); A.J. Talbot, Lucrezia Borgia’s Little Party: A Comedy in One Act (London and New York: Samuel French, 1933); several editions of the comic book Diabolik were based on Lucrezia—see Alfredo Castelli and Lucio Filippucci, Lucrezia nelle nuvole (Editoriale Sometti, 2002); see also the motion picture by Aidart Pictures, Sins Of The Borgias (1956). For a collection of articles on Lucrezia in literature, film, theatre, and cinema, see [unnamed editor], Il mito, and Laureati.

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as D’Este properties, archives and artwork survive into the present in known locations while so much has been dispersed and lost on the Bentivoglio front. Based on contemporary documents and letters, Ferdinand Gregorovius (1874) and Maria Bellonci (1939) were among the first who worked to distinguish Lucrezia’s historical figure from the fictitious one, but their works alone were not enough to cancel her dissolute Roman image. Recent publications in Ferrara in commemoration of the 500-year anniversary of Lucrezia’s arrival there brought her (and her image) into the spotlight again—and 2002 in Ferrara was officially dedicated to her and known as the ‘Anno di Lucrezia Borgia’. Now Lucrezia is considered to have been a Borgia pawn during the first two decades of her life in Rome, led in high contrast to her position as a respected and traditional matron during the second two decades of her life in Ferrara.140 Additional recent scholarly contributions by Gabriella Zarri, Dianne Ghirardo and Allyson Burgess Williams have added many more nuanced arguments to Lucrezia’s history related to her spirituality, her image in portraiture and her work as an entrepreneur.141 Caterina Sforza (1463–1509), a cousin of Genevra’s and a granddaughter of Duke Francesco Sforza, is another early modern Italian woman to whom Genevra can be compared. Caterina was one of four illegitimates born in Milan to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the infamous future duke, and a concubine, Lucrezia Landriani.142 From her grandmother Bianca Maria Visconti, Caterina received a humanistic education, including practical information about fifteenth-century government and military affairs. In 1477 she moved to Rome upon marriage to Girolamo Riario, a nephew of Pope Sixtus IV (featured together in the famous Vatican fresco representing nepotism by Melozzo da Forlì); the pope eventually appointed him signore of Imola and Forlì where the couple moved (1480) and had six children. After the pope’s death when chaos pursued in Rome (1484), Caterina, although seven months pregnant, defended Castel Sant’Angelo.143 So far, in comparison with Genevra, Caterina and her husband held legal power to rule (albeit over small fiefs compared to a significant city like Bologna), were in close contact with a pope and important Roman aristocrats, and by age twenty Caterina had already overstepped the traditional gendered limits by becoming involved in the defence of a fortress. After Riario was killed by conspirators (1488) Caterina vindicated his death and defended the fortress of Ravaldino. Pregnant again at the time of the revolt, Caterina became known for having made a bold comment, proclaiming that if 140 See Laureati, pp. 19–76. 141 See works by Williams, Zarri and Ghirardo in the bibliography below. 142 For Caterina’s biography, see De Vries; Hairston; Graziani and Venturelli; Pasolini; for Caterina in popular culture, see The Borgias (Showtime, 2011); The Medici (Rai TV series, 2016–2019); Assassin’s Creed II (2009) and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (2010); S. Yoshida, The Trinity Blood (2007). 143 De Vries, p. 37.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

her children were to be killed, she could make others to replace them—the basis of the exaggerated ‘skirt-lifting’ story described by Machiavelli.144 For many years Caterina served as a brilliant widowed regent, running all matters in place of Ottaviano, her young son. She was interested and capable in military affairs (like other male Sforza condottieri) but added gendered touches to her tactics, like the incident above that only a female could have performed. Back in Bologna, Genevra was not involved directly in political or military life and never officially ruled in place of Giovanni II or as regent for any son; and she never was written about as a virago or in any context by the likes of Machiavelli. As Caterina ruled Forlì she understood how important spectacle, performance and self-fashioning were in order to maintain power (as did Genevra in different terms) but Caterina was so successful at performing her role as ruler that she was able to take on male lovers (including Giacomo Feo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici) and have children with them—men and children who served her in alliances of her own device, beyond plans devised by her natal family or other Riario.145 Although both Caterina and Genevra bore children (Caterina, 8; Genevra, 18) and organised their futures and in their own ways desired stability and family glory, Genevra’s life was led within certain limits as wife of a de facto ruler presiding over an uncertain regime. Genevra also had significantly more children within marriage but she could have never taken illicit risks with other men or bore their children; doing so would have been completely unacceptable as wife of Giovanni II (or of any other self-respecting early modern man). Caterina, on the other hand, as sole adult ruler in Forli, had the freedom to fashion her own lifestyle and to rule as she saw fit in order to maintain power. After Feo’s arrogance became intolerable to the townspeople, he was murdered by a group of conspirators. Caterina was known to have revenged his death by killing not only those who had plotted against him but also their wives and children— maintaining order through martial law; 146 and so like Feo, Caterina must have lost the goodwill of many townspeople. Back in Bologna (and although it was later claimed that Genevra cruelly vindicated certain deaths and conducted herself like a virago, possibly based on stories reported about Caterina’s behaviour), Genevra was not involved in rage or the ordering of killings, and at no point was she recorded as having lost the goodwill of the Bolognese. At age forty Caterina trained her military in preparation for the arrival of Cesare Borgia and held out against his troops—for which she became known as the ‘tigress’ of Forli. Caterina also commissioned various coins, medals and architectural projects creating fame and credibility 144 Machiavelli, Discourses, Chapter III; Florentine Histories; and Prince; see Hairston. 145 De Vries, p. 1. 146 De Vries, pp. 49–50.

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around her rule.147 In later life she compiled Gli Experimenti, a book of 454 of her own formulas related to cosmetics, health products, and alchemy.148 In comparison to her cousin, Genevra never took on a potent nickname for any military feat (or for anything else); and although Genevra did act on behalf of the Bentivoglio and Bologna during a couple of emergencies, and rather than training and commanding troops before the arrival of Borgia near Bologna, Genevra let Giovanni II take the lead. Since we don’t have records of how Bentivoglio architectural projects were commissioned, we cannot compare the cousins on that point; and since so much was lost in 1506/07, we do not know what kinds of recipes or other things that Genevra might have collected. De Vries concludes that Caterina ultimately acted as a great noblewoman who protected her family and provided for her children by dividing up property and possessions among them in fair terms.149 Regarding legends, Caterina’s were developed in three stages: by Machiavelli and the Medici Grand Dukes, by Italian nationalists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and by writers and scholars of the twentieth and twenty-f irst centuries. De Vries also notes that it had been Foresti who first published about her masculine traits, calling her a virago (while Foresti’s biography of Genevra in the same incunabula focuses on her traditional female traits: fecundity and piety).150 In Florence, Cosimo I de’ Medici, grand duke of Tuscany and one of Caterina’s grandsons, remade Caterina’s image to fit into an unstained account of his noble heritage, including the commissioning of a painting by Giorgio Vasari that immortalised her as an iconic matriarch and a widow—not of Girolamo Riario, but of Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, Caterina’s lover and Cosimo’s father.151 Several biographers from the sixteenth century onwards wrote long books about Caterina, characterising her as a flamboyant woman who transgressed social codes, a fierce ruler and an exception to her sex. In the era of Italian unification, and because no contemporary portraits survive of Caterina, old portraits of widows were searched out and believed to have been of her, and others were painted in an attempt to capture her strong ‘Italian’ character. Joan Kelly’s depiction of Caterina as an exception to her sex also focused on her fame, exceptionality and transgression rather than on an overall assessment of her unique ruling capacities.152 Overall, Caterina’s legends seem to stem from her bold political and military leadership; and although some people certainly must have feared and shunned her as she overstepped traditional gendered limits, most legends seem to have served to 147 De Vries, pp. 101–117. 148 De Vries, p. 211. 149 De Vries, pp. 227–233 150 De Vries, pp. 8–9; 233–66. 151 De Vries, p. 237–240. 152 De Vries, p. 265.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

uplift her fame and exceptionality as a virago (or to have cleared her from that idea, recreating her as a traditional widow)—while those about Genevra focused on a wide variety of negative gendered traits. Alfonsina Orsini (1472–1520), wife of Piero II de’ Medici (1471–1503), also suffered criticism for her position in nearby Florence.153 Her unpopularity arose particularly after the Medici family’s exile (1494) when the males were forced out of town at which time she and other Medici women were responsible for upholding the family’s position in the city. Alfonsina and Genevra had much in common as both were foreigners in their husbands’ cities; the families into which both women married were considered upstarts, only recently in power (and de facto at that); their husbands’ families had risen to power thanks to working-class money (made by notaries, butchers, bankers, doctors or merchants); and neither family had much footing in the traditional Italian or European aristocracy. Alfonsina’s influence became particularly strong however after 1513 when her brother-in-law, Giovanni de’ Medici, became Pope Leo X. Thanks to this papal connection she succeeded at gaining political positions for her son Lorenzo II and her son-in-law Filippo.154 Although Lorenzo II was unpopular in Florence due to his haughty nature, it was Alfonsina (and her mother Caterina Sanseverino) who took the blame for his unpopularity among Florentines.155 And because Alfonsina had publicly helped her son, she was accused of nepotism, of having promoted him at all costs, to the detriment of the republic.156 Even though Genevra had also promoted each of her children, no criticism with regard to nepotism came out of Bologna perhaps because she went about helping her sons and daughters behind the scenes in a more traditional female fashion—plus Genevra had no close connection to any pope or to other major political figures. Overall, Alfonsina and Genevra were treated similarly: they both took blame for crimes committed by their sons and for the ruin of their husband’s families. Because wealth could be acceptably spent by males, Leo X’s extravagance in Rome was considered magnanimous.157 On the other hand, Florentines complained about how Alfonsina accumulated and spent money, and her patronage of art and architecture bothered them, making them feel contempt for her.158 Like Alfonsina, Genevra had also been accused of spending when she allegedly complained about not living in a grand enough home, forcing Sante to build Palazzo Bentivoglio. When 153 Tomas (2000), pp. 82–85; Tomas (2003); Reiss. The legends behind Isabella de’ Medici (1542–1576), born 100 years after Genevra, also share striking similarities; see Mori. 154 Tomas (2000), p. 75. 155 Tomas (2000), pp. 88–89. 156 Tomas (2000), p. 84. 157 Tomas (2000), pp. 83, 85. 158 Reiss, p. 140.

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Pope Leo X visited Florence, citizens did not approve of her as a Medici representative and posters appeared that vilified Alfonsina as a foreign female ruler of a republican city.159 Criticism of Alfonsina appeared during her lifetime in immediate and direct response to her real political role—while critiques of Genevra were made by men who remained silent during her lifetime, bringing forth charges only after her exile and posthumously after a major change in local government. Negative commentary continued after Alfonsina’s death in the form of satiric texts, similar to the epitaph and sonnet that circulated about Genevra. Alfonsina’s detractors focused on her avarice, nepotism, unpopularity and ambition—some of the same characteristics used to degrade Genevra. Finally, the story of Catherine de’ Medici (1519–1589), raised in Florence before becoming queen consort, regent and queen mother in France, offers similarities with those of Genevra, Lucrezia and Alfonsina (her grandmother).160 Even though Catherine’s mother had been a Bourbon princess (Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne) and Catherine herself married the duke d’Orléans (later King Henri II), Catherine was considered an outsider in France because her father, Lorenzo II de’ Medici duke of Urbino, was Italian and considered insufficiently aristocratic. It is alleged that Jules Michelet (1798–1874), famed historian of the French Renaissance, referred to Catherine as a maggot out of Italy’s tomb.161 Others associated Catherine’s agnatic family with wicked Machiavellian scheming—and the link was close as her own father had been the dedicatee of Machiavelli’s Prince. While serving as regent of France for over twenty years (for Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III), Catherine worked hard toward the establishment of religious moderation and peace. In attempts at reconciliation between Catholics and Protestant Huguenots, Catherine issued the Edict of Romorantin (1560), sponsored the Colloquy of Poissy (1561), put forth the January Edict (1562), mediated the Treaty of Amboise (1563), established the Peace of Longjumeau (1568), and arranged the ultimate attempt at peacemaking: marriage between her Catholic daughter Marguerite de Valois and Protestant Henry of Navarre (18 August 1572). But because within one week of their marriage extreme violence broke out in Paris on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s Day when thousands of Catholics attacked thousands of Huguenots, Catherine was credited with causing disaster—instead of being credited with having attempted to unite the French. Catherine began to be hated by the nation as a wicked foreign female ruler. Catherine was depicted as a cold, cruel, evil, 159 Tomas (2000), p. 79–82. 160 Sutherland; Knecht; Héritier; Kruse; ffolliott; and for the similar legends behind Isabella de’ Medici (1542–1576), see Mori. 161 As referenced in Knecht, p. xii; however, this characterisation by him appears to have been a legend, as I am unable to locate any such reference in Michelet’s massive nineteen volume original work.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

ambitious, manipulating and criminal queen, initially in relation to the massacre but later in regard to other facets of her life.162 It was one particular event that shattered the image of Catherine while Genevra, Lucrezia and Alfonsina were plagued by a variety of ongoing problems. At least three were detested for their foreignness: Catherine was never considered truly French, Lucrezia was hated for her Spanish ways, and Genevra came from a foreign Milanese/Pesarese family and ridiculed as having been born to a Jew. Three were blamed for violence: Catherine for causing mass violence, and Lucrezia and Genevra for the deaths of a variety of men. Overall, four of the women were seen as evil manipulators of the men in their families and were blamed for the downfall of the family into which they married. Two were so detested that they took on disgusting insect metaphors: Catherine was called a maggot and Genevra a termite. The Catherine legends are said to have been complete with all of their elements by the late eighteenth century yet unsurprisingly they reached their maximum sphere of influence when her character became the protagonist in historical novels and plays in the nineteenth century.163 As we have seen, the same thing happened in the case of the characters of Genevra and Lucrezia—their negative reputations reached their peaks in the same era. Because none of these women’s images were constructed from critical analyses, objective historical interpretations related to these women as individuals and to their families and cities have all been distorted.

Further Reflections on Women Plagued in History From most of the examples above, we see how some early modern women suffered misrepresentation due to their political power: they were considered to have overstepped gendered lines that installed fear in men and women alike. These women upset the status quo that could have potentially lead to social disorder and the ushering in of new kinds of ‘unacceptable’ gendered norms; many must have feared losing the gendered structures that were believed to have been necessary to uphold family and society.164 Sure, many early moderns were misogynistic,

162 Sutherland, pp. 45–51; Knecht, pp. 163–165; Kruse, p. 140. 163 See one of the late sixteenth-century Huguenot pamphlets, Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions et déportements de Catherine de Médicis, royne-mère [1575] (Paris: N. Cazauran, 1995); Alexandre Dumas, Henri III et sa cour (New York: Oxford University Press, 1829); Alexandre Dumas, La Reine Margot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Isabelle Adjani, La Reine Margot (Burbank, Ca: Buena Vista Home Video, 1995). 164 Potential changes to traditional gender roles were thought to destroy the Italian family and society; for these very reasons divorce became a highly debated topic and remained illegal in Italy until 1970.

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vilifying women of power—but how can the concept be more fully understood in Genevra’s case? As the early modern world was full of unexplained phenomena and perhaps because there was fundamentally so little order in most people’s lives, many cherished, admired and found comfort in the concept of order—class and gender order, and hierarchical orders of all sorts. And as Bologna was the centre of European legal studies, it was a place rich with laws, rules and orderly hierarchies. Concrete examples of the love of order in the Bentivoglio world abound: Bolognese chroniclers noticed ‘order’ and praised it at civic events; Costa painted the Bentivoglio family at San Giacomo based on strict hierarchies related to gender and birth order; when the Bentivoglio wrote letters, they followed strict hierarchical protocols, taking gender and rank into account; when Bolognese asked the Bentivoglio to serve as godparents, it was done according to birth order and gendered hierarchies; when Bolognese girls married, their worths were quantified in dowries, reflecting their marketability and ordered rank in society. And fear of social disorder could help explain why Cardinal Bessarione issued his sumptuary legislation, categorising the Bolognese population into six distinct social groups and devising detailed schemes for what each group’s clothing and accessories would look like—according to strict social and gender orders. Refusing to wear appropriate clothing assigned to one’s class and gender became a crime; and gender disorder was at the heart of this fearful matter. Natalie Tomas outlines the debate regarding Alfonsina Orsini’s ‘problematic’ rule Florence, ‘to the Republican Florentines, the rule of a woman was particular galling because it was a powerful metaphor for the loss of their liberty’.165 Tomas further explains that while male rule was ‘orderly, legitimate and correct’ female rule was ‘disorderly, illegitimate, and dangerous’, threatening the natural and social order.166 The fear of women rulers and women in power was real; and Tomas notes that foreign women were especially displeasing due to their ‘perceived divided loyalties and strange customs’.167 And since most ruling-class alliances took place among families of different cities or countries, elite brides were the ones who moved from their natal homes and cities into their husbands’ residences, a change that set them up as ‘foreigners’ to be questioned from the start. Earlier in this chapter the unfolding of the damnatio memoriae campaign against Genevra is outlined—but what could be another fundamental reason behind it, and how did it differ from the histories and legends about other women of power examined above? Like all women, the powerful women examined here strove to incorporate certain female ideals (such as chastity, modesty, piety, dedication to 165 Tomas (2003), p. 164. 166 Tomas (2003), p. 164. 167 Tomas (2003), p. 167.

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

family) into the presentations of themselves while simultaneously co-existing as rulers who were working ‘beyond their sex’ by definition—except in the case of Genevra Sforza. Genevra never held political power but was maligned along with other female rulers who did because she too crossed a line. Genevra did not step into the male socio-political arena (like Lucrezia in Rome, Caterina in Imola and Forlì, Alfonsina in Florence, Catherine in Paris) but she transgressed the norms of an ideal woman by being ‘too’ successful or ‘too’ bold—not as a virago—but as a mother. She could have been seen to have had too many children and grandchildren; she could have been considered unusual for having accepted too many illegitimates; since she was behind the creation of so many marriage alliances, she could have been considered someone who served as the nexus of too many relationships; and thanks to her children and grandchildren and their alliances, her family was considered to have been allied with too many powerful families across Northern Italy. While other large family dynasties depended on less-fertile wives (or a series of wives who often died in childbirth) as well as on multiple concubines to create children, Genevra’s biological strength (and luck) allowed her to create perhaps the largest family of legitimate ruling-class offspring in Renaissance Italy. Although I came across no explicit statement in the correspondence as to why Julius II hounded Genevra in particular at the end of her life in Mantua and thus began a damnatio memoriae campaign against her, he seems to have despised Genevra because she had gone too far—even though she followed the appropriate and idealised gendered norms as a chaste, modest and pious woman dedicated to her family. When Marchese Francesco Gonzaga visited Bologna and commented on her family and all of its many children as ‘a sight worth seeing’, they had become a spectacle worthy of commentary in his correspondence.168 In my research I quit trying to trace Genevra’s and Giovanni’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren after counting over one hundred of them; and even though many early modern families were large, being recorded as ‘fecundissima’ (‘extremely fertile’) could be considered radical.169 ‘Fecundissima’ was a word not used to describe other females of the time, and as it ends in ‘issima’, it is an extreme word in Italian. With so many children and grandchildren available for alliances, Genevra represented the key to her family’s success and a reason why Julius II lashed out against her alone in Mantua. Genevra was not a woman who operated in government like a virago—but because early modern politics were based around family alliances and family power, and because that power was based on children and their alliances, in her own unique and fully traditional female way Genevra was the base of and directly tied to the creation of a massive political structure that had been chipping away at Julius II’s 168 ASMN, AG 2115 bis, f. 230r–v, 29 August 1503, Francesco Gonzaga to Isabella d’Este. 169 Foresti, f. 164.

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power base in Northern Italy. Genevra was considered out of line for having been too successful in the most traditional fashion for an early modern woman. It was thanks to her many successes in the confinement room that Genevra became an incredible woman of power to be feared and despised, even by the pope in Rome. For these reasons, Genevra might stand alone as an early modern female vilified on a grand scale for having been too successful in the most traditional realm for women: motherhood.

Conclusions Over the course of the past 500+ years a body of creative posthumous stories has been invented and repeated about a woman named Genevra Sforza who lived her life at the apex of society in Renaissance Bologna. The historical Genevra, investigated in contemporary archival sources and discussed in the first five chapters of this book, functioned as a loyal Bentivoglio matron but has since been lost in a sea of negative historiography. In a time of abrupt change in Bolognese government when the city lost its semi-independent status to Rome, chroniclers, pamphleteers and street poets used Genevra as their ideal scapegoat for explanations behind change and the loss of local political control. Genevra was female, illegitimate, foreign, and associated with the powerful scheming Sforza clan whose members were active in politics across the peninsula. As a Sforza in Bologna, it was plausible for some patriotic Bolognese to imagine that Genevra too served as a strong, manipulating political leader who could have beguiled a more provincial Bentivoglio man—Giovanni II. The fact that Genevra was female and sforzesca, matched with early modern fears of women exercising power—albeit political or familial or even imaginary—spelled disaster for her historical reputation. Contributors to the legends, including some tied to the famed academic culture of Bologna’s ancient university community, must have felt that the city’s lost quest for libertas and identity were tied to the Bentivoglio. The ousting of Bologna’s leading Renaissance family and the destruction of their home—Bologna’s finest example of a thoroughly decorated Renaissance palace—were considered a huge shame. Critically or not, some continued to feel that someone must have been responsible for their losses—and someone evil, foreign, female and closely tied to the Bentivoglio fit the bill. While many early moderns contributed to the destructive posthumous portrait of Genevra, the traditional laude delle donne genre simultaneously developed and described for fellow citizens what sort of female would be acceptable and praiseworthy for their metropolitan posterity: beautiful traditional women of good birth. Although Arienti had featured Genevra as the leading woman of his Gynevera, because of her scandalous posthumous image it is ironic that her early

Making and Dispelling Fake History 

and thoroughly traditional fame was displaced by that of a large group of similarly traditional Bolognese laude women. The legendary image of early modern Bologna as the most liberal city for women in Italy came after Genevra thanks to these many laude women of the sixteenth century and thanks to some highly successful female painters, namely Lavinia Fontana and Elisabetta Sirani. Genevra was only one of several early modern Italian women who suffered vilification primarily because of her sex in an era when the woman ‘question’ was emerging and developing as an enormous pan-European debate. Although Genevra never held an official political position, her image was destroyed nonetheless because of her imagined proximity to the male political sphere; her personal link to politics was related to marriage alliances made through the use of her many children thanks to her role as a mother. And now for centuries researchers and anyone interested in reading about Bologna have been forced to rely on a large concordant negative body of materials published about her. Genevra’s case is unique in that her many legends have lived on into our times and that her character has never been systematically dismantled and analysed until now. Finally, the blanket Italian term storia, covering both the idea of histories and stories, attempts to blur our thinking about the past—and its fundamental indistinctness might have conceded early modern writers certain literary freedoms, allowing them natural creativity when constructing accounts that could have been based more on facts and less on fantasy (fear of women or misogyny in this case)—had the term storia itself been defined more precisely or understood more exclusively as a fact-based semi-scientific practice. Considering the ways that la storia has been written in Genevra’s case questions (or demonstrates) to what extent history has been an active work of storia in its full sense—a mix of truths and tales—thanks to its (and our) gendered nature.

