The Tigress of Forli (34 page)

One last item needed to be settled in Caterina's life—her irregular situation with Giovanni. By August 1497, Caterina and Giovanni were expecting a child; in September she married the young Medici in a secret ceremony in the fortress of Castrocaro, far from her uncle and his spies. Concealing her marriage to Feo had been due to his low station, but this time Caterina needed to keep Duke Ludovico in the dark until the complicated web of Italian alliances saw a reflowering of friendship between Milan and Florence. Her realm, life, and soul stood on an even keel for the first time in her life, and Caterina looked forward to the future. Probably in this year, the late summer or fall of 1497, the most famous portrait of Caterina was executed. Today gracing the Pinacoteca Civica, the art museum of Forlì, the image of a lovely young woman seated by a window is attributed to Lorenzo di Credi, the former collaborator of both Leonardo and Botticelli, who ran a flourishing studio in Florence. The painting was executed in the avant-garde style of female portraiture pioneered by Leonardo. Caterina turns her head for a three-quarter view, typically used for men: a bolder image than the modest profile portraits of earlier years. Her long fingers delicately arrange jasmine buds in a bowl. This inclusion of hands was the latest rage in portraits, as they provided a precious clue to the personality of the sitter. Caterina sits tall, with her hair pulled gently back and coiled at the back of her head as a few red-gold tendrils frame her face. Steady brown eyes gaze warmly at the viewer. Behind her head a red curtain hints at the fiery character that fascinated Italy, while her beloved castle of Ravaldino is portrayed outside the window in front of her. Her simple but elegant clothes reflect the Florentine distaste for ostentation, not straitened circumstances. No jewels encircle her fingers or throat; the radiance of her skin provides sheen enough. The thirty-five-year-old newlywed Caterina looks serenely out on the world. She had love and success. And now she was immortalized through art. In May 1497 the first edition of Jacopo Filippo Foresti's
Lives of Illustrious Women
²²
was printed, featuring Caterina's biography.

Caterina's contentment was not shared by the duke of Milan or his envoy. After months of denials, the astounded Tranchedini was bitterly embarrassed by the arrival of a letter from Giovanni Bentivoglio, confirming the marriage. "
Nisi maledictos homo qui confidet in homine et maxime in muliere,"
"Cursed is the man who places his trust in men and even more so he who trusts a woman," wrote the exasperated ambassador. Venice took the opportunity to reprove Duke Ludovico for his inability to control Caterina. The doge was uninterested in the sentimental aspect of her arrangements because, as he wrote, "it is the nature of the female sex." What he found objectionable were "her mistakes in public office." The Venetian ruler insisted that "the duke, her uncle, should make sure she understands her role and duties in the present state of Italy." In short, the crown jewel of Romagna, Forlì, with its strong fortresses, strategic position, and well-trained troops, now shimmered in the palm of Florence.

The spring of 1498 was enlivened by a splendid carnival thrown by Ottaviano while Caterina was in the final months of her pregnancy. Dances, parties, and banquets heralded a golden age of relations between Forlì and its rulers. The new arrival to the Sforza-Medici household, Ludovico Sforza de' Medici, was born on the night of April 6 in the fortress of Ravaldino. Caterina named the boy after her uncle, in the hopes of mending fences, but no Milanese ambassador was present at his baptism. The birth was a joyous event nonetheless, and the fruit of Caterina's most fulfilling relationship.

Soon, however, the celebratory atmosphere was swiftly dispersed by gathering tumult. Girolamo Savonarola, the brilliant preacher who had led cynical Florence to repentance and had directed Caterina toward the road to salvation, was executed in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence on May 23, 1498. The Dominican had gone so far as to criticize Pope Alexander VI himself, insistently calling for church reform. Several pro-Medici supporters had plotted against the friar and in 1497 Savonarola was banned from preaching. The priest continued his work anyway and in April he was imprisoned and tortured to obtain a spurious confession of heresy. He was hanged and burned, and then his ashes were scattered in the Arno to ensure that no relics could be collected to venerate the renegade preacher as a martyr.

Today Savonarola seems an enigmatic figure; some portray him as the Inquisition personified, others as a power-hungry politician, while still others work to have him proclaimed a saint. The Savonarola Caterina knew was a stern but supportive adviser who helped her return from spiritual death. Although Caterina's correspondence contains no comment on the sad end of Savonarola, her support of the friar's beloved Muratte continued until the end of her life.

