HISTORY/ Visconti and Sforza, ladies, courtiers and intrigues: that nasty mess at the Court of Milan
Beatrice Cane, wife of the condottiero Facino Cane, played a leading role in the transition between the Visconti and the Sforza in 14th-century Milan.
On May 16, 1412, one of the greatest leaders of the 14th century , Facino Cane, died in Pavia. Born in Casale Monferrato in 1360 (his name was Bonifacio), he was one of the sons of Emanuele Cane, constable of cavalry and podestà in the service of the Visconti, lords of Milan, since the 1370s.
Facino, at just 26 years old, became a captain in the pay of the Veronese Della Scala family. In 1387, he entered the service of Marquis Teodoro II of Monferrato, for whom he conquered several Piedmontese territories, devastating and pillaging them, in accordance with a custom that saw plunder as a further reward for soldiers and mercenary captains. Teodoro II, however, rewarded Facino more generously, granting him the Borgo San Martino fiefdom.
Having returned to the service of the Visconti after the death of Duke Gian Galeazzo (1402), in 1403 Facino managed to subjugate Bologna to the Visconti lordship, also obtaining its government. Having reached the height of a power that was both military and political, Count of Biandrate and holder of numerous lordships (Como, Novara, Piacenza, Varese, Vercelli, Vigevano etc.), he married Beatrice Cane, daughter of his powerful cousin Ruggero Cane: a woman as strong-willed and tenacious as he was, but with whom he would have no children.
Pavia had long been the seat of Facino, partly as the protector of the young Count Filippo Maria Visconti, younger brother of the Duke of Milan, Giovanni Maria. It is perhaps no coincidence that, at the same time as Facino's death, Giovanni Maria was assassinated in front of the church of San Gottardo in Corte in Milan by a group of conspirators, members of important local families such as the Pusterlas, Trivulzios, Aliprandis, and del Mainos.
These close-quarters deaths place on the massive head (depicted in a medallion by Pisanello) and the unsteady legs (the son of first cousins, he was said to have barely walked) of twenty-year-old Filippo Maria Visconti what he perhaps dared not hope. Facino's will, in fact, stipulated that his considerable estate would pass to his wife if she remarried Filippo Maria.
Who was this coveted and ambitious noblewoman in reality? The Treccani Italian Encyclopedia, under the entry "Beatrice, Duchess of Milan," compiled in 1930 by Ettore Verga, states that she was "Born in 1372 in the castle of Tenda, to Pietro Balbo Lascaris, Count of Ventimiglia and Lord of Tenda, and probably to Margherita del Carretto, of the Marquises of Finale."
A short biography inspired by the primary existing source on Beatrice: Bernardino Corio's Historia di Milano (Venice 1515). This narrative is inaccurate, if not mendacious, yet it inspired all subsequent stories, especially in the early 19th century, when the Duchess's image and story fit perfectly into the Romantic era, like many other heroines, saints and sinners alike.
The poet and writer Diodata Roero, Countess of Saluzzo, was timely with her novel Il Castello di Binasco (Florence, Tipografia e Calcografia Goldoniana, 1824) and with her short story Beatrice di Tenda (Florence, Vincenzo Batelli 1835).
She was followed in the theatre by Carlo Tedaldi Fores, with Beatrice di Tenda in Tragedia Istorica (Milan, Società Tipografica de' Classici Italiani, 1825).
And then Pietro Marocco, with The Castle of Binasco (Milan, Felice Rusconi, 1829) and Giambattista Bazzoni, with Historical Stories: Macaruffo Venturiero or The Court of Duke Filippo Maria Visconti (Milan, Omobono Manini, 1832).
And it was she that Vincenzo Bellini and Giuditta Pasta considered for an opera, after attending the "historical mime action" Beatrice di Tenda by the prolific choreographer Antonio Monticini at La Scala in the fall of 1832. Bellini's opera, with a libretto by Felice Romani, premiered at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on March 16, 1833, initially enjoying modest success, then growing exponentially over the years.
For all these people, is the Beatrice they're talking about the daughter of Count Pietro Lascaris of Tenda? This is what many believe, even beyond the authoritative reference from the Treccani cited above.