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Archivio di Stato, Ferrara (FB = Fondo Bentivoglio) Archivio di Stato di Mantova (Archivio Gonzaga) Biblioteca Comunale (‘L’Archiginnasio’), Bologna Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna

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Some Web References Featuring Legends Accademia Culturale ‘Castelli in aria’: http://www.castelliinaria.org/evento%20musical%20ginevra%20 e%20gentile.htm (retrieved 28 August 2020)

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Annales e Cronologia di Bologna. http://www.miabologna.it/STORIA/017_Bentivoglio3.htm (retrieved 28 August 2020). Istituto Comprensivo di Ozzano dell’Emilia (BO). ‘La Storia dei Bentivoglio’. 2004–2006: http://icozzano.scuole.bo.it/ic/media/attivita/05-06/rinascimento-bo/bentivoglio/bentivoglio.htm (retrieved 28 August 2020). ‘Italian Renaissance Learning Resources in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art made possible by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation copyright 2022’: www.italianrenaissanceresources.com/units/ unit-2/essays/husbands-and-wives-case-studies/ (retrieved 17 May 2022). Mutus Liber. Bologna magica: passeggiate nei misteri più magici della città: bolognamagica.com/ bolognaestate.html (retrieved 21 June 2022). Wikipedia. ‘Ginevra Sforza’. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginevra_Sforza (retrieved 28 August 2020; then existent in seven different languages).

Conclusions Although Genevra has been unlucky in how history has portrayed her, she was incredibly lucky in life. She existed as part of the most privileged group of people from the early modern European era—living as a glamorous, wealthy, respected and prominent aristocratic Italian woman who almost never had to struggle for basics like food, clothing or shelter; who had continual access to interesting people, news and social events and to artists and artisans available to help her with projects; who was exceptionally fortunate with her health as a female who endured eighteen childbirths without one complaint or complication left on record; and who lived comfortably among her many healthy children and grandchildren and alongside dozens of on-call staff members and between literally magnificent palatial surroundings. On a historical level Genevra has been fundamentally privileged too as a woman whose name has not been forgotten (thanks to archival documents, art and various publications) and about whom a research project could be planned and conducted in the first place when compared to the majority of early moderns about whom we have few individual, researchable traces—people whose lives were once closely interwoven among their networks of friends, relatives and neighbours and whose existences helped shape their families and their cultures but whose stories have, without specific written traces, faded into the bigger picture. The chapters of this book display a historical and thus revisionist view of the life of a previously unexamined elite early modern woman in Northern Italy. Uncovering and understanding as much as possible about Genevra’s life based on surviving contemporary documentation has yielded much nuanced historical information about her and her enormous family as well as about many aspects of life in Renaissance-era Bologna. Genevra is worth knowing as an example of a unique fifteenth-century female who invented herself on a thoroughly traditional yet grand scale within the restricted gendered contexts of the Sforza and Bentivoglio worlds. Because she is one of the few people who can be studied from her time and place, it is important to know her life story to better understand her as a person as well as to better understand her context; and it has been especially important to study Genevra because although through the centuries people have been interested in her name thanks to the legends, until now she has only been known through a body of historiography that has not given justice to her life circumstances. Furthermore,

Bernhardt, E.L., Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463726849_concl

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understanding that the woman at the heart of Renaissance Bologna was something other than ‘an evil genius who destroyed her family’ is essential information. Learning about her as a historical figure could have only happened after giving her centre stage in a historical investigation—the goal of this book. Despite the initial gendered challenges Genevra faced, namely being an illegitimate girl raised under the guidance of a father who handed her over to his brother who in turn gave her away young to a ‘foreign’ man in a far-off city where she had no relations and existed without the safety net of a dowry, she (and those around her) took her position and role in life seriously. When she was brought to Bologna around age thirteen, and like other young women of her time and station, Genevra had already been successfully pre-programmed to throw herself into the development of the family into which she married; and so she fully immersed herself within the parameters of a predetermined role dictated by fifteenth-century norms related to gender, patriarchy, family culture, honour, class and politics. Genevra acted appropriately in her first marriage, bearing children and upholding high Sforza status and connections in her new city. But in her early twenties and within a decade she became a widow, left with two healthy youngsters but with no say in their futures or hers. Because she had no dowry, something I pieced together from fragmentary information left (and not left) in Pesaro, Bologna, Milan, Ferrara and elsewhere, her economically unsure and fundamentally helpless state explains a lot about her developing attitude in life; it was thanks to her gendered understanding of the world and her place in it without the dowry and thus no capacity to make basic choices on her own behalf, that much of her attitude in life developed—especially around the idea of being forced to accept certain situations that were planned for her by her powerful uncle, Duke Francesco Sforza. Next, with total Sforza and Bentivoglio dedication and submission, she followed the commands of Duke Sforza and his ideas for her second marriage even though it meant marrying a household relative of her first husband and someone who had been repulsed at the idea of what she represented. Accepting the parameters of her uncle’s plan, she lived a long and successful life at the apex of society in her adopted city. Extensive research in contemporary archival materials demonstrates that Genevra lived for over five decades in Bologna as a virtuous, honourable, and traditional courtly lady liked by contemporaries—much like her depiction in Arienti’s Gynevera and Ebreo’s Zinevera. Genevra represented fifteenth-century female ideals related to motherhood, dedication to family life, chastity, piety, and maintenance of social decorum; how Arienti and Ebreo framed her might have idealised her role but their work was in no way meant to have been farcical or satiric (as many later suggested). Although Giovanni II tried hard to overcome the fact that he was never a true signore like many of his peers, and with no looking to his flawed family tree for help, he strove to live a life of family development aimed toward the future. Important

Conclusions 

contemporary theorists like Leon Battista Alberti believed that creating both a strong family and a reflectively magnificent home were the goals of every male citizen of means. Along those lines, Giovanni II used his wealth and power to create and honour his family; he spent his life working towards household glory and the development of a Bentivoglio image and legacy to live on ‘forever’—according to his own terminology repeated multiple times in his last will and testament. And it was thanks to Genevra’s total dedication in the most organic way to this Bentivoglio construction project that Giovanni II was able to enjoy such a large and powerful family. Genevra risked her life continuously while serving as the force behind Bentivoglio family goals; she delivered one legitimate child after another and all while accepting and promoting Giovanni II’s many illegitimates simultaneously born to multiple females of their household staff. With all of these children the couple diligently constructed their social networks ultimately culminating in politically-manoeuvred marriage alliances with leading families across Northern Italy and with magnates living within Bologna’s city walls. With so many healthy legitimate Bentivoglio children available for alliances organised for the growth of the clan at large, Genevra represents the key to the family’s incredible success. Especially in her second marriage, Genevra turned into an integral part of the construction of a major Renaissance Italian family. During those same years of intense family development, together Genevra and Giovanni II built and decorated a magnificent family palace, an adjacent sky-scraping family tower and various country estates that all reflected the power and enormity of their family. This book is based on analyses of rich contemporary documentation behind Genevra and the Bentivoglio family, nearly all of which is analysed here for the first time. The text sometimes bridges gaps by offering family context in order to reach Genevra’s story and arrive at a better understanding of who she was, what she did during her life, and how contemporaries saw her. Genevra’s life was followed, commented upon and represented in various fifteenth-century Bolognese sources (especially chronicles) that had never been the object of study with her in mind (Chapter One). Details behind her two marriage arrangements had never been examined within the dense and intense correspondence between the governing bodies of Bologna and Milan (Chapter Two). Information on the many Bentivoglio children and the organisations of their futures had never been searched out or brought together as it has been dispersed across Northern Italy (Chapter Three). Nearly all of Genevra’s surviving letters, mainly in Mantua and Milan, had never been located or examined in context (Chapter Four). From the close analysis of the Bentivoglio-Gonzaga correspondence in particular, which had also never been studied as a body, many new truths were uncovered about the fall of the Bentivoglio and Genevra’s final days under the wings of Isabella d’Este and the Pallavicini, a particular story within the correspondence that had never been told (Chapter Five).

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In sum, Genevra’s public appearances, her honourable behaviour at the time of her marriages, her actions behind the creation and planning for individuals of her enormous family, her participation in civic and religious activities, the rather straightforward content of her missives typically written to serve others, her only semi-successful position as a small-scale patron and client, and her behaviour reported while in exile are all documented events that leave us with many facts that had never before been examined. All surviving contemporary evidence about Genevra demonstrates she acted consistently throughout her life as a traditional and loyal courtly matron of the Bentivoglio family. Based on contemporary facts, we see Genevra’s personal story unfolded within the bounds of her understanding of her own social position and its limits as an illegitimate Sforza and dowerless consort of two consecutive men who served as only quasi signori. The conventional roles she played over the course of her long life were often dictated to her by others as a result of her understanding of gender and social order of fifteenth-century Italy, and they were overlapped by Bentivoglio submission to the major Italian courts and especially to their overlord, the pope. Despite the limitations set upon her, Genevra appears to us from contemporary sources as a woman who, in all aspects of her life, immersed herself in her role as an honourable wife and mother. She upheld conventional gendered social order and thrived within its limits—and to the point of pushing her prolific motherly role beyond what any other elite Renaissance Italian woman had succeeded at accomplishing. To turn to a bread metaphor from the family’s Storia del pane fresco cycle, research behind this book has identified and sifted out contemporary historical truths from posthumous legends: the first five fact-based chapters focus on the grano (wheat) that has been now been systematically threshed from large quantities of pula (chaff)—as the legends have been identified and dispelled within the final chapter; these legends had also never before been isolated or examined as a collection or noticed to have been based on a set of early modern political and misogynistic inventions (Chapter Six). Looking beyond Genevra’s story, this book will hopefully contribute to more research, particularly in relation to certain aspects of the history of the Italian family. Specific projects could evolve around the Bentivoglio grandchildren and descendants (many of whom were named Ginevra and Giovanni) and the study of their full families, how they maintained their Bolognese identity while in new locations—or how they freed themselves from it. Another fruitful and more specific project could focus on AntonGaleazzo, one of Genevra’s and Giovanni II’s most interesting children who travelled to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage, patronised artists and spent his adult life in Rome. The relationships among Genevra’s female courtly family relations, especially her daughters-in-law and their networks, could be explored, thanks especially to the excellent record-keeping of the Gonzaga; more

Conclusions 

work could revolve around the ties forged between fifteenth-century families of different ranks using the Bentivoglio and their relations as a starting point; the history of family relationships among leading Italian families, i.e. the Sforza and their connections with the Bentivoglio and other families (thanks to their Potenze Estere Romagna files and others), could be further investigated within enormous quantities of fifteenth-century correspondence carefully held at the Archivio di Stato in Milan; and finally, the Bentivoglio domestic staff (the bassa famiglia) and their many roles could be further examined and compared to those who served other Italian families. Overall, Genevra’s story has been tied to a longstanding Bolognese desire for libertas. With the fall of the Bentivoglio dominante family and a return to closer papal rule, Bologna never became an independent capital city of a regional state like many of its neighbours. Despite their papal overlords, many Bolognese have long considered themselves free-thinking university-tied citizens: libertas as a concept and practice has meant particularly much to this well-informed, cosmopolitan, wealthy and independent-minded community located far from Rome. Into our twenty-first century, libertas remains present on current civic symbols: it is written large across Bologna’s city flag (gonfalone), and it appears twice in all capital letters on the city’s coat of arms (stemma). The loss of some early modern libertas to Rome was considered by many to have been a huge loss—and by recalling once more the story of Sante Bentivoglio helps us understand its importance—so let’s think again about the moment when he first arrived in Bologna back in 1446: he was received with great honour by vast crowds of supporters who had never before set eyes on the young man; he was presented immediately before the Anziani and knighted, fully accepted as leader of the Bentivoglio; he was triumphantly conducted to Annibale Bentivoglio’s residence in Strà San Donato where magnificent festivities honouring him continued into the night. Although he was merely twenty-two, politically inexperienced, an illegitimate manual labourer with a foreign Tuscan accent who literally did not know a soul in town and who had probably never before set foot anywhere near Bologna, it didn’t seem to matter to the Bolognese. The cheering patriotic crowds loved him—as they loved associating him (and themselves) with the idea of local one-family rule tied to Bolognese fame, power and possible eventual political independence, libertas. Accepting Sante also meant that the Bolognese accepted and awaited Giovanni as their leader—and Machiavelli in his Prince (Chapter Nineteen) recalls how the Bolognese protected Giovanni until he came of age because the Bentivoglio family had gained the goodwill of the people. Knowing how Sante was received paired with the triumph behind how he was credited for having successfully negotiated greater freedom for Bologna with the Capitoli in the following year (1447) and how he was magnificently married to Genevra Sforza as a prized representative of Milan (1454) brought even greater respect to the

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Bentivoglio and the city. These feats helped usher in the Pax bentivolia—something Giovanni II and Genevra and the Bolognese enjoyed for many decades, and up until Giovanni II’s 1506 departure. Over that unusual half century of peace, many loved the Bentivoglio and relied on them, and even after the events of 1506 the Bolognese community never blamed Sante or Giovanni II or any other members of the Sedici for Bologna’s return to the hands of the Church—but someone or something had to have been responsible for the vast change in local government and the loss of civic independence that the community desired. So even though a politically inactive grandmother on her deathbed had little to do with this change in papal policy and Bolognese government, Genevra became the key explanation for the fall of the family and the city to Rome. Just as her socio-political fluidity had made her unique among women, it made her a malleable target as a scapegoat. From contemporary evidence, we have seen that many of Genevra’s strengths lay in areas traditionally associated with courtly females: those of power through child-bearing and consequent family planning and alliance making, power through social relations, power through patronage of objects of art and material culture, and the fundamentally ambiguous power of persuasion—and because much behind such characteristics are unquantifiable or ephemeral, those would be the areas where various critics would claim she struck and destroyed others. As a ruling-class female living respectfully behind closed doors for much of her life, detractors could speculate on certain details about her existence; and her character turned out to be elusive and flexible enough to be blamed for a wide variety of Bologna’s early modern problems and loss of libertas. Far removed from the scheming, corrupt, violent fanatic of legend, Genevra has ultimately suffered gross posthumous misrepresentation due to her having been in the wrong place at the wrong time: a foreign, female Sforza in a contended city of the Papal State after her husband’s family and her natal family had vanished from local, regional and national politics; and from how Julius II treated her at the end of her life we can also imagine how she must have been considered by him as an overly successful mother, responsible for the creation of a family that had simply become too large and powerful. These are explanations as to how a prolific mother/grandmother became the unique victim of a campaign of misinformation aimed at explaining the fall of the Bentivoglio, the loss of local courtly and family-based power, and the loss of Bolognese independence. Significantly changing our understanding of the history of one influential, interconnected person has effects: knowledge of Genevra’s history ripples through the histories of many others: through the dynamics of the Bentivoglio family and the history of the early modern Italian family; through our perception of early modern Italian women; through our understanding of the roles of Genevra and Giovanni II as an early modern couple; through various points about Bentivoglio

Conclusions 

and Sforza family histories and related elements of Bologna’s Renaissance-era past; and through our understanding of Bologna’s transition to closer papal rule—as all of these stand as affected arguments in need of re-evaluation. This case study about Genevra’s life spotlights how a damnatio memoriae campaign grounded in early modern Roman and Bolognese politics and patriarchy has affected the collective historical knowledge of a Renaissance city. The case also reflects how early modern gender disparities have lived on into our own times as this book investigates the life of a never-researched (yet researchable) important early modern person who had until now been considered lost in history and not worth researching based on a series of attitudes fundamentally based on gender.

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Index abbesses 44, 60n.100, 76, 91, 140, 141, 142, 172, 173, 281, 287 Acciarini da Sant’Elpidio, Tideo (Sforza teacher) 76 Accorambuoni, Vittoria (legends) 25n.13 Ady, Cecilia M. (historian) 22nn.3-5, 27, 117n.18, 134n.81, 136n.85, 194, 280-282 Aesopus moralizatus (literary work) 57 Agocchie, Sebastiano delle (Bentivoglio secretary, treasurer) 220, 260, 286, 289 Alberteschi, Mario Salamonio degli (testimony in mission to retake Bologna) 218n.2 Alberti, (Fra) Leandro (Dominican historian) 263, 264, 267, 268n.24, 274, 283 Alberti, Leon Battista (Florentine author) 246n.160, 311 Almerici, Giovanni Battista (Pesarese historian) 77nn.12-13 Almerici, Raniero degli (Pesarese poet) 76, 76n.7 almonds 192, 208 Alessandria, Simone da (tournament winner) 48 Alessandro (or: Alexander) VI, (Pope) (also called: Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia) 54, 134, 291, 292 Alfonso, King (of Aragon, duke of Bisceglie, duke of Calabria) 39n.2, 66, 292 Aliotti, (Abbess) Agostina (at Santa Cristina della Fondazza, Bologna) 287 Amati, Giuseppe (playwright) 275 Ambrosio, Giovanni—see Ebreo, Guglielmo amulets 112 Ancona (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232 Andrea, Novella d’ (female Bolognese scholar) 271 Anelle, Antonio delle (Bolognese chronicler) 38, 259 animals—see specific animal, e.g. falcon, horse, mule, etc. Anselmi, Gian Mario (contemporary scholar) 29 Antella, Giovanni dell’ (client of Genevra) 211 Antenhofer, Christina (contemporary scholar) 112 Antonelli, Armando (contemporary scholar) 287 Antimachus (Gonzaga scribe) 183 Anziani (senior government officials) 19, 38, 49, 81, 142, 227, 237n.111, 313 apostolic chancery (cancelleria apostolica) 238 Aragona, (Duke) Alfonso d’ (of Bisceglie, husband of Lucrezia Borgia) 292 Aragona, Beatrice d’ (dedicatee of Foresti’s text) 56n.77, funerary orations for 253 Aragona (Sforza), Camilla Marzano d’ (also called: Covella, wife of Costanzo Sforza) 33, 49, 50, 99 Aragona (d’Este), (Duchess) Eleonora d’ (wife of Duke Ercole d’Este) 24, 46, 47n.32, 49, 56n.77, 84, 118, 141, 141n.190, 182, 188, 192, 208, 209, 211, 253 Aragona (Sforza), (Duchess) Isabella d’ 272n.40

Aragona, (Cardinal) Luigi d’ (resided in Felicini home) 239 Arc, Joan of (individual vita published from Arienti’s Gynevera) 275 Archiginnasio Library (also: Biblioteca dell’) 27, 267, 281, 287 Arienti, Angelica (daughter of Arienti, nun) 53, 53n.70 Arienti, Barbara (Bolognese female scholar) 271n.37 Arienti, Giovanni Sabadino degli (Bolognese courtier, writer) 9, 25, 26, 27n.17, 28, 44, 45, 53, 55, 56, 58, 61, 64, 91n.61, 103, 121, 127, 136, 136n.85, 142, 143, 144, 146, 149, 188, 219, 264, 269, 270, 274, 275, 278, 285, 286, 289, 293, 302, 310 Arienti, Ursina (daughter of Arienti, nun) 53, 53n.70 Arigoni brothers of Mantua (owed money to Genevra) 209 Ariosto, Ludovico (poet) 293 Arquato, Antonio (astrologer) 57 ars dictaminis (ancient art of letter writing) 188 art/ painting/ sculpture/ architecture (see also: individual artists/ patrons/ creations: Bembo, Bonifacio; Borgia, Lucrezia; Costa, Lorenzo; Dossi, Dosso; Francia, Francesco; Luini, Bernardino; Marescotti, Antonio; Forlì, Melozzo da; Francesca, Piero; Nadi, Gaspare; Palazzo Bentivoglio; Roberti, Ercole de’; San Giacomo; Sforza, Caterina; Storia del pane; Titian; Vasari, Giorgio) 41, 42, 43, 48, 52, 113, 114, 173, 251, 277, 297, 285, 296 et al. Sante’s tomb destroyed within Bentivoglio chapel at San Giacomo 103 high culture, absence of in correspondence 186, 205-206 Ascoli (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 assassinations/ murders/ killings/ massacres/ slayings/ stabbings (see also: poison; vendetta; death) 17, 19, 20, 52, 79, 113, 114, 115, 132n.74, 133, 134, 141, 174, 195, 257, 263, 265, 268, 273, 274, 275, 276, 279, 281n.78, 288, 290, 292, 295, 299 astrology/ astrologers 57, 136n.87, 212 Attendoli Manzoli, Alessandro Sforza (adopted son of Filippo Manzoli, husband of Lucia Bentivoglio) 67, 166, 171 Atti, Angelo di (ambassador) 90 Auvergne, (Princess) Madeleine de la Tour (mother of Catherine de’ Medici) 298 Bacchi della Lega, Alberto (Bolognese historian) 65, 262n.6, 274, 274n.46, 275 Baffioni Venturi, Luciano (contemporary scholar) 289