That summer, Ottaviano left with his
condotta
for Pisa, accompanied by Giovanni and a trusted castellan. But the sight of the eldest Riario taking the field flanked by a Medici brought out the vindictive side of the Most Serene Republic. Caterina found herself under constant attack, from little turf invasions to full-scale assault on her castles. The indomitable countess knew it was only a matter of time before she would find Venetian troops digging under her very walls, but she responded to her uncle's warning with a valiant reply: "When Venice attacks, I will have enough spirit to defend myself!"
²³
Besides relying on her own troops and well-built fortresses, Caterina was also anticipating aid from her new allies and family in Florence to fend off whatever the Venetians might bring. She expected to meet Venice head-on in battle, declaring to her uncle, "If I must lose because I am a woman, I want to lose like a man."
²⁴

But the mainstay of her alliance and the pillar of her new happy life was tottering. Giovanni, like many of the Medicis, was cursed with gout and suffered a serious attack after his return from Pisa. He spent one romantic week with Caterina in the fortress but then retired to the thermal baths in Bagno in Romagna for treatment. Gout, an arthritic condition characterized by large amounts of uric acid deposited in the joints, was alleviated by drinking large quantities of water. Sweating in the hot baths also helped eliminate toxins from the body. Giovanni departed for Bagno on August 28 in hopes that the waters would relieve his painful and debilitating condition. Caterina's daughter, Bianca, also unwell, went with him. The first days brought good results. Giovanni wrote to Caterina on September 2, asking for hats and cloths to change during his steam baths. The young Medici was feeling well and felt certain he would be home soon. Urgent political matters occupied most of their correspondence; they both knew that Venice was on the verge of an attack. Giovanni trusted Caterina's judgment in military matters and reiterated his faith in her wisdom. On September 11, emphasizing the need for secrecy, Giovanni recommended no longer using the usual secretaries but only direct correspondence. That businesslike letter was the last between husband and wife. On September 12 Caterina was urgently summoned to Bagno, where Giovanni died that night in her arms. His body was claimed the next day by his brother Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and brought back to Florence for burial. Caterina was alone once again. The lover who had changed her life, the father of her infant son, her friend and ally had slipped away, taken not by sword or dagger but by a fever. Caterina, heartbroken, rode back to Forlì and into her fortress. She donned mourning clothes and draped the bright walls of Paradise in black, but she could spend little time crying over her lost love. Every bit of her energy was directed toward preparing for the Venetian attack.

The swift and ferocious assault at the end of September probably saved Caterina's sanity. Florence had sent a pitifully small force to prevent the Venetian army from entering Tuscan and Romagnol territory. The mercenary captain Dionigio Naldi, assisted by Caterina's fine troops, held the Apennine Pass into Tuscany. The Florentine Simone Ridolfi, a close friend of Giovanni, and his handful of men were overrun at Marradi on the dividing line between Florence and Romagna. Caterina had long predicted this strategic approach by Venice, but the Florentines had paid no heed. Now it was Caterina's soldiers from Imola who turned the tables and rescued the castle. Caterina had saved the day, Florence reaped the profits, and Venice sharpened its knives against the countess of Forlì.

I
N
1499,
TWENTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD
Niccolò Machiavelli's romantic conquests far outnumbered his political successes. With chestnut hair cropped tightly around his long thin face and a meticulously barbered beard, he cut a dashing figure in Renaissance courts. His dark, glittering eyes were his most striking feature: quick to appraise a situation, narrow with wry humor, or wink at a pretty serving girl.

Born in 1469, Machiavelli came of age in the golden twilight of Lorenzo the Magnificent's Florence. His father, Bernardo di Niccolò di Buoninsegna, of the old yet impoverished Machiavelli line, had obtained a law degree but could barely scratch out a living for his wife and four children. Niccolò, the oldest, was endowed with a good humanist education but had no training in the practical skills that might make him wealthy. In the spring of 1498, however, the ambitious young man landed a job with the Great Council of Florence, thanks to his public and vocal disapproval of Girolamo Savonarola. As chief of the Second Chancery and secretary of the Ten of Liberty and Peace, Niccolò's task was to keep the governing bodies apprised of potential military and political problems. With a salary of 192 ducats a year and a prestigious position, Machiavelli's prospects were looking very favorable. "Il Machia," as his friends called him, was already a political player, but his second diplomatic commission, in July 1499, would reveal the young man to be less adept than he had imagined. His mission was to persuade Caterina Sforza, the countess of Forlì, to renew the contract with Florence for a contingent of her troops commanded by her son Ottaviano. The tricky part of the negotiations lay in the fact that Florence not only intended to reduce Ottaviano's salary from seventeen thousand to ten thousand ducats but also had never paid him for his earlier service. Nor did the council want an alliance with Forlì whereby Florence would have to guarantee the safety of the town, despite the fact that they wanted Caterina to send them her best soldiers. She had already refused to renew her contract under these insulting conditions in January and showed no sign of changing her mind.