The truth came to light only in 1956, thanks to Francesco Cognasso and his Who Was Beatrice di Tenda Duchess of Milan (Turin, Italian Deputation of National History), in which the author made public a contemporary document, where Beatrice herself declared herself the daughter and heir of Ruggero Cane.
Proof of this is a later correspondence between Beatrice and the Doge of Genoa, Giorgio Adorno, in which both speak, she of her father Ruggero, and he of the friendship that had bound him.
The truth is, therefore, that Ruggero had a daughter with his wife, Giacobina degli Asinari, between 1370 and 1372: Beatrice. As we have seen, her first marriage was to Facino; and, as we will now see, her second marriage was to Filippo Maria.
A marriage that came just in time, many observed. The Duchy of Milan was then gripped by a double impasse: political, in relations with neighboring states, and economic, with the now total absence of funds in the ducal coffers.
Having defeated and killed his rival Estorre Visconti, Filippo Maria – a personality not only physically scarred, but psychologically paranoid, hypochondriac and superstitious, but who time will reveal to be an unscrupulous, cruel yet exceptionally valuable politician – immediately offers some demonstrations of ingenuity.
Facino had left his wife Beatrice a sum of 400,000 ducats and the vast territories he ruled. His army was also the only one capable of guaranteeing Filippo Maria the conquest and defense of Milan. Through the intermediation of Archbishop Bartolomeo Capra, the marriage between the young Visconti and the much older Beatrice (called procax et avara by the courtier and historian Pier Candido Decembrio) was announced as early as May 21, 1412, to Amadeus III of Savoy.
In a document dated June 17, Beatrice was now called "Duchess of Milan." She lived in the castle of Porta Giovia (later Sforzesco), and at first seemed to be in harmony with her husband, "cubicle and table." She also had a personal power that saw her interact with Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, conquer cities and obtain investitures, conclude treaties and sign them together with Philip Maria.
The certainty of not being able to have heirs, the jealousy towards a Duchess who was too much of a protagonist, the intrigues of those courtiers who had placed near him the young and beautiful lady-in-waiting of his wife, Agnese del Maino (daughter of the powerful Count Ambrogio del Maino) – who, although taken violently the first time, would later become his influential and fertile lover –; all this was perhaps "reason for the Duke's disgust towards the Duchess".
What is certain is that Filippo Maria secretly and skillfully fabricated an accusation of adultery against Beatrice and her supposed lover, the young count (and court musician) Michele Orombello. After a trial and several torture sessions, exhausted by his admissions and her steadfast resolve, both were condemned and beheaded in the gloomy castle of Binasco on the night between September 13 and 14, 1418. Even on the scaffold, Beatrice proclaimed herself an "innocent victim" until her last moment, sparking conflicting views of guilt and innocence from then until the 19th century.
Philip would have no heirs, even through his second wife, Maria of Savoy, daughter of Duke Amadeus VIII and Mary of Burgundy, whom he married in 1427 for the sole purpose of establishing an alliance with the House of Savoy. Left to her own devices and without a worthy dowry from her family, oppressed and sidelined by her husband, Maria lived in solitude until her death in 1469.
It was only with Agnese del Maino that Filippo Maria had a daughter, Bianca Maria, legitimized by Emperor Sigismund and later married to Francesco Sforza. Their firstborn, Galeazzo Maria, began the Sforza dynasty, Dukes of Milan.
Galeazzo Maria may have been burdened by an implicit curse from Beatrice. Of an unstable and unruly temperament, Galeazzo Maria had repeated conflicts with his mother, which erupted upon his accession to the ducal throne after his father's death and which, according to some, ended in a poisonous matricide.
The duke's difficult character, the arrogance with which he treated his subordinates, and the unbridled lust he displayed toward both the wives of courtiers and the pages of the court, alienated him from the aristocracy. A conspiracy of Milanese nobles, likely supported by the King of France, Louis XI of Valois, was soon hatched: Galeazzo Maria was stabbed by Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani, Girolamo Olgiati, and Carlo Visconti on the threshold of the church of Santo Stefano on December 26, 1476, shortly before his 33rd birthday.
He was secretly buried during the night, in an unspecified spot between two columns of the Cathedral. Public unrest was feared, given the hatred that had accumulated against him. It was his fourth-born brother, Ludovico il Moro, who would lead the Sforza family and Milan to a glory of power, culture, and art no less than that of the great Renaissance capitals.
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