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Baglioni (family) in Perugia 235n.102, 220, 252 Baglioni, Giampiero (condottiere tyrant of Perugia) 252 bankers/ banking 22, 164, 212, 252, 262, 297 baptisms/ baptismal sources 9, 32, 43, 44, 46, 57, 86n.42, 94, 94n.71, 100n.94, 117, 119, 120, 122, 122n.37, 124, 125, 125nn.42-46, 126, 144, 146-161, 174 Barbari di Bentivogli, Tomaso di Giovanni (godson of Genevra) 156 Barbarosso, Federico (legendary Bentivoglio ancestor) 122 Barbiere, Giacomo di Marco (Bolognese chronicler) 38n.1, 78n.16, 100n.97 Barcelona (production site of high-quality veil material) 113 Bargellini (family) 134, 153, 168, 171 Bargellini, Alessandro (home given to a cardinal) 239 Bargellini, Galeazzo (husband of Isotta Bentivoglio) 67, 134, 134n.81, 166, 171 Bargellini, Ippolita (Bentivoglio grandchild) 119, 160 Bargellini, Lattanzio (husband of Isabetta Bentivoglio) 67, 125n.46, 134, 160, 162, 168 Bargellini, Ovidio (home given to a cardinal) 239 Bartolomea (widow of Bentivoglio chancellor Filippo Ugiero) 209 Basile, Bruno (contemporary scholar) 28, 285 bassa danza 43, 43nn.17-18 bassa famiglia—see servants, domestic Bassi, Laura (first female graduate of University of Bologna) 24n.8 Bavaria (Gonzaga), (Marchesa) Margherita (of Mantua) 188 Beccadelli, Antonio (Neapolitan historian) 38n.2 beccai—see butchers Bellonci, Maria (historian) 25n.9, 294 Bembo, Bonifacio (Milanese painter) 48 Bembo, Pietro (poet) 26, 292, 293 Benci (family) 57 Benci, Francesco (medical doctor) 198, 208 Bensi, Innocenzo di Franco (also: Benci; godson of Genevra) 155 Benson, Pamela (contemporary scholar) 56 Bentivoglio (family)/ Casa Bentivoglio 67, 86, 92, 123, 130n.65, 164, 193, 202 et al. archive in Ferrara 117, 135, 183, 183n.4, 260 et al. bicultural image: half European/royal, half local/peasant 21 children 109-179 et al. (see individual entries for each child) as a sight worth seeing 109, 301 choices made for good of family 32 dominante (branch of family that ‘dominated’ Bologna until 1506) 237, 313 historiography 26-29 history, overview (ancestors, in fact and myth) 19-22, 114-115

Bentivoglio psychological/ charismatic space 239 as “Maltivoglio” 243, 243n.139 palace of (Palazzo Bentivoglio) 9, 17, 26, 27n.17, 28, 30, 47, 52, 60, 86, 101n.102, 130, 131, 137, 144, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 183, 190, 218, 219, 221, 231, 233, 236, 237, 238, 239, 246n.159, 260, 262, 267n.22, 268, 275, 284, 287, 297 as choice lodging for Julius II/ surrogate Vatican 238 destruction of/ looting 245, 263 et al. holy apparition within 250 as hybrid fantasia rebuilt in Rome 276-278 tower 45, 143, 245, 272, 285, 311 bell tower, silenced 245, 245n.158 as residence for 175 people 130 senatoriale (branch of family that stayed in Bologna after 1506 and became part of Senate) 237 et al. town named after/ summer estate—see Ponte Poledrano Bentivoglio, Alessandra (daughter of Alessandro, nun at Monastero Maggiore, Milano) 173 Bentivoglio, Alessandro (son of Genevra and Giovanni II, husband of Ippolita Sforza) 50, 52n.57, 63, 66, 67, 110, 111, 119, 121, 125, 128, 130n.65, 132, 132nn.72 and 75, 134, 135, 136, 139, 139n.98, 149, 150, 157-161, 164, 165, 170, 186, 187, 202n.56, 223n.26, 236, 240, 241, 249n.175, 253n.139, 264, 267n.22 Bentivoglio, (Countess) Annetta (founder of Order of Poor Clares in North America) 143 Bentivoglio, Annibale I (father of Giovanni II) 19, 20, 67, 79, 114, 120, 121, 146, 147, 164, 267, 313 Bentivoglio, Annibale II (primogenito son of Genevra and Giovanni II, died young) 19, 65, 67, 120 Bentivoglio, Annibale III—then called Annibale II (primogenito (surviving) son of Giovanni II and Genevra) 21, 22, 27n.17, 28, 48, 50, 50n.48, 51, 52n.57, 63, 65, 67, 100n.94, 110, 111, 117, 117n.18, 120, 121, 123n.39, 125, 125nn.43 and 46, 126, 128, 130n.65, 131, 131n.71, 134, 135, 136n.85, 139n.98, 140, 146, 147, 153-160, 161, 164, 169, 186, 187, 189, 194, 195, 196, 200, 201, 202, 202n.56, 205, 209, 210, 211, 214, 221, 223, 224, 228, 232, 234, 236, 238, 240nn.123 and 125, 241n.130, 242n.133, 246, 247, 249n.175, 252, 266, 282 Bentivoglio, Antongaleazzo (law professor ancestor, condottiere) 19, 67, 86, 114, 121, 148 Bentivoglio, AntonGaleazzo (son of Genevra and Giovanni II; protonotaio apostolico) 58, 63, 65-66, 67, 110, 111, 117n.18, 119, 121, 123n.39, 125, 128, 130n.65, 135, 137, 138, 139, 139nn.96 and 98, 148, 155-161, 164, 172, 186, 187, 189, 202n.56, 205, 236, 240, 241, 241n.130, 245, 247, 248n.169, 250, 253n.193, 312 Bentivoglio (Brandolini), Antonia (sister of Giovanni II, wife of Sigismondo Brandolini) 67, 114n.12

319

Index 

Bentivoglio, Antonio (illegitimate son of Sante and an unnamed widow from Poppi, husband of Clara) 67, 78n.17, 120, 125, 146, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 162, 168 Bentivoglio, Ascanio (illegitimate son of Giovanni II, prior of Santa Maria Maggiore) 67, 121, 122n.35, 139, 139n.102, 140, 147, 156, 160, 162, 172, 236, 243 Bentivoglio, Battista (possible illegitimate son of Giovanni II) 67, 152, 167 Bentivoglio (Rangoni), Bianca (daughter of Genevra and Giovanni II, wife of Niccolò Rangoni) 45, 50, 63, 65, 67, 110, 111, 119, 121, 125, 126, 129, 130, 134, 138, 142, 146, 155, 157, 163, 168, 173, 174, 187, 191, 235n.102, 236, 237n.110 Bentivoglio, Camilla (daughter of Genevra and Giovanni II, nun at Corpus Domini) 52, 54, 54n.72, 63, 66, 67, 110, 111, 140, 140n.106, 142, 148, 163, 172, 236, 237n.110 Bentivoglio, Carlo (illegitimate son of Giovanni II) 67, 121, 150, 159, 160, 161, 166, 236, 243 Bentivoglio, Clara (wife of Antonio Bentivoglio) 67, 158, 162, 168 Bentivoglio, Confortino (possible illegitimate son of Giovanni II) 67, 167 Bentivoglio (Pico della Mirandola), Costanza (daughter of Genevra and Sante, wife of AntonMaria Pico della Mirandola) 44, 45, 46n.30, 50, 67, 86, 103, 110, 120, 127n.54, 134, 146, 160, 162, 168, 195, 210, 282 (N.B. She is not mentioned in Arienta’s Gynevera) Bentivoglio, Cornelio (son of Genevra and Giovanni II, died young) 65, 67, 110, 111, 149 Bentivoglio, Costanza (daughter of AntonGaleazzo I) 86 Bentivoglio, Donnina (daughter of Genevra and Giovanni II, died young) 65, 67, 110, 111, 119, 120, 147 Bentivoglio (Pio), Eleonora (also called: Lionora, daughter of Genevra and Giovanni II, wife of Giberto Pio) 50, 51, 63, 65, 67, 119, 126, 129, 130, 133, 134, 137, 140, 147, 158, 163, 169, 173, 184, 187, 188, 192, 222, 223n.26, 236, 239, 240n.123 Bentivoglio, (Conte) Ercole (from senatoriale side of family) 53n.70, 158 Bentivoglio, Ercole I (father of Sante) 67, 79, 86, 103, 114, 120, 146 Bentivoglio, Ercole (primogenito son of Genevra and Sante, husband of Barbara Torelli) 41, 43, 45, 46n.30, 54, 67, 86, 86n.42, 103, 103n.112, 104, 110, 117n.18, 120, 125, 135, 140, 140n.106, 142, 146, 156, 157, 164, 168, 172, 187 (N.B. He is not mentioned in Arienta’s Gynevera) Bentivoglio, (H)Ermes (son of Genevra and Giovanni II, husband of Giacoma Orsini) 50, 52n.57, 63, 66, 67, 102, 110, 111, 117n.18, 119, 123n.39, 125, 128, 130n.65, 134, 135, 139, 139n.98, 149, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 166, 170, 186, 187, 198n.44, 202n.56, 236, 240, 246, 247, 263, 265, 266, 275, 281n.78, 282, 284n.94, 287, 290

Bentivoglio, Ferrante (primogenito son of Annibale II) 126, 160 Bentivoglio, Filippo (chancellor)—see Ugiero, Filippo Bentivoglio (Manfredi/ Torelli), Francesca (daughter of Genevra and Giovanni II, wife of Galeotto Manfredi, then Guido Torelli) 45, 50, 51, 63, 65, 67, 110, 111, 113, 117n.18, 119, 121, 126, 129, 129n.62, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 141, 142n.111, 147, 157, 163, 165, 168, 170, 174, 184, 195, 214, 280n.78, 284n.95 Bentivoglio (Malvezzi), Giovanna (individual vita published from Arienti’s Gynevera, husband of Gaspare Malvezzi) 67, 275 Bentivoglio, Giovanni (possible illegitimate son of Giovanni II) 67, 167 Bentivoglio, Giovanni I (de jure signore of Bologna) 19, 67, 114 Bentivoglio, Giovanni II (also called: Joanne/ Zoanne et al., de facto signore of Bologna, second husband of Genevra—see also: Capitoli; mission to recapture Bologna; politics; Palazzo Bentivoglio; Sforza, Genevra; team work; et al.) 17, 20, 27, 46, 47, 48, 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 65, 67, 79, 84, 91, 102, 133, 190, 193, 296, et al. in art 48, 52, 62, 113-114 et al. as de facto signore/ titles and position/ image/ goals in Bologna 21, 22, 26, 28, 31, 32, 37, 45, 52, 57, 89, 93, 302, 310-315 as father/dynastic strategies 20, 21, 32, 104, 109-175, 301, et al. (see also: individual entries for each of his children) why he wanted so many children/ whether (or not) a satyr 114-116 choice of godparents for children 112, 119-120 ecclesiastical institutions, relations with 138-143 et al. and household servants/ illegitimate children 21, 47, 50, 104, 116, 117, 119, 122-124, 134n.81, 196 et al. information about children 116-122, 146-152 importance of keeping all of his children in Bologna 130, 145 libri di famiglia missing/ lost 127 marriage alliances for children 51, 126-138 naming of children 120-122 protection, alliance through primogenito son with d’Este Ferrara for 131 as Genevra’s second husband 26, 31, 44-45, 74, 88-105, 248 other potential brides for 87 negotiations with Milan 88-105 Duke Francesco Sforza’s idea for him to marry Genevra 92 Giovanni II’s opposition to/ Bolognese government opposition to Genevra as bride choice/ total submission to Milan 92-99, 105, 204 et al. his status vs. Sante’s 94

320 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

forced to accept Genevra with no dowry 98 et al. no wedding celebrations 100-101 invented legend/ story that he wed Genevra based on love (Vizzani et al.) 265 et al. destruction of Sante’s tomb in San Giacomo/ lawsuit with Sante’s son 103 as godfather 124-126, 153-161 as Gonzaga client/ correspondent 183-187, 190-191, 204, 205, 209-215 et al. submission to Gonzaga 200-201, 202, 203, 204 as heir to concept of libertas 22 history, and relationship with 26-27, 37, 144 et al. in legends/ legend literature/ ‘letter’ allegedly composed by/ image elevated in 17, 73, 74, 160, 262n.6, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267n.22, 268, 272, 273, 274, 274, 276, 278-290 et al. in military/ as condottiere/ sons-in-law condottiere/ importance of defence 48, 104, 129, 132, 145, 189 et al. political miscalculations with Rome/ Julius II 219-227, 249, et al. papal troops approach Bologna/ Giovanni II living at height of wheel of fortune 227-230 departure from Bologna 230-234 in exile/ price put on head/ in San Donino/ in Milan/ death 236-237, 240-241, 243, 246-247, 252, 253n.193, 258 his face destroyed on painting at San Giacomo 251 will and testament of 91, 102n.108, 117, 117n.17, 130, 136n.86, 145, 311 et al. codicil to 91, 91n.63, 117, 117n.17, 132n.72, 136n.86 private donation to a group of illegitimate sons 117, 123 Bentivoglio, Ginevra (daughter of Ercole di Sante, nun at Corpus Domini) 54, 140, 140n.106, 142, 172, 236, 237 Bentivoglio, Ginevra (grand-daughter of Genevra, wife of Manfredo Pallavicino) 247 Bentivoglio, Ginevra (daughter of Annibale II Bentivoglio) 140, 161 Bentivoglio (Guidotti), Griselda (also called: Breiseda, illegitimate daughter of Giovanni II) 50, 67, 121, 125, 134n.81, 148, 159, 164, 170, 237, 239 Bentivoglio, (Cardinal) Guido 139 Bentivoglio, (Marchese) Guido (destroyer of copies of Ghirardacci) 267 Bentivoglio, Isotta (daughter of Genevra and Giovanni II, died young) 65, 67, 110, 111, 119, 121n.33, 149, 150 Bentivoglio, Isotta II (daughter of Genevra and Giovanni II, nun at Corpus Domini then at San Mattia) 54, 63, 65, 66, 67, 110, 111, 119, 121n.33, 133, 140, 142, 165, 172, 236, 237n.110

Bentivoglio (Bargellini), Isotta (illegitimate daughter of Giovanni II, wife of Galeazzo Bargellini) 50, 67, 134n.81, 151, 166, 171 Bentivoglio (Bargellini), Isabetta (also called: Elisabetta, Isabeta, Maria Isabeta, illegitimate daughter of Giovanni II, wife of Lattanzio Bargellini) 47, 50, 67, 162, 168, 187, 237 Bentivoglio (Gonzaga), Laura (daughter of Genevra and Giovanni II, wife of Giovanni Gonzaga) 50, 52n.57, 59, 63, 66, 67, 110, 111, 121, 125, 126, 133, 134, 137, 137nn.90-91, 138, 141, 149, 158, 165, 170, 173, 183, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191, 196, 201, 218, 222, 230, 231, 236, 241n.130, 249 Bentivoglio, Leone (illegitimate son of Giovanni II) 50, 67, 124, 125, 150, 159, 166, 170, 236, 237, 243 Bentivoglio, Lucia (illegitimate daughter of Giovanni II, wife of Alessandro Attendoli Manzoli) 67, 124, 150, 166, 171, 237 Bentivoglio, Ludovico (son of Genevra and Giovanni II, died young) 65, 67, 110, 111, 121, 149 Bentivoglio, Lodovico (member of Sedici, senatoriale branch) 81, 93, 96, 98 Bentivoglio, Martino (cancelliere/ secretary) 161 Bentivoglio, Orsola (possible illegitimate daughter of Giovanni II) 67 Bentivoglio, Ottavio (also called: Ottaviano, illegitimate son of Giovanni II) 67, 150, 151, 161, 167, 236, 243 Bentivoglio, Pantasilea (possible illegitimate daughter of Giovanni II) 67, 151, 167, 172 (?) Bentivoglio, Paolo (possible illegitimate son of Giovanni II) 67, 151, 167 Bentivoglio, Ragosa (possible illegitimate daughter of Giovanni II)67, 151, 167 Bentivoglio, Rinaldo (illegitimate son of Giovanni II) 67, 150, 166, 170, 236 Bentivoglio, Sante (de facto signore of Bologna, first husband of Genevra) 17, 20, 26, 54, 109, 122, 153, 187, 194 children of 110, 111, 114, 118-119, 120, 125, 140, 146, 162, 164, 166 death of/ legacy 20, 44, 49, 88-90, 91-105, 126, 140, 174, 236, 286 de facto signore/ face of Sedici 37, 86-89, 114, 313, 314 and Capitoli 20, 226 (see also: Capitoli) husband of Genevra 20, 31, 37, 40-44, 43, 49, 61, 73, 74, 77-79, 143 legends and/in 260, 265, 266, 274, 278, 280n.78, 284, 286, 289, 297 marriage negotiations with Duke Francesco Sforza for Genevra 79-87 lack of dowry from Sforza for Genevra 83-87 wedding celebration in Bologna 40-43 will (final testament), no trace remains of 89 Bentivoglio, Sigismondo (illegitimate son of Giovanni II) 67, 150, 166, 172, 236

321

Index 

Bentivoglio (Malatesta), Violante (daughter of Genevra and Giovanni II, wife of Pandolfo Malatesta) 50, 50n.49, 51, 63, 66, 67, 110, 111, 119, 130, 132n.72, 133, 134, 136, 137, 148, 154, 169, 236 Bentivoglio-d’Este wedding (1487) 21, 27, 27n.17, 28, 50n.48, 51, 131, 135, 162 Bentivoleschi (partisans) 21, 56, 57, 60, 109, 162, 166, 230, 234n.97, 245, 249, 250, 252, 260 Beroaldo, Filippo (professor, humanist writer) 28, 47, 136 Bersani, Serena (contemporary scholar) 289 Bersello, Francesca (wife of Rinaldo Bentivoglio) 67, 166, 170 Bessarione, (Cardinal Legate) Giovanni 41, 41n.11, 42, 79, 80, 146, 269, 272, 300 six fixed Bolognese social classes determined by 79n.20 betrothals 81, 84, 121n.33, 124, 128, 129, 131, 137, 140, 144, 147, 162-167, 183n.6, 184n.7, 196, 293 Betussi, Giuseppe (writer from Bassano) 264, 265 Beverara (location of potential benefice in Mantuan territory) 202, 209 Bianchetti, Alamanno (Bolognese chronicler) 38n.1, 268, 273 Bianchetti, Giovanna (female Bolognese scholar) 271 Bianchi (family) 124, 153, 155, 156, 158, 159 Bianchini/ Cronica Bianchini 259 Biondo, Flavio 39n.3 birds 191, 193, 215 falcons 52n.57, 169, 191, 221 Bisticci, Vespasiano da 56n.77, 76 ‘black’ legends; myths—see entirety of Chapter Six and Conclusion: 257-315 et al. Blanshei, Sarah Rubin (contemporary scholar) 29 Boccaccio, Giovanni (famous writer) 55, 56, 121, 264, 270 De claris mulieribus 55, 56n.77, 264 Bocchi, Achille (Bolognese historian) 268n.24 Bocchi, Costanza (female scholar) 271 Bocchi, Dorotea (female scholar) 271 Bocchi, Francesca (contemporary scholar) 28, 92, 103n.115, 104 Bologna—as backdrop/political nature of (see also: Bentivoglio, Giovanni II; Bentivoglio, Sante; Sforza, (Duke) Francesco; Sforza, Genevra; Bologna, University of; weddings; et al.) 18-22, 309-315, 1-315 Bentivoglio, Giovanni I as only true de jure signor of—see Bentivoglio, Giovanni I Bentivoglio, Giovanni II as most powerful man in/ desire to dominate 21, 37, 116, 124-125, 144-145 et al. Bentivoglio writers from 187 et al. chroniclers writing from/ about 37-61 consensus among 39 Genevra as a prize in 48 as commune 18, 19, 227, 237, 290, 291 as la dotta 29-30; see also: Bologna, University of

golden ages of 18, 271, 279 historiography of 26-29 Julius II (Pope)—see mission to retake Bologna; Julius II (Pope) marriage arrangements made to secure/ Bentivoglio children living in 129-130, 162-167 partisans in 149-251 in submission to Milan 105 et al. under papal rule, see 217-254 et al. women, early modern (see also: women, Bolognese) 23-26, 30, 268-271 Bologna, University of 22, 24n.8, 29, 39, 47, 53n.69, 57, 79n.20, 116, 128, 226, 271n.37, 302, 313 Bolognini (family) 57, 157, 158, 160 Bolognini, Giovanni Maria (godson of Genevra) 160 Bombello, Giovanni Battista (Bolognese laude writer) 271n.37 Bonbardero, Costantino (Bentivoglio partisan) 249 Bonconvento 102n.106 Bononia 18 Borgia, Cesare 102, 128, 185, 205, 205n.67, 220, 263, 278n.61, 290, 295, 296 Borgia, Lucrezia 24, 25, 54, 84, 118, 141, 199, 257, 291, 292, 292n.134, 293n.139, 294 Borgo San Donnino (Fidenza) 240, 241n.126 Borgoforte (village along Po) 240 Bosso, Matteo (humanist writer) 269 Botte (also: Botta), Leonardo (Bolognese citizen) 93, 97 Bottrigari, Alessandro (Bolognese notary) 117 Brancaleone, Gentile (funerary orations written for) 253 Brandenburg (Gonzaga), Barbara of (married without a dowry) 102 Brandolini, Sigismondo (Milanese general, husband of Antonia Bentivoglio) bread/ bread making (see also: grain; Storia del pane) 21, 288, 312 breastfeeding 112 Brisighella, Piero of (fur dealer, hanged) 59 brocade—see textiles Brucker, Gene (contemporary scholar) 102 Bruni, Francesca (individual vita published from Arienti’s Gynevera) 275 Bruni, Leonardo (Florentine humanist) 39, 39nn.34, 75, 253n.193 bucintoro (fancy barge) 138 Budrio (town) 59, 154, 229, 230 Budrio, Gentile da—see Cimiera, Gentile Budrioli, Giacomo (Bolognese notary) 220 Buonsignori, Maddalena (Bolognese female scholar) 271n.37 bulls, papal 91, 91n.61, 141n.109, 226, 232, 238, 244 Burckhardt, Jacob (historian) 118 Burlamacchi, (Fra) Pacifico (Dominican historian) 271, 288