The friends of the rising diplomat, however, were blind to the difficulties of the task. Caterina Sforza, they breathed in awed whispers, the most famous woman in Italy! Didn't she capture the Castel Sant'Angelo while pregnant? Hadn't she outwitted her husband's assassins? Was it true that she was the most beautiful woman in the world? Biagio Buonaccorsi, Machiavelli's closest friend, was green with envy. Three days after Machiavelli's arrival in Forlì Buonaccorsi wrote to him, begging for a portrait of the thirty-six-year-old celebrity by return mail, preferably rolled instead of folded so as not to damage the image.

Men like Machiavelli and his friends were intrigued by Caterina's reputation for boldness, of a sort not limited to the battlefield. She had gone through three husbands and, rumor had it, countless lovers. Whereas Caterina's first husband had been chosen for her, she was the one who decided to enter into her next two marriages. The stories about her, true or false, fueled the fantasies of many star-struck Italians.

Machiavelli set off to visit the countess, looking forward to adventure and success. Probably he thought he would charm the countess into conceding her soldiers immediately and then spend a pleasant interval in Forlì, enjoying her favors. But in 1499, with the death of Giovanni de' Medici, Caterina was fully immersed in the business of taking care of her family. According to reports from Rome, her second son, Cesare, was doing the family proud. Caterina discreetly disclaimed any credit for her son's merits, writing that her nineteen-year-old was "still fresh from the nest, and if he doesn't yet know how to fulfill his offices, Your Excellency will excuse him considering that he was raised by a woman."
¹
Meanwhile Caterina, through her agents, convinced Cardinal Raffaello Riario to renounce his title of archbishop of Pisa in favor of his cousin Cesare.

Caterina was also negotiating a military appointment for thirteen-year-old Galeazzo and a marriage, once again, for her only daughter, Bianca. After the failure to wed Bianca to Astorre Manfredi, she had toyed with an offer from the count of Caiazzo, although she eventually demurred because "he was somewhat advanced in age."
²

Ottaviano remained unmarried as well. In May 1498, Caterina had been surprised to see the bishop of Volterra in her court, proffering an unexpected bride for her eldest son: Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI. The Borgia pontiff was already Ottaviano's godfather and the proposed match would catapult Ottaviano into the most powerful family in Italy, but Caterina shrewdly read between the lines of the offer. The blandishments included gifts, lands, and titles, but Caterina was not so dazzled that she did not see that the pope expected her to abdicate immediately in favor of Ottaviano, leaving the state in the inexperienced hands of her nineteen-year-old son. Furthermore, Lucrezia had already been married, at age thirteen, to Lord Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro, Caterina's cousin. The marriage had been annulled three years later for alleged impotency on the part of Giovanni Sforza, despite the fact that his first wife had died in childbirth. Caterina knew that the Borgias used marriages as political steppingstones and unscrupulously discarded spouses when they were no longer useful.

Yet Pope Alexander pressured Caterina, deploying her own uncle Cardinal Ascanio Sforza to persuade her, as well as trying to enlist the Medicis. Caterina answered the pope in less than delicate terms, bluntly stating that her son was busy learning the art of war, a warning that she was training him to defend his lands. She also decried the poor treatment of her cousin, claiming that she had no intention of marrying her son to a woman "who had slept for three years in her husband's bed and with one of our own family to boot; for which he could not but derive great shame and infamy from the illustrious lords in many respects."
³
She reproached her own uncle, claiming that she doubted that Cardinal Ascanio could in good conscience ask her to give her son "someone else's wife."
⁴
In short, Caterina wrote, when she did decide to marry her son, it would be to a person whose family was not actively plotting against her and "contrary to and repelled by her continued well-being."
⁵
By doing this she well may have saved Ottaviano's life, for Lucrezia's next husband, Alfonso, duke of Calabria, was murdered by her brother Cesare in June 1500. But the countess had made a powerful and ruthless new enemy in Pope Alexander VI.