322 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Busseto (Parma; location of Pallavicino court where Genevra died) 61, 127n.54, 129, 217, 245, 247, 248, 253, 258, 259, 260, 266, 268 butchers/ butcher’s guild/ arte dei beccai 19, 60, 88n.48, 297 Caccialupi, Lodovico di Floriano dei (Bolognese citizen) 82, 84 Caccianemici, Cristoforo (Bolognese citizen) 81 Cacciante, Bernardino (Bolognese laude author) 56n.77 Calderini, Bettina (Bolognese female scholar) 271n.37 Caldes, Pedro (Spanish messenger) 292 Campanaro, Alex. (seschalcho/ head servant of Genevra) 211 Campanazzi (family) 124, 153, 154, 155, 160 Canetoli (family) 20 Capitoli (governing agreement between Rome and Bologna) 20, 87, 101n.102, 226, 227, 227nn.52-53, 313 captain general—see condottieri Cappello, Bianca (Florentine woman about whom many legends have been told) 25 Capranica, Angelo (Cardinal Legate) 81, 88, 96 Camera apostolica (Papal Treasury) 238 Camillo, Prospero (Sforza representative/ secretary) 93, 96, 98, 208 Campeggio, Sigismondo (messenger) 212 Campeggio, Ugolino (messenger) 213 Canedi, Laura (contemporary doctor of gynaecology) 248n.167 Capponi, Neri (Sante Bentivoglio’s promoter in Florence) 79 Caravajal, (Cardinal) Bernardo 149 cardinal legates (also called: legates, papal legates) in Bologna 19, 21, 93, 114, 225, 231, 234, 244, 245, 248, 250, 251, 264, 281n.78 Bessarione, Giovanni 41, 80, 86n.39, 269 Capranica, Angelo 81, 88, 90, 90n.59, 96 Ferreri, Antonio 242n.138, 243, 243n.139, 244nn.147-148, 245nn.151-157, 248nn.170-171 households of in Rome 130, 131n.66 Rovere, Galeotto Franciotti della 238 Sforza, Ascanio 121, 132, 147 carpet, Western Anatolian (Lotto pattern) 114 Carpi 11, 51, 81n.41, 87, 116, 129, 129n.62, 133, 137, 141, 155, 156, 157, 163, 169, 176, 182, 184, 185, 187, 204, 232 carriages 51, 53, 54, 104, 168, 169, 240, 279 Cartwright, Julia (English historian) 25n.9, 281 Casa, Giovanni della (character from Brucker’s Giovanni and Lusanna)102 Cascese, Antonio (of Poppi, Arezzo; Sante Bentivoglio’s father figure/guardian; and his unnamed wife) 79, 103n.112, 120, 146 Castel San Pietro (town near Bologna) 226, 230 Castellani, Nicolosa—see Sanuti, Nicolosa 78n.17, 269

Castelbolognese (town near Bologna) 159, 214 Castellano, Antonio (Bentivoglio messenger) 213 Castelli, Baldassare (apostolic protonotary) 149 Castiglione, Baldassare (author of Il cortigiano) 105 Catasto Croce (large miniated record book) 27, 84, 100, 122, 131, 133, 134, 136, 168, 170, 183 Catastro A 122, 168 Catastro B 123, 134, 136, 170 Castelfranco 233, 84 Castello Estense (Ferrara) 276 Castello Sforzesco (Milan) 130 Cattani, Alberto (Milanese baptismal representative) 148 Cavalca, Fra Domenico (author of Pungi lingua) 57 Ceccarelli, Francesco 245n.158 Cecilia, Santa (Bentivoglio neighbourhood parish) 42, 44n.20, 57n.85, 86n.42, 265 Cenci, Beatrice (Roman woman about whom many legends have been told) 25 Centelles, (Don) Cherubin de (suitor of Lucrezia Borgia) 292 Centre, Tourist Information (in Bologna) 290, 291 Cereta, Laura (Brescian scholar) 269 Cerruti, Gerardo (Milanese ambassador) 46, 113n.9, 148, 168, 206n.69 Cesarini (Sforza), (Duchess) Livia (praiseworthy Sforza woman) 272n.40 Cesarino il giovane, (Cardinal) Giuliano 239 Cesena (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 Charles V, Emperor 239n.118 Charles VIII, King of France 232 Charles IX, King of France (son of Catherine de’ Medici) 298 Chaumont (Monsieur; French Captain) 231 childbirth 24, 75, 110-111, 118, 122, 248, 301, 309 et al. birth families 23, 24 birth/baptismal records kept in Bologna 44 birth of a boy vs. a girl 44, 45, 120, 128-129, 191, 212 et al. birth of Genevra 30, 50n.47, 74, 75 birth order, importance of 114, 125, 126, 127, 140, 186, 190, 300 birth of a primogenito healthy boy 120, 191 birth source information for Bentivoglio children 146-152 death in childbirth 75, 76, 118, 301 Genevra as a biological machine 111 illegitimates 122-124 Mamelini’s chronicle relating to 39 Nadi’s chronicle relating to 39, 118, 118n.22 naming of children 119-122 number of children 117, 118 pregnancy chart for prolific woman (Genevra) 110-111 tax exemption for large families 118 as women’s culture/ confinement room/ birthing paraphernalia 112 childhood 23, 24, 44, 49, 75, 110, 115n.15, 127, 130, 138

323

Index 

children: weaned on average 112n.5 number women had (see also: fertility) 114-119 mortality rates for 118 Christian of Denmark (King) 131 chronicles (cronache)/ chroniclers 37-54, 59-61, 78n.16, 86, 100-101, 122-123, 135-138, 144, 219, 228, 253, 259, 262, 268, 282, 284, 290, 300, 302 et al. Cibo, Francesco (son of Pope Innocent VIII) 135 Cicero 39n.3, 188, 188n.10 Cimiera, Gentile (healer from Budrio) 59, 112 Cimselo, Francesco (Bentivoglio tailor, client of Genevra) 208 Cino di Castel San Pietro, Elisabetta di (wife of Giovanni I Bentivoglio) 67 Ciruglia, Gherardo (Milanese ducal agent) 148 Cittadella del Padovano (location of Malatesta residence) 133 Civita Castellana (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 Clarisse (Poor Clares) 44, 138, 141, 143, 173 Clarke, Georgia (contemporary scholar) 28 Clermont, (Cardinal) Francesco Guglielmo de (met with courtesan in Palazzo Bentivoglio) 238 clothing—see: textiles coat of arms 21, 92, 232, 313 Cockram, Sarah D. P. (contemporary scholar) 59n.94 codes in letters—see letters, coded Codibò, Gaspare (money lender) 38, 60 Codro (also called: Antonio Cortesi Urceo, Bentivoglio humanist tutor) 47 coins, commissioned 295 coins/ prices (see also: money; taxes) ducats (dowry prices) 53, 84, 102, 114n.12, 132, 134, 135, 137 ducats (for a dispensation ) 44, 100 ducats (for military contracts) 48, 104 ducats (cardinals’ pensions) 139 ducats (rent prices) 164 ducats (money owed) 212, 229, 260 ducats (newly minted one-ducat coin in Bologna for Julius II’s entry) 238 ducats (inheritance) 132 ducats (as head prices when in exile) 244 ducats (to gather an army) 266 ducats (sopradote) 132 ducats (wedding donation) 136n.85 ducats (alleged worth of jewels) 268, 273 florins (sale of Pesaro) 78 florins (dowry price) 84 lire (wedding gifts) 45n.24 lire (jewels taken by Genevra, in legend literature) 273 scudi (dowry price) 136n.85 scudi (in marchese’s safe) 221 Collenuccio, Pandolfo (Florentine ambassador) 59n.93, 199 concerts (see also: music, singing, dance) 52n.61, 128n.58

Concordia (location near Mirandola) 162 concubines 50n.47, 74, 75, 76, 76n.7, 102, 123, 150, 162, 164, 294, 301 mistresses: 97n.82, 123, 131, 162, 291 lovers: 57, 293, 295, 296 condotta (prestigious military contract)—see condottieri condottieri (also includes: condotta contracts, captain generals, mercenaries) 37, 145, 183, 218, 225 Baglioni, Giampiero 252 Bentivoglio, Alessandro (for Milan, Florence) 132, 139, 164, 165 Bentivoglio, Annibale II (for Milan, Florence, Venice) 132, 139, 162 Bentivoglio, Antongaleazzo 19, 121 Bentivoglio, Ermes (for Milan, Venice) 132, 139, 165 Bentivoglio, Ercole (for Medici/Florence, Pisa, Papal State) 103, 164 Bentivoglio, Giovanni II (for Milan) 104, 129 Bentivoglio homo d’arme, unnamed son of Giovanni II 196 Bentivoglio sons as a group 132, 139 Gonzaga, Francesco (for Milan) 189, (for Papal forces) 218, 219, 224, 225, 246, 293, 295 Gonzaga, Giovanni (for Italian States, King of France, Holy Roman Emperor) 129, 165 Malatesta, Pandolfo 129, 164 Manfredi, Galeotto 129, 163 Paleologo, Guglielmo of Monferrato 99 Piccinino, Niccolò 19 Pico della Mirandola, AntonMaria 129, 162 Pio, Giberto (for Bologna) 37, 129, 137 Rangoni, Niccolò (for Bologna) 129, 138, 163, 190 Sforza, Alessandro 74 Sforza, Costanzo 75 Sforza, Francesco (for Visconti) 77-78 Sforza, Muzio Attendolo 74 Torelli, Guido 129, 165 Trotti, Antonio (for Bologna) 147 Condulmero, Lodovica (mistress of Duke Ercole d’Este) 131, 162 Conetti, (Cardinal) Carlo (part of Julius II’s entourage) 239 confinement room 112, 302 conspiracies (see also: assassinations; vendetta) Malvezzi Conspiracy 17, 52, 52n.60, 53, 132n.74, 204, 273, 289 Malatesta Conspiracy 133 Marescotti Conspiracy 290 construction/ building 19, 38, 42n.14, 86, 105, 109, 118, 260, 276, 277, 284, 311 Conti (Sforza), Fulvia (of Segni and Valmontone, countess of Santa Fiora) 272n.40 Cornaro Piscopia, Elena Lucrezia (first female to earn university degree) 271n.37 Cornazzano, Antonio (writer of women’s lives) 55, 57

324 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Corner, Caterina (Queen of Cyprus) 26 corredo—see trousseau correspondence/ carteggio / letter writing 7, 31, 32, 40, 59, 67, 74, 80, 83, 85, 86, 93, 127, 181-216, 218, 221, 222, 224, 229, 233, 238, 241n.130, 247, 249, 253, 263, 264, 280, 281, 283, 301, 311, 313 Corpus Domini Convent (also called: Sancta Clara/ Poor Clares) Bologna: 44, 49, 49nn.42-44, 53, 54, 60, 91, 96, 98, 100, 133, 133nn.76-77, 138, 140, 140n.106, 141, 142, 142n.111, 143, 163, 165, 172, 173, 174, 232, 237n.110 Carpi 141n.109 Ferrara 141n.109 Mantua 139, 140 North America Pesaro 76 Urbino 141 corte bandita (continuous festivities/ celebrations) 51, 137, 169 Corte, Luchino de (messenger of Genevra) 212 Corte, Scevo della (agent in Bologna and Rome) 80 Costa, Lorenzo (painter) 9, 52, 52n.61, 63, 113, 121n.32, 128, 128n.58, 251, 293 Costa Editore (in Bologna) 289, 289nn.125-126 Cotignola (also called: Chudignola, town of Sforza origin) 100n.98, 101, 129 courtesan—see: Vignone, Magdalena da court culture 21, 25, 76, 181, 190, 217, 310, 314 Cremona (Venetian territory, residenze of AntonGaleazzo Bentivoglio) 241 Croce, Giulio Cesare (Bolognese laude writer) 271n.37 Crotto, Giovanni (of Monferrato, law professor at University of Bologna) 218n.2, 226-227, 227n.49 Cusano, Francesco da (Francesco Sforza’s agent in Romagna) 80 damask cloth—see textiles damnation memoriae 17, 30, 250, 251, 257, 290, 300, 301, 315 dance/ dancing (see also: music, concerts, singing) 43, 43nn.17-18, 51, 54, 101, 128, 135, 137, 169, 205 Dandolo, Doge Andrea (helped Venice create civic history) 39n.2 Dazio delle carteselle (tax paid on contracted notarial acts) 131, 131n.67 D’Este—see Este, d’ Dean, Trevor (contemporary scholar) 99 death/ dying (see also: assassinations; childbirth; poison; vendette) 17, 19, 20, 25, 32, 38, 39, 44, 49, 50, 59, 60, 74, 75, 76, 88, 89, 91, 102, 110, 111n.3, 133, 135, 140n.106, 141, 142, 170, 172, 174, 195, 210, 221, 248, 252, 253, 253n.193, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 269, 278, 280n.78, 282, 286, 287, 289, 292, 293, 294, 295, 298, 299 burned at the stake 59 cadaver exhumed, uncorrupted, on display 141

deathbed 217, 246, 280, 314 death in childbirth 75, 76, 118, 301 defenestration 19 died young 46, 110, 111n.3, 112, 114, 115, 115n.15, 118, 118n.24, 119, 120, 146, 147, 149, 152 died in a duel 114 died of natural causes 114, 260 died from a tumour 248 domestic inventory redacted after death 92 lack of a death marker 30 stabbed to death 19 devil/ diavolo/ demonio/ hell 17, 260, 272, 279, 288 De Benedictis, Angela (contemporary scholar) 28, 29, 218 De duobus amantibus: Euryalo et Lucretia (Pius II (Pope)) 57 Defensio prognostici eiusdem (Manfredi) 57 De virtutibus mulierum (Plutarch) 55 De laudibus mulierum (Goggio) 56n.77 De pratica seu arte tripudia vulgare opsculum (Ebreo) 43 De Vries, Joyce (contemporary scholar) 296 Diabolik 293n.139 disobedient citizens/ disobedience 219 disorder (see also: order) 80, 232n.86, 237, 299 dispensations, Papal 44, 45n.23, 49n.44, 91n.61, 100, 100n.94, 105, 131, 131n.69, 142, 239 doctors/ surgeons/ healers Benci, Francesco 198, 208 Canedi, Laura 248n.167 Cimiera, Gentile 59, 112 Grado, Antonio da 244 Reguardati (of Norcia), Benedetto 88, 88n.48 dogs 191 Dolfo, Floriano (Bolognese lawyer/professor; Gonzaga partisan) 139n.96, 183n.3, 187, 200, 201 domestics—see servants, domestic Donati, Marco (Bolognese notary) 84 Dossi, Dosso (painter) 293 dowry/ dowries 23, 24, 83, 84, 85, 89, 91, 92, 101, 116, 185, 300 convent 91, 143 for Arienti, Angelica 53 counterdowry/ sopradote 132, 135, 136, 136n.86, 163 lack of 85, 91, 101, 102 Brandenburg, Barbara of 102 Nucci, Lusanna 102 Orsini, Giacoma 102, 134, 166 Savoy, Bona of 102 Sforza, Genevra 23, 26, 30, 73, 84, 85, 87, 91, 92, 97, 98, 100, 104, 105, 206, 253, 257, 283, 310 late payments of: 134, 134n.81 for Griselda and Isotta Bentivoglio loss of for Bentivoglio, Francesca 133 paid by Bentivoglio 128n.59, 135, 183n.4 dowries to be returned by Giovanni II 91

325

Index 

specifics for: Aragona, Eleonora d’ 84 Bentivoglio (Brandolini), Antonia 114 Bentivoglio, Bianca 163 Bentivoglio, Eleonora 137, 163 Bentivoglio, Francesca 163 Bentivoglio, Griselda 164, 170 Bentivoglio (Bargellino), Isabetta 122, 146, 168 Bentivoglio (Riario), Isotta 165 Bentivoglio, Laura 137n.90, 138, 165, 230 Bentivoglio (Attendoli Manzoli), Lucia 166 Bentivoglio, Violante 137 Borgia, Lucrezia 84 Cimiera, daughters of Gentile 85 domestics who had children with Giovanni II 122, 123 Este, Isabella d’ 84 Este (Bentivoglio), Lucrezia d’ 131, 162 illegitimate girls—not legally necessary to provide 85 a Jewish friend 98, 212 Orsini, Giacoma 102 Samperoli, Antonia and Caterina di Pacifica 76 Sforza (Bentivoglio), Ippolita 132, 132n.75 Visconti, Bianca Maria 84 Drusianus, Carolus (astrologer/writer) 57 Duranti, Tommaso (contemporary scholar) 29 earthquakes 60, 142, 142n.118, 174, 285 Ebreo, Guglielmo (also called: Giovanni Ambrosio) 43, 43nn.17-18, 310 ecclesiastical vocations for Bentivoglio family (see also: Bentivoglio, AntonGaleazzo; et al. ) 9, 109, 128, 138-144, 172-173, 268 education for females 47, 47n.32, 75, 76, 188 Aragona, Eleonora d’ and her children in Ferrara 47n.32 female humanists 121, 149, 269, 294 illegitimate Bentivoglio daughters born to household servants, for 47 Malatesta (Gonzaga), Paola and La giocosa school in Mantua 47n.32 oration on female education (Leonardo Bruni, dedicated to Battista di Montefeltro) 75 Sforza, Genevra, thinking highly of/ valuing 46, 47, 74, 76, 188, 272 Varano, Costanza da and famous women of culture 75 Visconti, Bianca Maria and her children in Pavia 46, 294 Emanuele and Habraam (of Fano; Jewish banker friends of Genevra) 212 Emilia Pavilion at Esposizione Nazionale di Roma 276-277 Enzo (also called: Enrico or Heinrich), King (Son of Holy Roman Emperor Federico II) 19, 21, 112 epitaph (about Geneva Sforza) 261, 262, 262n.6, 283, 298

Equicola, Mario (author) 56n.77 Erasmus, Desiderius (of Rotterdam, humanist writer) 218n.2, 219, 238 Ercolani (family) 124, 155, 158, 160 Esculo, Ser Cola de (Bolognese agent, sometimes “Ser Cola”) 90, 93, 95, 96, 208 Esposizione Nazionale di Roma—see: Emilia Pavilion at Este, d’ (family) 20, 28, 47, 54, 73, 84, 126, 128, 130n.66, 131, 133, 139-140, 182, 184, 185, 193, 198, 219, 225, 251, 294 Este, (Duke) Alfonso d’ (of Ferrara, husband of Lucrezia Borgia) 54, 219, 222, 232, 292 Este, (Duchess) Beatrice d’ (of Milan) 24, 115 Este, (Duke) Ercole d’ (of Ferrara) 51, 53, 65, 120, 131, 133, 141n.109, 147, 162, 188, 196, 210, 214 Este, (Cardinal) Ippolito d’ 219, 242 Este (Gonzaga), (Marchesana or Marchesa) Isabella (wife of (Marchese) Francesco Gonzaga) d’ 24, 26, 47, 55, 58, 84, 118, 191, 192, 206, 217, 219 and hosting Genevra in Mantua 182, 217, 218, 240, 311 and husband (see also: (Marchese) Francesco Gonzaga; team work) 59, 109, 127, 184n.7, 218, 229, 241n.130, 249 as letter writer/ Bentivoglio correspondent 182, 183, 183n.2, 186, 187, 188, 189, 205, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 237, 253n.193 recipient of Gynevera de le Clare donne 55, 55. 75, 56, 58 Este (Bentivoglio), Lucrezia d’ (illegitimate daughter of Duke Ercole d’Este, wife of Annibale II Bentivoglio) 21, 27n.17, 28, 50n.48, 51, 65, 67, 117, 126, 135, 136, 136n.85, 147, 156, 157, 159, 162, 169, 186, 187, 190, 191, 200, 202, 242n.143 d’Este protection/ Bentivoglio reason behind her marriage 131n.71 in/regarding exile 219, 232n.87, 236, 240, 246 return to Bologna 241n.130 Este, (Duke of Ferrara) Niccolò III (as prolific father) 115n.13 Estense, Castello (in Ferrara) 276 Etruscans (early inhabitants of Bologna area) 18 Eugenius IV, (Pope) (Gabriele Condulmer) 78 ex-voto (see also: PGR) 19, 52, 113 excommunications 78, 82, 225, 226, 226n.46, 239, 243, 260, 264, 266, 290 exile (see also: partisans) for Bentivoglio 19, 22, 27, 116, 124, 140, 142, 172, 174, 182, 183n.4, 185, 206, 219, 234, 236-237, 243, 244n.145, 252, 253, 258, 259, 266 for other Bolognese 130, 220, 249, 253 exile, voluntary (being forced to flee) 234 French invasion (1494) and 235 institution of 234, 234n.97, 250, 252, 259 Julius II setting exile terms for Bentivoglio 241, 243 in legend literature 266, 279, 286n.109, 288 for Malatesta 133

326 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

for Malvezzi 53, 235n.102 for Medici 232, 235, 235n.102, 297 and Pallavicino 247 for Perugians 252 for Sforza, Genevra 30, 32, 60, 217, 243, 246, 251, 253, 298, 312 et al. women in / for females 234n.97, 235, 235n.99, 236, 246, 259 Facio, Bartolomeo (Neapolitan historian) 38 Faenza 11, 51, 52, 65, 113, 116, 129, 129n.62, 132n.74, 133, 138, 159, 163, 168, 174, 182, 184, 185, 195, 196, 209, 210, 214, 272 falcons (see also: birds) 52n.57, 169, 191, 221 family/ family strategies (see also: childbirth; pregnancies; Sforza, Genevra; team work et al.) Bentivoglio family, creation of 117-119, 146-152 birthdates and baptisms 119 et al. Bentivoglio family/ family unit as work of art (between Burckhardt and Ruggiero ideas) 118 Bentivoglio family portrait—see: Roberti, Ercole de’ Bentivoglio serving as godparents to hundreds 119-120, 124-126, 145, 153-161 Bentivoglio children/ political destiny of Bentivoglio children/ strategies/ why Giovanni II and Bentivoglio wanted so many 114-115, 126-135, 162-167, 175 (map) boys marrying into major Italian families 128, 145 children with no strings attached 123 division of space within palace/ household size 130 ecclesiastical vocations of 138-143, 172-174 geographical considerations of matches 129-130, 175 girls marrying condottieri/ military potential of sons-in-law 129-134 Genevra and—see also: Sforza, Genevra Genevra’s frequent pregnancies 110-111 Giovanni II and—see also: Bentivoglio, Giovanni II whether or not Giovanni II was a satyr 115-116 why Giovanni II could not keep publicly known women to bear children 123 hierarchical considerations/ organising children’s lives/ strategies 126-130 illegitimates as fully part of strategies 122124 et al. illegitimates marry Bolognese magnates and live in Bologna 130, 134, 145 last will and testament in relation to 91, 145 legitimates, how they married 132-134 wedding celebrations of 135-138, 168-171 greatest festivities for Annibale II and Lucrezia d’Este 135-136

departure celebrations for legitimate girls 137-138 location of information on offspring 116-117 location after marriage/ nearly all in Bologna 130 Medici strategies in Florence, in comparison to 134-135 naming of children 120-122 organising their lives for good of family 32, 131, 138, et al. primogenito, greatest investment in 131 young ages at times of matches 128 conclusions about enormous Bentivoglio family/ political motherhood 143-145 Bentivoglio goal to dominate Bologna/ large politically influential family 144-145 Genevra/ Bentivoglio family strategies 109179 et al. Genevra’s dedication to success of Bentivoglio/ desire for large powerful family 144 Fano (town in Marche) 212, 232 Fantuzzi (Bolognese family) 57, 124, 134, 154, 157, 158, 159, 160 Fantuzzi, Carlo Antonio (godson of Genevra) 126 Fantuzzi, Giulia (wife of Leone Bentivoglio) 67, 125, 166, 170 fashion (see also: gold; horses; jewellery; pearls; silver; textiles; veils, etc.) art, Genevra/ Bentivoglio in/ as example of 4243, 48, 52n.61, 62-64, 87, 92, 100, 113, 293 beauty, Genevra as idealised 15th c. (blond hair, high forehead, ivory skin, thin lips, pink cheekbones, wearing pearls, fashionable hairstyle, etc.) 48 jewellery, Genevra’s 49, 92 veiling expertise/ Genevra as knowledgeable woman of contemporary 46, 113n.9 Fasoli, Gina (Bolognese historian) 27, 279, 280 Fava (Bolognese family) 124, 157, 159, 160 favours 52, 78, 122, 132, 185, 192, 193, 196, 197, 205, 206, 215, 222, 239, 241, 279 Fazio da Viterbo, (Cardinal) Santorio 239 Fazion, Paolo (contemporary scholar) 28 Federico II (Holy Roman Emperor) 19, 122 Felicini (Bolognese family) 134n.81, 156, 159 Felicini, Giovanni (Bolognese citizen) 239 Felicini, (Count) Giuseppe Maria (one of Bologna’s most damned souls) 278n.61 Feo, Giacomo (lover of Caterina Sforza) 295 Felsina (Etruscan name for Bologna) 18 Feltre, Vittorino da (founder of La Giocosa school in Mantua) 47n.32 Ferrara (see also: Este, Castello Estense) 11, 20, 22, 43, 47, 47n.32, 49, 51, 54, 55, 68, 73, 84, 100n.94, 106, 115n.13, 116, 117, 126, 129, 130, 130n.66, 140, 141, 162, 166, 169, 171, 176, 181, 182, 184, 188, 192, 195, 198, 205n.66, 208-214, 219, 225, 232, 242, 264, 267, 276, 310

327

Index 

Bentivoglio alliance with Lucrezia d’Este (Bentivoglio) 51, 131nn.68-71, 133, 135, 162, 169, 219, 248 Bentivoglio archive in Ferrara (ASFE, Fondo Bentivoglio) 11, 27n.17, 49n.44, 104n.119, 106, 117n.17, 123nn.38-39, 130n.64, 131nn.67-69, 183n.4, 215, 254, 260, 303 Borgia (d’Este), Lucrezia 54, 84, 141, 292, 294 fertility/ fecundity 45, 56, 66, 109, 110-111, 112, 118, 143, 144, 296, 301 prolactin (hormone impeding fecundity) 112 festivals—see: corte bandita; San Giorgio; San Martino; parties/ festivities; processions; weddings Fideli, Alessandro di (of Pesaro, friend of Genevra) 210 figureheads/ figurehead puppet 22, 79, 89, 95n.74, 133 Fior di virtù (popular school reader) 57 Florence 20, 22, 24, 30, 36, 47, 73, 83, 85, 86, 88n.48, 105, 111n.3, 116, 123, 134, 134n.80, 162, 163, 164, 165, 168, 181, 182, 198, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 232, 235, 272, 278, 296 Bentivoglio, Ercole 103 Bentivoglio, Sante 83, 85, 86n.40, 91 humanist historians 38, 39 Medici, Catherine de’ 298, 301 Orsini, Alfonsina 297, 298, 300, 301 Foligno (town in Marche) 141, 232 Fondazione del Monte di Bologna and Ravenna 287 Fontana, Ercole (Bolognese laude writer) 271 Fontana, Lavinia (Bolognese painter) 303 food/ drink/ foodstuffs (see also: bread; corte bandita; grain; servants; Storia del pane; weddings; wine) 49n.44, 58, 127, 142, 193, 203, 233, 240, 260, 309 Foresti (da Bergamo or Bergomense), Giacomo (or Iacopo) Filippo (of Ferrara) 9, 43, 43n.19, 45, 56n.77, 57, 58, 64, 143, 144, 296 Forlì (town in Romagna) 120, 129, 148, 156, 165, 214, 232, 246n.161, 281, 294, 295, 301 Fornovo, Battle of 225 fortuna/ fortune/ luck/ chance 7, 27, 31, 116, 218, 228, 230, 253 fortune/ misfortune 218, 230, 253 hostage to 217 wheel of 217-256 Foschi, Paola (contemporary scholar) 287 Foster Baxendale, Susan (contemporary scholar) 235 Francesca, Piero della (Tuscan painter) 48, 75 Francia, Francesco (Bolognese painter) 172, 268, 293 Frederick III, (King) of Germany 81, 82 Francis II (son of Catherine de’ Medici) 298 French (see also: Louis XI; Louis XII) 228, 233, 234, 242, 243, 291n.133, 298 army 229, 231

Catherine de’ Medici as not truly 299 court and courtesy in relation to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga 242 invasion 130n.66, 235n.103 Milan 281 rewarded with new cardinals 231n.78 troops and news 205 friendship affinity/ ancient (with Gonzaga) 196, 222 with families in legend literature 282 formalised as godparent 119 hanged for (with Bentivoglio) 250 medal exchanges as tokens of 43 with Medici 232 as political/ alliances 135 et al. with a saint 281 vero amore/ partisan loyalty, in dialogue about 56 fruits (oranges, pomegranates, nuts, etc.) as requests in letters 188, 191, 192, 211 Furlotti, Barbara (contemporary scholar) 28 G.A.I.A. (guides of Bologna) 290 Gallese (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 Ganz, Margery (contemporary scholar) 235, 235n.99, 250 Gastaldino (fortress keeper at Cento) 194, 209 gender order/ gendered structures/ gendered social order (see also: hierarchies) 25,105, 109, 114, 125, 127, 130, 190, 204, 207, 243, 288, 299, 300, 309, 312, 315 gender, performance of 17, 48, 295 gender roles/ relations 17, 18, 31, 37, 59, 61, 73, 105, 128, 181, 188, 195, 206, 246, 257, 310 legends/ tales based on gender and 30, 257-304 et al. Gengini, Vincenzo (Bolognese chronicler, parfumier) 38, 38n.1 Gernvesge, (Cardinal) (godfather of Lodovico Bentivoglio) 149 Ghinghan (Bentivoglio butcher) 60 Ghirardacci, Fra Cherubino (Augustinian historian) 27, 53n.70, 100, 134n.81, 219n.4, 222, 265, 266, 267, 267n.22, 268n.24, 273, 274, 283, 290, 293 reproduction of missing ‘letter’ 267, 267n.22, 283 how historians have been forced to rely on 290 as non-contemporary source, and use of noncontemporary sources 219n.4, 265, 266 Ghirardo, Diane (contemporary scholar) 25n.11, 294 Ghisilieri, Francesco (osteria owner) 137 Giannini, Serafino (playwright) 275 Gianantonio (servant of Genevra) 209 gifts exchanged/ gift culture/ gift giving/ gifts 41n.11, 42, 45, 48, 92, 96, 97, 101, 132, 135, 136, 168-171, 188, 189, 191, 192, 205, 212, 279

328 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

godparents/ godparenting 9, 49, 109, 112, 117, 119, 119nn.25-26, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 131, 134, 145, 222, 249 et al. Bentivoglio, Annibale II as popular godfather/ other Bentivoglio sons serving as 125 Bentivoglio, Giovanni II as popular godfather 125 Bentivoglio as godparents 153-161 birth order and social hierarchies, according to 125, 126, 300 godfather/ compare 41n.11, 46, 51, 86n.42, 94, 100n.94, 114, 119, 120, 126, 131, 146-152, 153-161, 223, 224, 241, 242, 249n.175 godmother/ comare 57, 119, 124, 125, 126, 146-152, 153-161, 198n.44, 223 godparents to Bentivoglio children 146-152 godparents as partisans 57, 109, 114, 149, 249 marrying into family of godparent 131, 222 naming children after godfathers 126 Nappi, Cesare as popular godfather 124n.40 political act, as 49, 112, 117-126, 134, 145 Goggio, Bartolomeo (laude text author) 56n.77 gold dialogue about gems and gold 56 gold brocade dresses 41, 51, 138, 168 horse dressed in gold brocade 168 golden clothes 138 gold ducats and florins 48, 78, 137 gold purse 48 gold/ red saw (sega) 21 gold, silver and silks 104 Gonzaga (family) 9, 20, 31, 32, 47, 73, 84, 88n.47, 126, 127, 133, 138, 139, 181, 182, 183, 183n.3, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 218, 219, 223, 225, 239, 240, 247, 248, 249, 251, 253, 264, 311, 312 Gonzaga, (Marchese) Aloisio 190 Gonzaga, Doroteo (falsely accused of being a hunchback) 99 Gonzaga, Eleonora (wife of Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere) 223 Gonzaga, (Marchese) Federico (of Mantua) 120 Gonzaga, Federico (son of Laura Bentivoglio and Giovanni Gonzaga) 173 Gonzaga, (Marchese) Francesco 59, 109, 109n.2, 137n.90, 183, 185, 188, 191, 301 as Bentivoglio correspondent (see Chapter Four for full context: 181-216) and especially 183, 186, 187, 198, 199, 203, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215 daughter (illegitimate, unnamed) promised to Bentivoglio grandson 184, 184n.7 as leader of papal expedition to recapture Bologna (see also: mission to recapture Bologna; Julius II) 217, 218, 219, 221, 227, 228, 247 chosen for family connections (not as military leader) 221-226, 252-253 compassion for exiled Bentivoglio/ offers hospitality to them (see entirety of

Chapters Four and Five for full context: 181-216 and 217-256) and also 185, 223, 224, 239, 240, 240n.123, 241, 242, 245 covers for/ suffers papal oppression due to helping Bentivoglio 239-247 alters papal punishments to help Bentivoglio 243-244 et al. helps Lucrezia d’Este 248-249 entry into Bologna/ declares fortuna won over 230, 231 forced to deal with impossible situations among family members 225 Genevra confides resentment towards Julius II in 233 lodges within Palazzo Bentivoglio, keeps Bentivoglio women/ home safe 231, 238 luxurious jewelled hat 221, 230 et al. uncertainty of mission, 221-237 wishes to impress Julius II with camera pincta (painted reception room) 221 Gonzaga, GianFrancesco (husband of Paola Malatesta) 47n.32 Gonzaga, Ginevra (daughter of Laura Bentivoglio and Giovanni Gonzaga, nun at Corpus Domini in Mantua) 140, 141, 173 Gonzaga, Giovanni Maria (husband of Laura Bentivoglio) 67, 129, 165, 170, 173, 183, 186, 187, 200, 205, 228, 233, 234n.93 Gonzaga, (Duchess) Elisabetta (of Urbino) 105 Gonzaga, (Marchese) Ludovico 102 Gonzaga, Margherita (funerary orations written for) 253n.194 Gonzaga, (Cardinal) Sigismondo 218, 242, 242n.133 government, mixed (governo misto)/ dyarchical government 18, 19, 20, 22, 251 government, shared (governo condiviso) 20 Gozzadini, Bettista (Bolognese female lecturer) 271n.37 Gozzadini, Camillo (initiates destruction of Palazzo Bentivoglio) 246n.159 Gozzadini, Francesca (grandmother of Giovanni II) 121, 147 Gozzadini, (Count) Giovanni (Bolognese historian) 27, 273, 274 Gozzadini, Giovanni (datario for Julius II) 239 Grado, Antonio da (Isabella d’Este’s court doctor) 244 grain/ grain passage (see also: bread; La storia del pane) 185, 194, 203, 209, 213, 215, 233, 240, 248n.169, 279 Grande, Palazzo (also called: Palazzo dei Signori, Palazzo dei Signori Anziani, Palazzo della Città, Palazzo del Comune, Palazzo del Legato, Palazzo del Governatore) 237 grandchildren (Bentivoglio) 31, 53, 111, 114, 117n.18, 119, 138, 172, 173, 184, 204, 222, 223, 231, 233, 240, 247, 249, 301, 309, 312 grandfathers 121 Bentivoglio, Antongaleazzo 114, 148

329

Index 

Bentivoglio, Ercole 120 Bentivoglio, Giovanni I 114, 121 Gonzaga, Francesco 204, 222, 224 grandmothers Gozzadini, Francesca 121, 147 Montefeltro, Battista di 75, 141 Orsini, Alfonsina 298 Sforza, Genevra 61, 140, 191, 263, 314 Varano (Malatesta), Elisabetta 141 Visconti, Bianca Maria 294 Grassi, Paride (offers testimony regarding arrival of Julius II) 218 Grato, Carlo (Sedici member; ambassador) 196, 196n.35, 220 Grati, Franco (representative of Pino of Forlì) 148 Grati, Giacomo (Bolognese diplomat) 93, 95n.72, 96, 98 Grato, Andrea (Sedici member) 51 Greek philosophers 57 Gregorovius, Ferdinand (historian) 292n.134, 294 Grengoli, Tommaso (Bolognese notary) 117n.17 Griffoni (family) 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 161 Griffoni, Alessandro (Bolognese laude writer) 271n.37 guasto (also called: Guasto de’ Bentivoglio; Via Del Guasto; Giardino del Guasto; rubble) 31, 246, 252, 265 Guiccioli, Teresa (noteworthy woman of Romagna) 284n.95 Guicciardini, Francesco (Florentine humanist historian) 39n.3, 225n.44 Guidotti (family) 134, 160, 239, 287 Guidotti, Salustio (husband of Griselda Bentivoglio) 67, 125n.43, 134n.81, 156, 159, 164, 170 Gynevera de le clare donne (Arienti) 28, 44, 44n.21, 45n.25, 55, 55n.74, 56, 61, 64-66, 103, 121, 127, 142n.113, 146, 149, 270, 274, 302, 310 six vite chosen for individual publication 275 Arienti’s sincerity questioned (in legends) 278, 285, 286, 289 head price (taglia) 243, 244, 244n.145 healing/ magical healing/ healer (see also: Cimiera, Gentile) 59, 112 Hemedes, Sante (Bolognese patrician) 93 Henri II, King of France (also called: Duke d’Orléans, husband of Catherine de’ Medici) 298 Henri III, King of France (son of Catherine de’ Medici) 298 Holy Roman Emperors 224 Federico II 19 Frederick III of Germany 81 Henry V 18 Sigismondo of Luxembourg 75, 75n.3, 102, 184 hierarchy/ hierarchies Bentivoglio family members, in art 113 Giovanni II vs. Sante 94 gender, birth order and status and 126, 186, 189, 190, 204, 300 et al.

godparenting and 125 letter writing, with regard to 189, 190 et al. noble status and 184, 192, 207, 293 order in world 38—see also: order Historia di San Giuliano (anonymous) 57 histories/ historians Bolognese chroniclers as writers of (vs. humanist historians in other cities) 38-39 Bentivoglio, Guido, blocks publication of Ghirardacci’s Historia di Bologna 268 Bentivoglio historiography and 26-29, 39 et al. forced to rely on concordant historiography regarding Genevra 257-259, 271-290 image creation in, lack of, on medal for Genevra 87, 101 images, fashioning in writing of 21, 27 et al. image making for Julius II and 245 et al. image/reputation, with loss of Palazzo Bentivoglio and (see also: damnatio memoriae) 246, 250 readers of, for centuries, interested in Genevra’s story 271-290 Sforza, (Duke) Francesco, use of/creation of 38 storia (Italian term, hybrid idea of histories and stories) 64, 303 holy apparition—see Bentivoglio, palace Holy Land, pilgrimage to 172, 312 homo faber suae quisque fortunae 116 horses (see also: mules) 41, 53, 54, 78, 104, 136, 138, 168, 169, 170, 218, 241 Genevra fleeing Bologna with ten 240, 247 Genevra’s gift of eight of Sante’s finest horses 96, 97 typical gifts exchanged among males 191 Annibale II and Ermes fleeing with seventyfive 240, 240n.143 rule established that any Bentivoglio who could ride a horse must leave Mantua 244 households Bentivoglio 47, 130, 130n.65, 188, 198, 199, 201, 310, 311 Bentivoglio, Sante 92, 93, 102, 310 Este, Lucrezia d’ 248 independent ones kept within Palazzo Bentivoglio for Giovanni II, Annibale II, AntonGaleazzo, Alessandro, Ermese, Genevra, Lucrezia, Ippolita 130n.65 Sforza, Genevra 188, 193, 197, 198, 202, 247 cardinals in Rome 130 Este, d’ in Ferrara 130n.66 Gonzaga in Mantua 130n.64 Medici 103 paterfamilias ruling over 23 Sforza, Alessandro 82 Sforza in Milan 130 130nn.63 and 66 Naples (court of) 130 Urbino (court of) 130 women organising 24

330 

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Hughes, Diane Owen (contemporary scholar) 285286, 289n.123 Hugo, Victor (French writer) 293, 293n.139 humanists/ humanistic education/ humanist historians (see also: education for females) 39 Bolognese university 47 for females 294 Nogarola, Isotta 121, 149 Sanuti, Nicolosa 269 hunting 192 Hymneo Bentivoglio (Arienti) 27n.17 illegitimates/ illegitimacy Bentivoglio family tree and 19, 26, 67, 267 Bentivoglio who died young (completely unknown) 67, 118, 152 Bentivoglio, on par with those of major Italian houses 131, 184 Bentivoglio, Sante as/and 20, 79, 87, 94, 98, 114, 124 blocking publication of Historia di Bologna (Ghirardacci) over 267 Borgia, Lucrezia as 291 of female rule 300 girls 23, 47, 85 girls’ fathers not having to provide dowries, according to customary law 85 Bentivoglio, Ascanio as 121, 139, 140 Bentivoglio, Giovanni II and his many 20, 32, 47, 50, 104, 109, 114, 115, 116, 117n.18, 118, 122-124, 125, 127, 130, 135, 139, 140, 146-152, 162-167, 168-171, 172, 175, 184, 236, 237 attitude towards Sante and Genevra 94, 98 baptismal records, not recognised in 119 children marrying into Bolognese magnate families 134, 145 dowries for—see dowries head prices for his boys after exile 243, 244, 244n.145 names for 121 et al. politically insignificant enough/ allowed to stay in Bologna 236, 237 private donation to boys 117, 117n.17, 123 unknown mothers who birthed them (domestic servants) 123, 123nn.38-39, 124 Este, Lucrezia d’ as 51, 100n.94, 131 Gonzaga 184, 204, 222 illegitimacy in other courts 115n.13 massive numbers of, in Bologna’s baptismal records 112n.37 Sforza, Alessandro as 74 Sforza, Caterina as 294 Sforza, (Duke) Francesco as/and 67, 74, 80, 80n.23, 83 Sforza, Genevra as/and 23, 26, 32, 50, 75, 83, 85, 87, 97, 98, 104, 144, 195, 196, 206, 262, 268, 293, 301, 302 illness (see also death) 59, 217, 58n.89 fever 88, 88n.50, 211, 217, 244

gout 243 Madonna of San Francesco healing sick 58n.89 sickness 39, 59, 88, 89, 141, 142n.111, 217, 219, 244, 280 syphilis 243 tuberculosis 88, 88n.50, 286 ulcers 88 Imola 66, 87, 129, 165, 226, 232n.86, 267, 272n.40, 294, 301 Imola, Thadeo of (as potential alliance with) 87 indulgences, plenary 243 Ingrati (family) 124, 153, 158, 160 Ingrati, Jacopo degli (also called: Iacomo, Bolognese ambassador) 81 Innocent VIII, (Pope) (Giovanni Battista Cybo (or Cibo)) 131, 135, 142 Inquisition, Dominican 59 insect metaphors termite (Genevra Sforza) 17, 278, 299 maggot (Catherine de’ Medici) 298, 298n.161, 299 interdicts, papal 217, 225, 231, 238, 239, 244, 248, 249 inventory, household/ domestic for Bentivoglio, of family’s dowries, marriage contracts, related papers, divorces 128 for Bentivoglio, Giovanni II’s wedding (alleged list) 45 for Bentivoglio, Sante 44, 48-49, 92 Sforza, Genevra, items related to 48-49, 92 lack of inventory 240 as redacted in legends 280, 281n.78 investitures, imperial/ papal 20, 78, 114 italianità (essence of Italian national identity/ as manifested in Palazzo Bentivoglio rebuilt in Rome) 276 Iudicium eversionis Europae (Drusianus) 57 images—see history James, Carolyn (contemporary scholar) 25, 28, 56, 127 Jerusalem (see also: Holy Land; pilgrimages) 312 Jesi (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 Jew/Jews Genevra born to Jewish mother (in legends) 17, 262, 275, 299 Genevra and Jewish friend 198 Genevra helping Jews recoup stolen money 198, 212 jewels/ jewellery/ precious stones/ gems (see also: gold; prizes; textiles) belt, luxurious 92 Bologna shining more than gems and gold (in Arienti) 66 burying rings, jewellery, etc., in anticipation of arrival of papal troops 230 emeralds 113 Este, Lucrezia d’, special ones worn at her wedding 169

331

Index 

garland of pearls for one’s head owned by Genevra 92 Genevra, given to her at time of Giovanni II’s death 102n.108 gold purse, 48 hat, magnificent jewelled hat worn by (Marchese) Francesco Gonzaga upon his entry into Bologna 221, 230 (also mentioned in many other places within Bentivoglio/ Gonzaga correspondence at ASMN, AG) jewels sewn on sleeves of Genevra’s camora (red rubies and green emeralds symbolising marriage) 62, 113 jewel gifted to baby and large pearl offered to Genevra by Cardinal Riario, 46 in legend literature: Genevra fled Bologna with enormous amounts of jewels 273, 279, 288 Genevra covered in jewels like a Byzantine empress 278 Genevra found dead among jewels and money 268 necklace 92, 148 partisan loyalty/ vero amore worth more than gems and gold (in text by de’ Poeti) 68 pearls, hundreds of, owned by Genevra 49, 62, 92 pin in form of dove with pearls and reddish gemstone 92 rings 230 rubies, reddish gemstone 113 Sforza, Ippolita’s dowry, partially composed of 132n.75 jousting tournaments/ matches (see also: horses, prizes) 48, 53, 58n.89, 101, 135, 137, 169 prizes, given to to winners of 48, 48n.38, 53n.69 Judith decapitating Holofernes—fresco (by Francesco Francia) within Palazzo Bentivoglio 268 Julius II (Pope) (Giuliano della Rovere) as (Cardinal) Giuliano della Rovere/ Bishop of Bologna 220-225 personal clash with Giovanni II 220 as pope problems with Bentivoglio/ plans to recover Bologna 219-220 in relation to Capitoli 226-227 (see also: Capitoli) leads mission to recapture Bologna (see also: mission to retake Bologna) 217-230 recruitment of (Marchese) Francesco Gonzaga to lead mission 221-226 relationship with Genevra as kin 219, 222-223 approach to Bologna 217-237 forcing Genevra and Bentivoglio women out of Bologna 230-237 solemn entry into Bologna/ arrival with cardinals et al. 237

when in Bologna 237-239 inadequate lodging within Palazzo Grande 237 lodging within Palazzo Bentivoglio/ as surrogate Vatican 238-239 courtesan there serving Julius’ cardinal nephew and others 238-239 appropriation of other Bentivogliorelated palaces 239 which Bentivoglio allowed to stay in Bologna 236-237 Bentivoglio senatoriale side of family adds della Rovere name to theirs 237 sets exile terms for Bentivoglio 241 tests loyalties of Marchese Francesco Gonzaga, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, Cardinal Sigismondo d’Este 242-243 excommunicates Bentivoglio and puts prices on heads 243-244 forces Genevra to leave Mantua 244-245 Bentivoglio bell turned into statue of Julius II 245 allows Palazzo Bentivoglio to be dismantled/razed 245-256 hypotheses/reasons why he detests Genevra 246-247; 301-302 turns to hounding Lucrezia d’Este 248-249 Bentivoglio miscalculations with 251-254 in legend literature with Genevra 259, 260, 264, 265, 266, 273, 276, 279, 280, 284, 284n.94, 286n.109, 287, 301-302 Kelly, Joan (contemporary scholar) 296 Kolsky, Stephen (contemporary scholar) 28, 56 Klebanoff, Randi (contemporary scholar) 28 Kress, Samuel H. (Collection at National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.) 43n.15, 291 Laertius, Diogenes (author of Vitae et sententiae philosophorum) 57 Latin/ Latin orations/ Latin treatises (see also specific titles of works) ars dictanimis in 188 booklet on shrine of Madonna of Loreto in (Spagnuoli) 53 female scholars using 271n.37 Genevra familiar with some 188 epitaph about in 261 verses 262n.6 Montefeltro, Battista di, presents orations in 75 names in 65 Nanni, Ercole—see Nanni, Ercole personal mottos in 27, 170 Sanuti, Nicolosa’s treatise in 42, 269 university community using 29 Varano, Costanzo writing in 75

332 

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L’Aquila 77 Landriani, Lucrezia (mistress of Galeazzo Maria Sforza) 294 Laude delle donne (Bolognese literary genre featuring ideal local women) 64-66, 270, 271, 271n.37, 302, 303 legates (papal legates)—see cardinal legates legends about Genevra (see: entirety of Chapter Six (pp. 257-308)) introduction 257-259 earliest stories about Genevra 259-268 early posthumous chroniclers 259-262 epitaph and sonnet 261-262 ‘letter’ from Giovanni II (Alberti, Ghirardacci et al.) 263-264, 267, 267n.22 Giuseppe Betussi 264-265 Pompeo Vizzani 265 Ghirardacci and 265-268 Genevra and other early modern Bolognese women in 268-271 Nicolosa Sanuti 269-270 Properzia de’ Rossi 269-270 laude delle donne bolognesi genre 270-271 more modern histories and legends 271-283 Burlamacchi/ Savonarola 271-272 Nicola Ratti 272-273 Giovanni Gozzadini 273 Corrado Ricci and Bacchi della Lega 274-275 nineteenth-century dramas 275-276 Palazzo Bentivoglio/ italianità in Rome/ Esposizione nazionale 276-278 Corrado Ricci 278-279 Gina Fasoli 279-280 Titina Strano 280-281 Cecilia M. Ady 280-282 Albano Sorbelli 282-283 most recent histories (1950s-today) 284-291 Genevra and other Italian victims of Renaissance legends 291-299 Lucrezia Borgia 291-294, 301 Caterina Sforza 294-297, 301 Alfonsina Orsini 297-298, 300, 301 Catherine de’ Medici 298-299, 301 further reflections on women plagued in history 299 Genevra vilified for having been too fecund/ too successful in motherhood 301-302 conclusions 302-303 legends about other early modern women (Vittoria Accorambuoni, Bianca Cappello, Beatrice Cenci) 25n.13 Leo X, (Pope) (Giovanni de’ Medici) 173, 297, 298 Leonini of Tivoli, (Bishop) Angelo 241 letters/ letter writing (see also: entirety of Chapter Four (pp. 181-216)) Bentivoglio-Gonzaga relationship/ letters exchanged 181-185 et al.

review of Genevra’s/ Bentivoglio correspondence 181-187 Genevra as writer/ Gonzaga client 188-189 maintaining family relations/ complimentary letters 189-191 maintaining family relations/ gift exchanges 191-193 as patron of her family 193 as representative of Bologna 193-195 as representative of Bentivoglio 195-197 representing herself 197-198 as representative of Bentivoglio staff/ misc. others 198-204 Genevra’s absences in correspondence 204-206 conclusions about her as a correspondent 206-207 summaries of individual letters 208-215 secret coded letters 80 lack of code breakers 80n.24 Duke Francesco Sforza and Bolognese government writing about marriage alliances (see: Chapter 2) 73-108 Eleonora d’Aragona’s many letter books (mostly lost) 182n.1 “living” letters 198 letters, signed with M.P. (Manu propria) 186, 200, 201, 201n.56, 202n.56 letter—infamous ‘letter’ written by Giovanni II to Genevra (in legend literature) scholars betrayed by damnatio memoriae campaign 290 versions of/ presence in work of: Alberti 263-264 Ghirardacci 267, 267n.22 in work of others: 273, 274, 281n.78, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 287, 291n.133 libertas as civic goal/ Bolognese symbol 19, 20, 83, 114, 313 Bologna’s contemporary city flag (gonfalone) 313 Bologna’s contemporary coat of arms (stemma) 313 Duranti, as explored by 29 Genevra blamed for Bologna’s lost of 314 Genevra’s story tied to 313 Giovanni II as heir of hope of civic libertas 22 losing hope of libertas with fall of Bentivoglio 258 nostalgia over lost libertas tied to Bentivoglio 271, 302 Litta, (Conte) Pompeo (Bolognese historian) 273 Lodi, Treaty of/ Peace of (9 April 1454) 83, 86n.39 Lombardy (see also: Milan) 78, 220, 241n.127, 245, 279 Loreto Genevra’s devotion to Madonna of 53 Genevra’s pilgrimage to 169

333

Index 

Latin text (by Spagnuoli, trans. Arienti) for Genevra 188 Lotto pattern in carpet—see carpet, Western Anatolian Louis XI, (King) of France 102 Louis XII, (King) of France 222, 224, 228, 232, 243, 244, 246n.159 lovers—see concubines Lowe, Katherine J.P. (contemporary scholar) 99 Lucia of Viadagola 19, 21, 122 Luciano, Eleonora (contemporary scholar) 291 Luini, Bernardino (Milanese painter) 173 Luna, Antonio di Franco (chronicler) 96 Machiavelli, Niccolò (Florentine author, diplomat) 32n.2, 295, 296, 298, 313 pre-Machiavellian schemes 73, 74, 83, 225 Madonna del Baraccano, Church of 269 Madonna and Child/ baby Jesus (by Costa) at Church of San Giacomo 52, 113, 114, 300 Madonna of Church of San Francesco 39 Madonna di Loreto—see Loreto Madonna of Palazzo Bentivoglio—fresco (holy apparition crying) 250 Madonna di San Luca (also called: Madonna del Monte/ Madonna del Monte della Guardia) descends as Julius II approaches city and Bolognese fear for everything 228 descends to enhance celebrations when Sante weds Genevra 41 does not descend when Giovanni II weds Genevra 100 madonna (title for females) 48, 57n.85, 61, 75n.4, 93 Maffei, Timoteo (humanist writer) 269 Magnani, Andrea (writer) 136, 136n.85 Magnano da Ranochio of Montecucolo, Antonio (cousin of Bentivoglio servant; client of Genevra) 209, 214 Malatesta (family) 20, 137, 182 Malatesta, Elisabetta (donna letterata) 67, 75, 253n.194 Malatesta, Giovanna (first promessa sposa of Alessandro Bentivoglio) 132, 132n.72, 164 Malatesta, Pandolfo IV (also: Pandolfaccio; Signore of Rimini; condottiere; husband of Violante Bentivoglio) 66, 67, 129, 133, 164, 169 Malatesta (Gonzaga), (Marchesana) Paola 47, 130n.64, 139n.95 Malatesta, Parisina di (famed woman of Romagna) 284 Malatesta, Roberto (Prince of Rimini) 66 Malatestiano, Tempio (in Rimini, recreated in Rome) 276 Malatonchi (family) 57 Malatonchi, Ercole (godson of Genevra) 126, 153 malefica (witch; see also: Cimiera, Gentile) 59 Malfetta, (Cardinal, godfather of Lodovico Bentivoglio) 149

Malvasia, Napoleone (Bentivoglio partisan) 158, 249, 249n.175 Malvezzi, Achille (Bolognese citizen) 81 Malvezzi, Battista (his sons lead Malvezzi conspiracy) 52 Malvezzi, Carlo (Bolognese citizen) 81 Malvezzi conspiracy—see conspiracies Malvezzi (family) 52, 95, 101, 132, 204, 233-234, 235n.102 Palazzo di San Sigismondo (Malvezzi headquarters) 101, 163 Malvezzi, Gaspare (husband of Giovanna Bentivoglio) 67 Malvezzi, Giulio (husband of Camilla Sforza) 53, 95 Malvezzi, Ludovico (Bolognese citizen) 81 Malvezzi, Marchexana (girl entering Corpus Domini) 49 Malvezzi, Virgilio (Bolognese citizen, Bentivoglio rival) 44n.20, 86n.42, 88, 89, 90, 93, 95, 96, 98, 146 Malvezzi, Virginia (fictitious Malvezzi character in a play) 275 Mamelini, Nicolo (notary, chronicler) 38, 39, 60 mandrake (narcotic painkiller) 112 Manfredi, Astorre (also: Astorigo, son of Galeotto Manfredi and Francesca Bentivoglio) 113, 133, 184, 195, 214 Manfredi, Galeotto (Signore of Faenza, murdered husband of Francesca Bentivoglio) 65, 67, 113, 129, 129n.62, 132, 132 n 74, 133, 163, 168, 184, 195 Manfredi, (Madonna) Gentile de’ (famed woman of Romagna) 284n.95 Manfredi, (Maestro) Scipione (astrologer recommended by Genevra) 212 Mannetti, Giannozzo (Florentine promoter of Sante Bentivoglio) 79 Mantua (see also: (Marchese) Francesco Gonzaga; (Marchesana) Isabella d’Este; Giovanni Gonzaga; Laura Bentivoglio; (Pope) Julius II; mission to retake Bologna) 17n.1, 20, 22, 32, 47, 55, 59, 65, 73, 84, 86n.41, 88n.48, 116, 126, 129, 130, 130n.64, 133, 137, 137n.91, 138, 139, 140, 141, 148, 165, 170, 173, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 196, 196, 198, 199, 200-209, 208-224, 311 Bentivoglio/ Gonzaga relationship and 181-216, 217-256 and Bentivoglio exile, location of refuge for Genevra et al. 230-234, 237-249 Genevra hounded in Mantua 240-249, 251, 253, 301, 311 Manutius, Aldus (printer; see also: printing) 293 Manzoli (family) 130n.63, 134, 160, 161, 171 Manzoli, Alessandro (adopted son of Filippo Manzoli, husband of Lucia Bentivoglio) 166, 171 Manzoli, Filippo (architectural theorist) 166 Manzoli Bentivoglio, Giulia (wife of Count Ercole Bentivoglio) 53n.70

334 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Marche (region; see also: Pesaro) 46, 74, 78 Marescotti, Antonio (artist) 9, 42-43, 62, 87 Marescotti brothers (as group) 17, 246n.159, 263, 265, 266, 281, 284n.94, 290 Marescotti, Ercole (initiated Bentivoglio palace destruction) 158, 159 Marescotti, Ercole (16th c. Bolognese laude writer) 271n.37, 159 Marescotti (family) 46, 103, 124, 153, 158, 159, 234 Marescotti de’ Calvi Malvezzi, Galeazzo (Bolognese citizen, local hero) 46, 81, 93, 97, 98, 103, 159, 168 marriage/ marriages/ marriage alliances (see also: dowry; weddings; parentela) Genevra’s first marriage to Sante/ negotiations behind 73-87 as way to create meaningful and lasting peace between cities 80 dowry (lack of) 83-87 first trace of in Pesarese records/ reason behind 77 Genevra’s portrait medal 87 how Duke Francesco Sforza arranged/ played games/ forced 80-86 Genevra’s second marriage to Giovanni II/ negotiations behind 88-105 Genevra at Corpus Domini awaiting 90-97 initial suggestions from Sante for bride for Giovanni 87 ongoing lack of dowry 91-92, 98 searching for Sforza bride for 89-97 Duke Francesco Sforza suggests Giovanni marry Genevra 92-98 Bolognese government/policy discussions about Sforza’s offer 94-96 Giovanni II agrees to marry Genevra 97-98 other suitor interested in Genevra (Marino Marzano) 99-100 papal dispensation granted for 100 lack of celebrations behind 100 strategies for Bentivoglio offspring 109-179 banns 81 per verba 82, 83, 136n.85 consent, and/as basis of 24, 83, 95, 97, 98 parentela/ parentado—see: parentela by proxy 50, 50n.49, 51, 75, 82, 82n.30, 82, 84, 85, 129n.62, 166, 168-171 Marsili, Lena (aristocratic girl entering Corpus Domini) 49 Martin V, Pope (Otto Colonna) 75 Martinengo of Brescia, Ottaviano di Giorgio (husband of Antonia Sforza) 75, 76n.5, 99n.92 Marzano (Sforza), Camilla (also: Covella; wife of Costanzo Sforza) 99, 99n.92, 272n.40 Marzano, (Prince) Marino (of Rossano, grand admiral) 99 Masi, Checca (prolific mother in Florence) 111 Massarento, Antonio (servant) 215 masses 41, 42, 58, 135, 136, 137, 144, 169, 170, 260, 272, 288

material culture associated with childbirth: amulets, charms (lapis aetite), philtres, etc. 112 Matteo (Bentivoglio servant) 213 Mazzeo, Arturo (contemporary scholar) 284 medals (see also: portrait; motto; Marescotti, Antonio) 9, 42, 43, 62, 87, 100, 295 Medici (see also the individual entires below) 134-135 men, discretion with women (due to citizen status) 123 women 23n.6, 25, 206n.68, 235, 253n.193, 257, 297-299 Medici, Bice de’ (exceptional Medici wife) 253n.193 Medici, (Queen) Catherine de’ (of France) 25, 25n.12, 257, 298-299 Medici, Contessina de’ (daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici) 134 Medici, Cosimo (pater patraie, banker, politician) 79, 83-84 Medici, Cosimo I de’ (Grand Duke of Tuscany) 296 Medici, Giovanni de’ (see Leo X, Pope) Medici, Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ (lover of Caterina Sforza) 295-296 Medici, Isabella de’ (in legends similar to those behind Genevra) 297, 298n.160 Medici, Lorenzo de’ (de facto ruler of Florence) 52, 134, 188, 194, 196, 208, 209, 210 Medici, (Duke) Lorenzo II (of Urbino) 297-298 Medici, Lucrezia (daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici) 134 Medici, Maddalena de’ (daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici; wife of Francesco Cibo) 135 Medici, Piero II de’ (de facto ruler of Florence) 188, 194, 211, 235, 297 Meleto, Nicolo de (godfather of Ercole Bentivoglio) 44, 86, 146 Melozzo da Forlì (painter) 41n.8, 294 menstrual blood, miraculous flow of 244 Michelet, Jules (French historian) 298, 298n.161 Milan (Milano, see also: (Duke) Francesco Sforza; Alessandro Bentivoglio; Ippolita Sforza et al.) 17n.1, 18, 19, 20, 22, 26, 31, 38, 38n.2, 39n.4, 42n.14, 43, 46, 47, 48, 40, 58, 61, 68-87, 88-105, 113n.9, 114n.12, 115, 115n.13, 116, 117, 146, 147, 162, 165, 220, 272n.40, 294, 299, 310, 311, 313 et al. Genevra as representative of, in her marriage to Sante 68-87 Genevra as representative of, in her marriage to Giovanni II 88-105 Bentivoglio godparents and 117, 119-120, 126, 146, 148 Bentivoglio choice of names and 117, 120, 121, 146, 147 Bentivoglio politics/ influence and 48, 112, 129, 130, 130n.66, 132, 133, 135, 145, 184, 196, 204, 206, 115, 206n. 69 et al. Bentivoglio wedding celebrations and 136, 137n.87, 170

335

Index 

Bentivoglio exile and 172, 232, 235n.103, 240, 241, 258 Giovanni II’s account books lost in 102n.108, 127 family of Alessandro Bentivoglio and Ippolita Sforza and/in 165, 170, 173, 240 Genevra’s correspondents and/ in 181, 182n.1, 188, 189, 194, 196, 197, 208-214 legends and 265, 278, 281, 286 Minerbio 55 miracle of Madonna crying within Palazzo Bentivoglio (holy apparition) 250-251 Mirandola 11, 53, 86nn.40-41, 103, 116, 129, 155, 162, 168, 176, 182, 184, 232, 282 Mirandola, AntonMaria Pico della (Count of Concordia, husband of Costanza Bentivoglio) 103, 129, 162, 168 mission to retake Bologna for Papal State (see also: Julius II; Francesco Gonzaga; Giovanni II Bentivoglio; and entirety of Chapter Five 217-256) Bentivoglio on wheel of fortune 227-230 Bentivoglio departures 230-234 Capitoli and legal matters 226-227 conclusions about mission/ Bentivoglio exile story 251-254 Genevra hounded in Mantua 240-249 Italian exile practices 234-237 papal plans against Bentivoglio Bologna 219-226 partisans in Bologna 249-251 pope at Palazzo Bentivoglio 237-239 mistresses—see concubines Modena 11, 51, 68, 86n.41, 87, 116, 127n.54, 133, 138, 140, 142, 163, 168, 178, 184, 215, 219, 236, 242, 247n.165, 254 Modigliana, (also: Modigliani) Fortress of 52, 195, 210 Monastero Maggiore (Milan) 173 money/ income (see also: coins; taxes) 24, 92, 97n.82, 139, 185, 198, 209, 212, 221, 222, 252, 253, 297 burying money, rings and jewellery before papal troops approach 230 chronicler working as money lender (Codibò) 38 coining money, Giovanni II’s right to 21 granted to Genevra from Giovanni II 102, 102n.108 in legends about Genevra 262, 268, 279, 281n.78, 283, 288 owed to Cristoforo Poggio 200 public money used to build Palazzo Bentivoglio 239 public money used for private wedding 100 special money coined for papal entry 238 Monte delle doti (dowry fund in Florence) 129n.62, 163

Montechiarugolo 129, 133, 164, 165, 168, 170 Montefeltro, Battista di (female scholar ancestor) 67, 75, 141, 284n.95 Montefeltro, (Duke) Federico di (of Urbino) 48, 75, 77, 129, 232 Montefeltro, (Duke) Guidobaldo di (of Urbino) 223 Montefeltro (Sforza), Sveva di (later: Beata Serafina, second wife of Alessandro Sforza) 76, 115, 141, 272n.40 Monti, Aldino (contemporary scholar) 29 Morandi (family) 124, 155, 156, 159, 160 mother/ motherhood/ motherly figure Genevra’s (unknown) mother 50, 75, 76, 257 Genevra as mother/ style of motherhood (prolific, political) 143, 109-179, 181, 257 Genevra dedicated to family as mother 181, 195-198, 310 Genevra dedicated to servant staff as motherly figure 198-204 Genevra vilified for successful motherhood 302 unknown mothers of Bentivoglio illegitimates 118, 119, 122-124, 150 mottos (see also: medals; weddings) 27, 43, 87, 101, 116, 168-171 arm around woman’s waist with no motto (Alessandro) 170 FCV (Ermes) 170 HIC OF 27, 27n.17 NUNC MIHI (Annibale II) 27, 27n.17, 116, 169, 170 PER AMORE TUTTO BEN VOGLIO SOFFRIRE 27, 27n.17 PER TROPPO AMARE (Ercole) 168 SIC MENS EST ANIMUS 27, 27n.17 SPES MEA 27, 27n.17 UNITAS FORTIOR DIVISIO FRAGILIS 27, 27n.17 military/ services/ feats/ affairs (see also: condottieri) 19, 38, 48, 58n.89, 78, 104, 104nn.116 and 119, 128, 129, 189, 195, 208, 211, 212, 219, 231, 221, 224, 225, 247, 251, 281, 286, 294 Caterina Sforza, handling of 294, 295 Ermes forced to marry over military accord with Cesare Borgia 128 Giovanni II accepting military contracts from whomever he pleased 219 et al. military potential as family negotiations 217, 224, 225 et al. military potential of Bentivoglio sons-inlaw 129 et al. mules (see also: horses) 51, 53, 138, 168, 279 mundualdus (legal guardian for women) 24 murders—see assassinations Murphy, Caroline P. (contemporary scholar) 270, 271n.37 Museo Civico Medioevale (Bologna) 27n.17, 287 Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (Spain) mushrooms (as gift) 191

336 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

music/ musicians (see also: Concerts, Dance, Singing) 41, 43, 71, 128, 128n.58, 186, 205, 274n.46 Nadi, Gaspare (architect/ construction worker/ chronicler) 38, 39, 42, 52, 53, 54, 60, 86, 118, 274n.46, 276 names/ naming schemes of Bentivoglio children (see also: Sforza, Genevra; Bentivoglio, Giovanni II) 120-122 et al. Nanni, Ercole (printer) 57, 57n.83, 293 Naples 38, 38n.2, 46n.30, 80, 89, 97, 130, 235, 266 Naples (King of) 38-39n.2, 89 Nappi, Cesare (Bolognese notary, popular godfather) 124n.40, 154, 269 Nardini, (Ambassador) Stefano di 92, 93 National Gallery of Art (London) 42n.61, 128n.58 National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.) 4, 9, 43n.15, 48n.39, 62, 291, 291n.133 Navarre, Henry of (Protestant son-in-law of Catherine de’ Medici) 298 nettles (ortica/ ortiche) 17, 262, 268, 275 Nicholas V, (Pope) (Tommaso Parentucelli) 78, 87, 101n.102, 226 Nogarola, Isotta (female humanist) 75n.2, 121, 149, 150, 151 Nonfarmale, Ottavio (painting restorer) 113n.10, 251n.187 Norcia 88, 232n.86 notary/ notaries/ notai (see also: protonotary, apostolic) 38, 55, 59, 84, 85, 117n.17, 124n.40, 138, 139, 220, 269, 297 Novilara, Castello di 50 Nucci, Lusanna (concubine of Giovanni della Casa) 102 nurse (see also: healer, wet nurse) 59, 112 nymph 52, 66 Offreduccio, (Saint) Chiara (of Assisi) 140, 141n.109 olives 191, 211 Olivieri brothers (of Acquanegra, Bentivoglio servants) 201, 202, 203, 209, 212 Olivieri, (Don) Bernardino (of Acquanegra) 202 Olivieri, Zoane deli (of Acquanegra, Bentivoglio servant) 202, 203, 209, 212 Ongarino (winner of a tournament) 48 opera/ soap opera 274n.46, 275, 276, 289, 293 Ordelaffi, Pino (of Forlì) 120, 148 order (see also: hierarchies; disorder) 38, 105, 114, 120n.29, 125, 127, 163-167, 186, 190, 295, 300, 312 Orlandelli, Gianfranco (contemporary scholar) 27 Ospedale, Milanzia dall’ (female scholar) 271n.37 Orsi (family) 57, 159 Orsi, Hector (godson of Genevra) 159 Orsini (de’ Medici), Alfonsina (wife of Piero II de’ Medici) 25, 25n.11, 235, 257, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301 Orsini (family) 197 Orsini (Bentivoglio), Giacoma (Borgia relation, wife of Ermes Bentivoglio) 67, 102, 104, 134, 166, 170, 236, 240

Orsini, Giulio (of Rome; father of Giacoma Orsini) 166 Orsini, Paolo (Roman ambassador) 134, 166 Otricoli (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 Owen Hughes, Diane (contemporary scholar) 286n.104, 289 Oxford University 281, 288 Palazzo Bentivoglio—see Bentivoglio palace Palazzo Grande—see Grande, Palazzo Palaeologa, Medea (funerary orations penned for) 253n.194 Paleologo of Monferrato, Guglielmo (condottiere, elderly husband) 99 Paleotti (family) 153, 155, 156 Paleotti, Cristina (one of Bologna’s most damned souls) 278 Pallavicino (family and court, in Busseto) 129, 160, 217, 240, 245, 247, 248, 251, 260, 265, 311 Pallavicino, Barbara di Rolando (married Lodovico Rangoni, grandson of Genevra) 247 Pallavicini, (Marchesa) Camilla (of Corte Maggiore) 264 Pallavicino, Galeazzo (hosted Genevra, married to Elisabetta Sforza) 247 Pallavicino, Manfredo (married Ginevra, granddaughter of Genevra) 247 Pallavicini, (Marchese) Pallavicino 248 Pallavicino di Zibello, Argentina di Federico (married Guido Rangoni, grandson of Genevra) 247 palmistry 57-58 Panaza, Giorgio (owner of osteria) 231, 240n.125 pane (bread)—see: bread, La storia del pane Papal State(s) (see also: Capitoli) 23, 78, 80, 98, 114, 128, 129, 164, 217-254 Bologna and/ as part of 19, 28-29, 31, 87, 123, 145, 219, 217-254, 313, 314 Papal Treasury—see Camera apostolica Papuzoni, Giovanni (Sante Bentivoglio’s agent in Milan) 86 parentela/ parentado (family alliance through marriage) 80, 83, 92, 99n.92, 100n.94, 185, 201 parentela spirituale (family alliance through godparenting) 124 Paris 298, 301 Parma 61, 116, 129, 245 parties/ festivities 9, 38, 40, 41, 42, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 58, 78n.16, 100, 101, 120, 131, 135, 136n.85, 137, 138n.91, 168-171, 183, 205, 279, 293n.139, 313 partisans/ partisan loyalties/ vero amore 21, 27, 56, 57, 60, 109, 139n.96, 162, 166, 230n.74, 234n.97, 235, 245, 249, 250, 252, 260 patria potestas (power of father) 23 Patrizi Sacchetti, Raffaella (contemporary scholar) 284 patron-client relationships 7, 28, 61, 119, 181, 182-216, 188, 193, 197, 198, 202, 224, 252, 312 et al.

337

Index 

Paul II, (Pope) (Pietro Barbo) 28, 57, 57n.85, 100, 101n.102, 220 Pavia 46, 76, 88n.48 pawn 73, 74, 84, 97, 127, 144, 145, 246n.159, 294 Pax bentivolia 314 pearls 46, 48, 48n.40, 49, 92 Pedota, Francesco (of Mirandola, university chancellor) 53n.69 Peltro, Righo del (Bentivoglio partisan) 250 Pepoli (family, as Bentivoglio enemies) 85 Pepoli, Guido (Bolognese citizen) 121-122n.33 Pepoli, Taddeo (Signore) 19 perfume (see also: Gengini, Vincenzo) 38, 191 Perticari, Costanza (famous woman of Romagna) 284n.95 Perugia 88n.48, 220, 252 Pesaro 11, 41, 44, 46, 46,n.30, 49, 50, 61, 73, 74, 75, 76, 76n.7, 77n.12, 78, 78nn.14-15, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 86n.41, 88, 91, 99, 103, 106, 129, 141, 182, 184, 208, 210, 232, 232n.86, 272n.40, 310 Pesaro, Giacomo da (grammar master) 76 Pesaro, Vincenzo of (friend of Genevra) 208 Petronio—see San Petronio Petrarch (Petrarca)/ Petrarchan verse 55n.77, 75, 121, 121n.32 PGR (per grazia ricevuta; see also: ex voto) 52 philtres 112 Piazza Maggiore (main square in Bologna) 18, 32, 41, 114, 237, 245, 249, 260, 290, 291n.132 Piccinino, Niccolò (condottiere) 19 pilgrimages to Jerusalem/ Holy Land 172, 312 to Loreto 53, 169 Pillizoni (church custodian chronicler) 38 Pio (family) 129n.62, 137, 141, 157, 158, 182 Pio, Alberto III (rival cousin of Giberto Pio) 133, 205, 223, 229 Pio, Camilla (founder of convent of Poor Clares in Carpi) 140, 140n.106, 141 last will and testament of 141n.109 Pio, Eleonora (daughter of Eleonora Bentivoglio, nun at Corpus Domini in Bologna) 140, 140n.106, 173 Pio, Galeazzo (of Carpi) 87 Pio, Giberto III (also Gilberto, of Carpi) (husband of Eleonora Bentivoglio) 51, 65, 67, 125n.46, 129, 133, 137, 141, 155, 156, 158, 163, 169, 173, 184, 187, 204, 222, 223n.26, 239, 240n.123 Pio, Ippolita (daughter of Eleonora Bentivoglio, nun at Corpus Domini in Bologna) 140, 140n.106, 173 Pio, Verde (active with Corpus Domini in Ferrara) 141, 141n.109 Pisan, Christine de (famous female writer) 270 Pius II, (Pope) (Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini) 44, 57, 57n.85, 88n.48, 100 Pius IX, Pope (Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti) 143 Pizano, Michele (Bolognese citizen) 93, 97 Plautus (ancient Roman playwright) 169 Plutarch (ancient Greek biographer) 55, 270

poison/ poisoning (see also: assassinations; vendetta) 260, 276, 283 plot to poison Sante Bentivoglio 17, 260, 286 plot to poison Julius II 249 as female method of killing 260 Genevra as poisoner (in legends) 17, 260, 276, 283, 286 Poeti, Achille (godson of Genevra) 153 Poeti, Nicoloso (Bolognese citizen) 81, 88 Poeti, Sigismondo de’ (Bolognese writer) 56 Poggio, Cristoforo (Bentivoglio secretary) 186, 187, 189, 199, 200, 200n.53, 201, 202, 201-202n.56, 211, 212, 213 Poggio, Jacomo (Bentivoglio servant) 187 Poli, Marco (contemporary scholar) 287 politics—see Bentivoglio, Giovanni II; Bentivoglio, Sante; Bologna; Capitoli; godparenting; government; Gonzaga, (Marchese) Francesco; history; Julius II (Pope); libertas; Milan; mission to retake Bologna; Papal State; pax benevola; Rome; Sedici; Sforza, (Duke) Francesco; et al. Pontano, Giovanni (humanist writer) 146n.160 Ponte Poledrano (Bentivoglio country estate; see also Bentivoglio, town) 27n.17, 28, 46n.30, 54, 138, 239, 288 Bentivoglio, Osteria del 102n.108 Pontremoli, Nicodemo of (Sforza agent) 80 pope—see names of specific pope Poppi (Arezzo) 79, 103n.112, 146 Portigiani, Lapo di Piero (Florentine architect) 86 portraits Bentivoglio family donor portrait at San Giacomo (Lorenzo Costa) 9, 63, 113, 114, 116, 143, 251, 251n.187, 274 Bentivoglio, Giovanni II 287 Bentivoglio, Giovanni II’s mistresses never painted 122 Borgia, Lucrezia 294 Sforza, Battista and Federico di Montefeltro, diptych (Piero della Francesca) 48, 75 Sforza, Caterina 296 Sforza, Francesco and Bianca Maria Visconti, diptych (Bonifacio Bembo) 48 Sforza, Genevra, medal (Antonio Marescotti) 9, 42-43, 62, 87, 100 Sforza, Genevra, etched/printed (Giacomo Filippo Foresti) 64 Sforza, Genevra and Giovanni II Bentivoglio, diptych (Ercole de’ Roberti) 4, 9, 48, 48n.39, 49, 62, 92, 113 Portugal, (Princess) Leonor de (also: Leonora) 81, 82 postcards—from Esposizione Nazionale di Roma 9, 277 posthumous images/ stories about Genevra—see: Chapter Six for full discussion (pp. 257-309) as well as Conclusion (pp. 309-315) stones, precious—see jewellery pregnancy/pregnancies (see also: childbirth) 9, 24, 110, 111, 112, 116, 144

338 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

price on one’s head (taglia)/ head price 243-244 printing shop/ press/ printing problems 26, 57, 57n.85, 205, 267, 273 paper production mill 102n.28 prison/ imprisonment/ jail Bentivoglio, Annibale at Varano 19, 97 Bentivoglio family members in prison after exile in ‘letter’ 264 Bentivoglio, Francesca in Faenza 133 Bentivoglio, Giovanni II in Faenza and Caffaggiolo 52, 196, 209, 210, 214 freed from jail (in correspondence) 185 Marescotti brothers in Bologna 263 Ranocchio, Antonio Magnano (freed by d’Este) 214 Rovere, (Cardinal) Giuliano della (nearly imprisoned in Bologna) 220 Julius II feeling imprisoned in Bologna 238 Sforza, Ludovico il Moro in France 232 processions/ cortèges Genevra, led by, for convent entry 142, 174 as highlights in chronicles 55 for grand-daughter after baptism 140 for Bentivoglio weddings 135 for Annibale II and Lucrezia 136 for Eleonora 169 for Giacoma Orsini 170 for Laura 138 for Lucrezia d’Este and other women 51-52 for Alessandro (religious dramas) 170 for most Bentivoglio daughters 137 celebrations for Bentivoglio offspring 168-171 for Julius II’s entry into Bologna 237-238 for peace treaty with Turks and for Giovanni II’s new condotta with Milan 47-48 Procida, (Don) Gasparo de (suitor of Lucrezia Borgia) 292 Prodi, Paolo (contemporary scholar) 28, 29 professors 19, 29, 47, 57, 121, 128, 183n.3, 226, 281 teachers/ tutors/ grammar masters 47n.32, 76, 185, 188n.10 Prognosticon (Arquato) 57 protonotary, apostolic/ protonotaio apostolico 66, 138, 139, 149, 164, 172, 173 prizes, for winners of tournaments 48, 53n.69 Ptolomeo (Gonzaga scribe) 183 Pugliola, Fra Bartolomeo della (Bolognese chronicler) 60 ‘Puteolano,’ Francesco dal Pozzo (university professor, tutor of Bentivoglio children) 47, 128 Pungi lingua (Cavalca) 57 Querelle des femmes 42, 269 Raimondi, Marcantonio (Bolognese etcher/ printer) 269 Rangoni, (Cardinal) Ercole (servant for Leo X) 173

Rangoni, Guido (son of Bianca Bentivoglio and Niccolò Rangoni) 187 Rangoni, Lodovico (grandson of Genevra) 247 Rangoni, Niccolò (of Spilamberto, husband of Bianca Bentivoglio) 65, 67, 125, 125n.46, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 168, 173, 187 Ranuzzi (family) 57, 161 Ranuzzi, Girolamo (Bolognese citizen) 146, 148, 153, 154 Ranuzzi, Sante (godchild of Genevra) 126, 153 Rannucio (Ranuzzi), Hieronymo (Bentivoglio godfather) 147, 158 Ratti, Nicola (Pesarese historian) 272-273 Ravaldino, Rocca di (fortress in Forlì) 294 Ravegnana, Porta (Bologna) 101 Records Office—see Registro Registro/ Ufficio del registro degli atti notarili 84, 90n.59, 122n.36, 139-140n.102 Registro/ Papal Records Office 238 Reguardati, Benedetto (of Norcia, medical doctor) 88, 88n.48 andn.50 reputation of Genevra in contemporary (15th c.) documentation—see Chapters 1-5 (pp. 1-256) and Conclusion (pp. 309-315) in posthumous literature—see Chapter 6 (pp. 257-308) and Conclusion (pp. 309-315) Revere (town in Gonzaga territory) 223, 240 Riario Palace (Rome) 41n.8 Riario Palace (Forlì) 246n.161 Riario (family) 295 Riario, (Cardinal) Raffaele of San Sisto (Bentivoglio godfather) 44n.20, 46, 86n.25, 148 Riario, Girolamo (Signore of Imola and Forlì, husband of Caterina Sforza) 66, 246n.161, 294, 296 Riario, Ottaviano (son of Caterina Sforza, betrothed to Isotta Bentivoglio) 54, 65, 133, 140, 165, 172 Rieti (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 Riccardina, tower at (benefice given to Genevra) 102n.108 Ricci, Corrado (Bolognese historian) 64, 274, 275, 278, 279, 280, 289n.123 Ridolfi (Florentine family) 134 Righizo, Francesco (of Bondeno, in lawsuit) 209 Rimini 11, 20, 51, 54n.70, 86n.41, 115n.13, 116, 129, 132n.72, 133, 136n.85, 137, 164, 169, 176, 182, 184, 236, 276, 184n.95 Rimini, Fosco of (writer) 136, 136n.85 Rimini, Francesca da (famous woman of Romagna) 284n.95 Rimini, Isotta da (famous woman of Romagna) 284n.95 Rizardi, Stephano deli (of Acquanegra, client of Genevra) 213 Roberti, Ercole de’ (Bolognese painter) 4, 9, 48, 62, 92, 113, 293 Robertson, Ian (contemporary scholar) 28, 79, 100

339

Index 

Rocca Antica (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 Rocca (Cocles/ Coclitis), Bartolomeo della (Bolognese palm reading expert) 57-58 Romagna 80, 98, 103, 129, 185, 205, 219, 220, 282, 284, 290, 313 Rome/ Roman 9, 19, 20, 21, 23, 30, 38, 41, 41n.8, 53, 54, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 88n.48, 102, 116, 128, 134, 135, 164, 166, 170, 172, 173, 185, 197, 205, 211, 214, 219, 220, 226, 234, 235, 241, 242, 245, 247, 253, 257, 259, 260, 266, 278, 292, 294, 297, 301, 302, 312, 313, 314, 315 Bologna, as a surrogate Vatican 239, 239n.118 and Capitoli 20, 87, 101n.102, 226, 227 (see also: Capitoli) cardinals’ households in 130, 131n.66 and cardinal/ papal legates (see: cardinal legates) relationship with Bologna (see also: libertas) 18, 19, 22, 28, 29, 73, 87, 114, 219, 220, 226, 227, 258, 263, 284, 313, 314 Esposizione nazionale, with form of Palazzo Bentivoglio rebuilt there 276, 277, 278 Vatican/ Vaticano 276, 294 Romantic era (nineteenth century) 270, 271, 273, 275, 276, 278, 293, 296, 299 Rossi (family) 124, 157, 161 Rossi, Lorenzo (Bolognese writer) 136n.85 Rossi, Mino di (Bolognese citizen) 51 Rossi, Prosperzia de’ (Bolognese sculptress) 269 Rosso Gozzadini, Giovanni di Bernardino (Julius II’s datario) 239 Rota (Roman Rota or Apostolic Tribunal) 238 Rovere, Felice della (daughter of Julius II) 97, 115, 197 Rovere, (Duke) Francesco Maria della (of Urbino, favorite nephew of Julius II) 223, 232 Rovere, (Cardinal) Galeotto Franciotti della (of San Pietro ad Vincula) 238, 239 rubble—see guasto Rucellai, Giovanni (Florentine author) 246n.160 Ruggiero, Guido (contemporary scholar) 118, 288-289 Sacre rappresentazioni (in painting) 114 as religious dramas or mystery plays 136 Saint Augustine, tableaux of life of 137, 170 Saint Bartholomew’s Day 298 Sala, Johanus de (Bentivoglio godparent) 149 Sala Bolognese, Antonio of (client of Genevra) 213 Sala Maggiore (Sala Mazore) 41, 52, 54 Salarolis, Filippo 149, 153 Saliceto (Bentivoglio), Diana (individual vita published from Arienti’s Gynevera) 275 Salimbeni, Francesco (Bolognese notary) 117n.17, 136 Salutati, Coluccio (Florentine humanist historian) 39n.3 Salviati (family) 134

Samperoli, Mattea (concubine of Alessandro Sforza) 76, 76n.7 Samperoli, Pacifica (concubine of Alessandro Sforza) 50n.47, 75, 76, 76n.7 San Domenico (Church, Monastery, in Bologna) 22, 28, 59, 164 San Donato, Strà (Via Zamboni) 21, 41, 61, 101, 113, 313 San Felice, Via 101, 163 San Francesco (Church, Monastery, in Bologna) 22, 39, 58 Madonna of San Francesco 39, 58n.89 San Giacomo (Church, in Bologna) 9, 27n.17, 28, 42, 45, 52, 58, 63, 103, 113, 116, 120, 121n.32, 143, 174, 250, 251, 265, 274, 300 Sant’Agostino, Order of (Genevra granted license to participate there) 49n.44 San Giorgio (featured in Giovanni II’s Book of Hours) 122 San Giorgio (spring feast day, 23 April) 245 San Girolamo (featured in Giovanni II’s Book of Hours) 122 San Lorenzo (Church, Convent, in Bologna) 53 San Luca (Church; see: Madonna di San Luca) San Martino (fall feast day, 11 November) 192, 213, 237 San Mattia (Convent, in Bologna) 67, 133n.76, 140n.106, 165, 172 San Michele in Bosco (Church, outside Bologna) 49n.44, 174 San Petronio (Basilica, in Bologna) 19, 21, 41, 42, 42n.14, 51, 119, 136, 137, 149, 169, 170, 245, 269, 272, 279 San Petronio (tournament) 21 San Piero, Ludovico da (Bolognese representative) 75n.4 San Pietro (Cathedral, in Bologna) 19, 44, 67, 101, 120, 139, 147, 162, 164, 166, 167, 172 San Pietro (Basilica, in Rome) 19, 81 San Pietro ad Vincula/ in vincoli (Minor Basilica, in Rome) 238 Sanseverino, Caterina (mother of Alfonsina Orsini) 297 Sanseverino, (Cardinal) Friderigo da 239 Sanseverino, Roberto da (condottiere) 97n.82 San Sigismondo, Palazzo di (Malvezzi headquarters) 101, 163 Sant’Agricola (on arca of San Domenico) 28 Sant’Angelo, Castel (Rome) 294 Santa Cristina della Fondazza (Church of, Convent, in Bologna) 60n.100, 287 Santa Lucia (Church, Convent of Poor Clares, in Foligno) 141 Santa Maria degli Angeli (Church of, confraternity, in Bologna) 139 Santa Maria degli Angeli (Church of, in Busseto) 248 Santa Maria della Beverara (Church of, near Mantua) 202

340 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Santa Maria del Barracano (Church of, Confraternity, in Bologna) 269 Santa Maria Maggiore (Church of, in Bologna) 67, 139, 140 Sanuti, Niccolò (Count of Porretta) 269 Sanuti, Nicolosa Castellani (Bolognese aristocratic writer of treatise against sumptuary legislation) 42, 78n.17, 269 Sanuti, Palazzo 239, 273 Sassoferato, Matteo da (grammar master in Pesaro) 76 Sassoni, Bernardo (godson of Genevra) 57, 157 Sassuolo (Pio/Bentivoglio town of residence) 11, 86n.41, 116, 129, 133, 163, 176, 232, 236 satiric verses—see Sforza, Genevra, epitaph and sonnet satyr 115, 116 Savonarola, Girolamo (Florentine preacher) 17, 271, 272, 279, 288 Savoy (also: Savoia), (Duchess) Bona (Duchess of Milan) of 24, 102, 113n.9, 272n.40 Scheurl, Christoph (testimony in mission to retake Bologna) 218n.2 Scioli, Stefano (contemporary scholar) 28 Scotti, Daniele (bishop of Bologna) 19 secret code—see letters, coded Sedici (also: Sedici Riformatori dello Stato di Libertà) 18, 19, 20, 21, 28, 37, 41, 51, 53, 79, 81, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 96, 119, 131, 137, 164, 194, 196, 228, 230, 258, 290, 314 sega (red and gold saw; Bentivoglio coat of arms/ family symbol) 21, 41, 124, 237, 249, 250 Senato (Bolognese Senate) 22, 237, 258, 263, 268, 273, 274n.46, 278 senatoriale side of Bentivoglio family—see Bentivoglio, senatoriale Serafina, Beata (see Montefeltro (Sforza), Sveva di) servants, domestic (servant staff, domestic staff, bassa famiglia) 21, 47, 96, 115n.13, 116, 122, 123, 123n.39, 124, 130, 130nn.65-66, 142, 158, 159, 160, 173, 182, 187, 189, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 231, 234, 240, 244, 248, 313 servants (in sense of faithful clients/ friends/ acquaintances) 59, 88, 92, 95, 200, 224 Sforza (family) 67 et al. Sforza, Alessandro (Genevra’s father) 50, 65, 67, 74, 75, 76, 76nn.5-7, 77, 77n.12, 78, 80-82, 85, 89, 91, 93, 99, 105, 121, 123n.39, 141, 149, 257, 262 Sforza (Martinengo), Antonia (Genevra’s sister from Pesaro, wife of Ottaviano Martinengo of Brescia) 67, 75, 76, 76n.5, 99, 99n.92 Sforza, (Cardinal Legate) Ascanio (son of Francesco Sforza) 121, 132, 147 Sforza (di Montefeltro), Battista (Genevra’s half sister, wife of Federico di Montefeltro) 24, 48, 50, 67, 75, 75nn.2 and 4, 118, 129, 232, 253n.194, 272n.40, 275 Sforza, Beatrice (funerary orations written for) 253n.194

Sforza, (Empress) Bianca Maria (praiseworthy Sforza woman) 272n.40 Sforza, (Queen) Bona (of Poland, praiseworthy Sforza woman) 272n.40 Sforza (Malvezzi), Camilla (of Cotignola, wife of Giulio Malvezzi) 101 Sforza, Carlo (of Milan, father of Ippolita Sforza) 54, 121, 126, 132, 148 (?), 150 Sforza, Carlo (illegitimate son of Alessandro Sforza) 67, 75 Sforza, Caterina (Signora of Imola and Forli) 24, 25, 41, 43, 46, 118, 165, 257, 267, 272n.40, 281, 284n.95, 294, 295, 296, 297, 301 Sforza, (Countess) Caterina de’ Nobili (of Santa Fiore, praiseworthy Sforza woman) 272n.40 Sforza, Costanzo (brother of Genevra, husband of Camilla Marzano d’Aragona) 46n.30, 49, 50, 67, 75, 99, 195, 208 Sforza, (Duchess) Cristierna (also: Christine of Denmark, praiseworthy Sforza woman) 272n.40 Sforza, Elisabetta (wife of Guglielmo Paleologo of Monferrato) 99 Sforza, Elisabetta di Tristano (wife of Galeazzo Pallavicino) 247 Sforza, Ercole (son of Alessandro in Pesaro) 67, 76. Sforza, (Duke) Francesco (of Milan) 31, 32, 37, 38n.2, 47, 48, 67, 115, 119, 121, 122, 132, 142, 181, 310 as manipulator of marital politics to force Genevra onto Sante Bentivoglio/ Bologna 73-87 desire to make an alliance with Bologna 80-81 forces Genevra without a dowry 84-85 (her ‘dowry’ being status/connections) forces Genevra’s marriage when Holy Roman Emperor visits Rome 81 Genevra—a favour/pawn owed to him from Alessandro Sforza 77-78 pretends to know nothing about betrothal/ uses pre-Machiavellian ways 82 forces Giovanni II to marry Genevra 88-104 after Sante’s death, suggests Giovanni II marry his aunt/Genevra 92 works against wishes of Giovanni II and Bolognese government 92-97, 105 no dowry offered to Giovanni II either 98 Giovanni II pays homage to Duke Francesco Sforza in Milan 104 marriage creates peace between him and Alessandro, between Milan and Bologna, paves way for Peace of Lodi 105 as correspondent with Genevra 188, 208 Sforza, (Duke) Galeazzo Maria (of Milan) 43, 47, 48, 99, 104, 113n.9, 119, 165, 188, 206n.69, 208, 294 Sforza, Genevra (also called: Zanevera, Zenevra, Zinevera, Gynevera, Genebria, et. al.) 67 art, as depicted in

341

Index 

diptych portrait (de’ Roberti) 48, 62 etching/ biography (Foresti) 64 family PGR portrait (Costa) 52, 63 medal (Marescotti) 42-43, 62 childhood/ daughter of Alessandro Sforza and unknown woman/ early life in Pesaro/education/ as part of family that respected female education 73-79 betrothal to Sante Bentivoglio, choice of/ negotiations with (see also: Bentivoglio, Sante) 77-88, 104-105 Genevra’s first appearance in written records 77 as correspondent with members of major court families 181-216 as correspondent with Gonzaga/ as Gonzaga client 186-189 as family-oriented traditional and loyal consort 206-207 as patron of family, city and staff 193-204 as writer of complimentary letters/ gift exchanges 189-193 chronicles, as most featured female in Bolognese 38 chronicles/ representation in, and other sources 36-66 in exile, forced into, against custom and tradition 217-254 as guest of Isabella d’Este in Mantua 240-245 as guest of Galeazzo Pallavicino in Busseto 245-249 considered important symbol of Bentivoglio family 251 death in Busseto 247 as recorded by chroniclers in Bologna 60-61 sickness/ miraculous flow of menstrual blood 244 preparation to leave Palazzo Bentivoglio 230-234 and family—see: family/ family strategies; team work fashion—see: fashion; veils fertility 109-111, 301 et al. fluidity, socio-political 22-26 friend of (future saint) Caterina de’ Vigri 44 Genevra, reason behind this spelling 17 Giovanni II, as betrothed to/ bride/ wife of (see also: Bentivoglio, Giovanni II) 44-61, 97-105 Bologna in complete submission to Milan 105 Genevra’s first son sent away, daughter married off 103 no celebrations behind marriage/ no dowry 101-102 papal dispensation granted to wed 100 as godmother 124-126, 153-160 historiographical tradition about 17, 257-291

legends/ damnatio memoriae campaign, subject of 257-303 compared with other Bolognese women 268-271 conclusions, overall, to life story/ legends 309-315 early stories 257-268 more recent stories 271-283 most recent historiography 284-291 victims of Renaissance legends 291-302 literary works/ printing biography (Arienti) 44, 55, 56, 64-66 biography (Foresti) 64 dialogue (de’ Poeti) 56 printing press of Ercole Nanni/ Tipografia Ginevera Sfortia 57 marriage—see: marriage motherhood/ fertility/ contribution to Bentivoglio family strategies (see also: childbirth) 109-145 et al. births, statistics about 110-111, 118-119, 145-152 conclusions about her political form of motherhood 143-145 ecclesiastical vocations for children/ use of Corpus Domini 138-143, 172-174 education, interest in children’s 46-47 godparent choices for her children 119-120, 153, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160 marriage arrangements/ weddings for children 126-138, 162-171 naming of her children, often after Sforza relations 120-122 prolific style of/ strongly backing Bentivoglio cause 45-46, 61 vilified for having been too successful in 302 public events/ religious processions/ weddings, parties 47-50, 54, 55 et al. Corpus Domini, events in relation to 44, 49, 54, 60 Costanzo Sforza, wedding of, in Pesaro 49-50 Loreto, visiting, with group of women 53 Lucrezia Borgia, entertaining her, in Bologna 54 Lucrezia d’Este, entertaining her, in Bologna 51-52 Sante, as promised bride of/ Duke Sforza’s arrangements with/ interest in Bologna/ wife of (see also: Bentivoglio, Sante; Sforza, (Duke) Francesco) 77-87 Genevra considered as prize for him and Bologna/ ‘dowry’ as status/ connections 104-105 arrangement made with no dowry/ little written about wedding 84-86 at wedding celebration/ in dance 40-43, 61 and construction of new family palace 86

342 

Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

as widow, after Sante’s passing 88-100 awaiting guidance from Francesco Sforza/ at Corpus Domini 90 belongings, personal, listed in Sante’s household inventory 92 Bolognese government/ Giovanni II against Genevra as choice of bride 92-97 in negotiations behind match with Giovanni II (see also: Bentivoglio, Giovanni II) 88-105 Francesco Sforza promises to care for her and children 97 suggestion from Francesco Sforza to marry Giovanni II 92 unstudied/ unchecked, why her history has been left in this state 29-32 Sforza, Giangaleazzo (Duke of Milan) 188, 209, 210, 214 Sforza, Giovanni (suitor of Lucrezia Borgia) 292 Sforza, (Duchess) Ippolita Maria (wife of duke of Calabria) 24, 97, 115, 118, 253n.194, 272n.40 Sforza (Bentivoglio), Ippolita (sometimes called: Ippolita Simonetti, daughter of Carlo Sforza and Bianca Simonetti, wife of Alessandro Bentivoglio) 54, 67, 123n.39, 125, 126, 130n.65, 132, 132nn.72 and 75, 135, 136, 150, 158, 159, 160, 161, 165, 170, 173, 187, 191, 212, 214, 236, 240, 272n.40 Sforza, (Duke) Ludovico Maria il Moro (son of Francesco Sforza) 132nn.74-75, 133, 149 Sforza, (Count) Marco (father of Camilla Sforza Malvezzi) 95, 101 Sforza, Muzio Attendoli (founder of Sforza dynasty) 67, 74 Siena 84, 154, 194, 209, 235 Sigismondo of Luxembourg (Holy Roman Emperor) 75, 102, 184, 224 (see also: Holy Roman Emperor, Henri V, Federico II, Frederick III) Signa, (Don) Battista da (mansionario of San Petronio; chaplain of Genevra) 58, 149 signore/ ruler, de facto 18, 21, 22, 22n.3, 41, 49, 61, 74, 77, 80, 83, 87, 89, 93, 94, 95n.74, 99, 112, 114, 123, 131, 133, 181, 184, 188, 192, 207, 276, 293, 295 et al. signore/ ruler, de jure 18, 19, 21, 114, 253 signoria (independent court) 20, 22n.3, 66, 81, 93, 133, 195, 280 Sigonio, Carlo (Bolognese historian) 268n.24 silk 53n.69, 102n.108, 104, 113n.9 silver 41, 41n.8, 104, 186, 249n.175 Simonetta, Margherita (funerary orations penned for) 253n.194 Simonetti (or Simonetta), Francesco (also: Cicco or Cecco, chief minister of Duke Francesco Sforza) 80, 132 Simonetti, Bianca (Calabrian heiress, mother of Ippolita Sforza Bentivoglio) 132 Sirani, Elisabetta (Bolognese painter) 303 Sixtus IV, (Pope) (Francesco della Rovere) 49n.44, 131, 142, 294

slave 185, 275 soap 191 Soardo, Baldassare (owed money to Cristoforo Poggio) 212 soldiers—see military sonnets 76n.7, 261, 262, 285, 298 Sorbelli, Albano (historian) 27, 282, 283, 287n.112 sopradote gifts (ultra-dotal counter gifts/ counterdowries; see: dowry) Spagnuoli, Battista (writer for Genevra) 53 Spanish/ Spain (see also Alexander VI, (Pope)) 52n.61, 291, 292, 299 Spilamberto (home of Rangoni family) 129, 137, 138, 159, 163, 168, 176 Spoleto (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 Storia del pane (History of Bread Making, fresco cycle at Ponte Poledrano/ Bentivoglio) 21, 288, 312 Strada Maggiore (street in Bologna) 41 Strano, Tiziana (Bolognese historian) 27, 280, 281 strategy/ strategies, dynastic, marital strategies 7, 73, 74, 78, 87, 92, 99, 104, 105, 109-145, 184, 233 Strozzi, Agostino (laude writer) 56n.77 Strozzi, Ercole (poet) 292, 293 Strozzi, Tito Vespasiano (writer) 293 Strullis da Coldazzo, Antonio de (grammar master in Pesaro) 76 subordination/ submission (of Bologna to Milan and Rome) 37, 89, 105, 116, 184, 193, 252, 258, 265, 310, 312 sumptuary laws/ legislation 24, 41, 42, 269, 272, 300 syphilis—see illness tapestries—see textiles taxes/ tax collection AntonGalezzo, not granted share of 139 Bentivoglio income based on 22, 252 Bentivoglio tax information at ASFE 183n.4 dazio delle cartelle (tax on notarial acts) 131, 131n.67 gabelle: civic taxes for communal needs 41 men exempt from after fathering many children 118 Palazzo Bentivogio, built with money from 239 tax-free entry into Mantua for Genevra 240 women paying when men in exile 235 team work ruling couples 25 Genevra and Giovanni II 59, 125, 127, 143-145 Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga 127 Palazzo Bentivoglio, constructed by 86 females, in confinement room 112 Teatro Comunale di Bologna (built on top of Bentivoglio guasto) 31 Terpstra, Nicholas (contemporary scholar) 28, 29 Terracina (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86

343

Index 

Terzani da Marsciano, Lucia (concubine of Muzio Attendoli Sforza) 67, 74 textiles/ clothing brocade (luxurious textile, often woven with gold) 41, 51, 138, 168 brocade for horses’ costumes 138, 168 damask 48 dresses/dressed 41, 58, 60, 92, 113, 116, 135, 136, 138, 168, 170 inventory of clothing and accessories 92 linen 102n.108 prizes in form of textiles, given at at jousting tournaments—see: prizes satin/ raso 53n.69 silk/ seta 53n.69, 102, 104, 113 sumptuary laws—see: sumptuary laws tapestries 186, 279 veils—see: veils velvet 51 wool 20, 41, 102n.108, 210 women’s dress code—see Bessarione, Giovanni; Sanuti, Nicolosa; sumptuary laws Thebaldino, Tommaso (Bolognese citizen) 93 Thyssen-Bornemisza (Collection of), Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Spain 52 Tintore, Nicolo (tortured Bentivoglio partisan) 249 Tipografia Ginevera Sfortia (see also: printing; Ercole Nanni) 57 Titian (master painter) 293 Todi (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 Tolentino, Pietro da (grammar master in Pesaro) 76 Tomas, Natalie 25, 206n.68, 300 Torelli (Bentivoglio), Barbara (of Montechiarugolo, wife of Ercole di Sante Bentivoglio) 135, 164, 168 Torelli, Guido (of Montechiarugolo, second husband of Francesca Bentivoglio) 67, 129, 133, 165, 170, 172 torture (see also: death; assassinations; poison; vendetta) of corda 59 of partisans 249, 259 tourism in Bologna (see also: Centre, Tourist Information) Santa Caterina at Corpus Domini 141 story of Genevra Sforza, as attraction 290, 291n.132 tournaments (see also: jousting, prizes) 21, 48, 53n.69, 58n.89, 135, 191, 278 Tramoglia, (Monsignor) Luigi della (cardinal hat promised to brother) 222 Trevi (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86 Trombetti Budriesi, Anna Maria (contemporary scholar) 28, 288 Trotti, Antonio (captain general of Bologna) 147 trousseau/ corredo 84, 92, 133, 138, 141, 168 Tristan and Isolt, chivalric legend of 121

Tuate (or Tuata), Fileno delle 38, 38n.1, 39, 45, 54n.72, 60, 61, 78n.16, 250, 253, 260, 269, 287, 288 Turks 47, 226 Tuscany 20, 82, 103, 296 (see also: Florence, Poppi) Ubaldini, Friano deli 38, 38n.1, 39, 44n.20, 48nn.37-38, 50n.49, 60, 78n.16, 100, 129n.62, 136n.84, 237n.110, 244n.145 Ubaldini, Cia degli (praiseworthy woman of Romagna) 284n.95 Ufficio del registro degli atti notarili—see Registro Ugiero, Filippo (Bentivoglio secretary/ cancelliere, husband of Bartolomea) 154, 155, 158, 159, 187, 200, 201, 209, 210 Università degli Studi di Bologna (Studium)—see Bologna, University of Urbino 48, 75, 75n.4, 76, 77, 77n.12, 105, 129, 130, 141, 184, 221, 223, 224, 232, 298 Valla, Lorenzo (humanist historian) 38, 39 Valois, Marguerite de (daughter of Catherine de’ Medici) 298 Varano (Malatesta), Elisabetta (abbess of Corpus Domini in Urbino) 141 Varignana (Bolognese chronicler) 38n.1, 51, 60, 100, et al. Varano 19 Varano, Costanza di Piergentile da 46, 50, 67, 75, 86, 118, 146, 253n.194, 272n.40 Vasari, Giorgio (Florentine author) 269, 296 veils garzeta di tela as foundation for 113n.9 Genevra as expert in 46, 113n.9 Genevra’s widow’s weeds and 100 vendetta (see also: assassinations; death; poison) 17, 263, 273, 274, 275, 276, 279 Venice/ Venetian territory/ Veneto 26, 30, 38, 39, 76, 80, 81, 86, 116, 133, 162, 189, 211, 220, 241, 265, 271n.37, 293 Verona, Guarino of (humanist writer) 269 Vescovato (Gonzaga territory) 129, 133, 141n.110, 165, 184, 236, 241n.130, 249 Aemilia, Via 18, 78 Viadagola, Lucia of—see Lucia of Viadagola vicaria 173 vicar/ vicariate, papal 55, 78, 82, 114, 184 Vignone, Magdalena da (courtesan serving cardinals at Palazzo Bentivoglio) 238-239 Vigri, Caterina de’ (abbess, beata, saint) 44, 60, 141, 142, 275, 281 virago 25, 61, 254, 282, 285, 295, 296, 297, 301 Visconti (family) 19, 20, 99 Visconti (Sforza), (Duchess) Bianca Maria 24, 26, 46, 48, 76, 84, 118, 121, 146 Visconti, Caterina (funerary orations penned for) 252n.194 Visconti (Bentivoglio), Donnina (daughter of Lancelotto Visconti; mother of Giovanni II Bentivoglio) 67, 115, 147, 253n.194, 272n.40, 294

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Genevr a Sforza and the Bentivoglio

Visconti, (Duke) Filippo Maria 78 Vita di nostra donna (Cornazzano) 57 Vitae et sententiae philosophorum (Laertius) 57 Viterbo (site of fighting and disorder between 1504-1506) 232n.86, 239 Vivarelli, Luca (playwright) 275-276 Vizzani, Pompeo (Bolognese historian) 265, 266, 287 Volta (family) 57, 124, 125, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159 Volta, Ginevra (goddaughter of Genevra) 159 Volta, Paolo dalla (Bolognese citizen) 81, 93 Wallace, William (contemporary scholar) 284-285 war/ warfare (see also: condottiere; military) 77, 80, 133, 185, 196, 204, 205, 218 wax 191, 226 weddings (nozze) 64, 21, 27n.17, 28, 41, 41n.11, 42, 43, 44, 45n.23, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 54, 62, 84, 85, 86, 92, 95, 99, 100, 101, 104, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 144, 162-168, 184, 185, 191, 272, 274, 289 Webb, Jennifer D. (contemporary scholar) 46 wet nurse 39, 112, 124 wheel of fortune (rota della fortuna) (see also: fortune; misfortune) 7, 217, 227-230, 217-256 widow/ widows/ widowhood 24, 28, 56, 89, 90-94, 97, 100, 101, 130, 141, 146, 153, 198, 209, 295-297, 310 Wikipedia entries on “Ginevra Sforza” 291 wills (final testaments of) (see also: dowries) Alessandro Sforza 91 Genevra Sforza (no trace remains) 253 Williams, Allyson Burgess (contemporary scholar) 294 wines 41, 188, 189, 191, 192, 208, 213, 215, 233, 240, 240n.123 witches 59, 291 women (see also individual entries for specific women) all walks of life, women from, in chronicles (see also: Tuate, Ubaldini) 39 Bolognese—see: laude delle donne bolognesi; Rossi, Properzia de’; Sanuti, Nicolosa; Sforza, Genevra; and individual entries for Bentivoglio and Sforza females; et al.) Bolognese, early modern, allegedly enjoying greater opportunity in most liberal city in Italy 30, 303 bodies/ women tied to (see also: childbirth; pregnancies; death) 24 as brides—see: weddings as concubines/ mistresses—see: concubines in confinement rooms, 112

and childbirth—see childbirth of culture in Renaissance Italy (see also entries for specific women) 24-26, 75-77, et al. and dowries (see also: dowries) 24, 84 education—see: education for females in exile—see: exile for females and family: see family and fashion: see fashion; textiles godparenting as a political act 126 as grandmothers—see: grandchildren in history 22-26, 29-32, 37-40 et al. and households—see: households laude delle donne bolognesi/ genre—see: laude delle donne bolognesi in legends—see: legends reflections on women plagued in history 299-303 and marriage—see: marriage in metaphors—see: insect metaphors misogyny/ misogynistic thinking 17, 30, 99, 257, 288, 299-300, 303, 312 sexism around births of children by males and females 190 as mothers—see: mothers orations, funerary, for courtly women 253n.194 as politically insignificant 234-237 power bases of early modern Italian noblewomen 112-113 et al. professions for, all-female 136, 142, 168, 169, 170, et al. religious/ in convents/ as abbesses 91, 172-174 et al. in sumptuary legislation—see: sumptuary legislation as writers of letters (Genevra Sforza; Isabella d’Este; et al.) 181-216 widows—see: widows writers of women’s lives (see also: Plutarch; Boccaccio; Arienti; Foresti; et al.) 55, 55n.77 wool/ wool worker/ woollen banners 20, 41, 102n.108, 210 Zamboni, Via—see: San Donato, Strà Zardin Viola (Arienti) 28 Zarri, Gabriella (contemporary scholar) 294 Zili (also: Gigli), Giacomo (Bolognese chronicler) 38n.1, 259 Zinevera (bassa danza) (see also: dancing; Ebreo, Guglielmo) 43, 310 Zoane Maria (Bentivoglio servant) 213