Note *64 — Chapter IV

Bianca Maria was promised and withheld from Sforza many times. At the beginning of the third war with Venice, which ended in 1432, the Emperor Sigismund came into Italy, and to Milan first, to receive the Iron Crown. It was on this occasion that Sforza was first betrothed to Bianca Maria Visconti, just then eight years old. At the date of their wedding—they had not met between—she was only seventeen, yet I suppose this to have been none too early for an Italian girl of the fifteenth century. Sforza was forty. A curious panegyric on the bride will be found in Sabadino G., Gynevra de la clare donne (Scelta di curiosità letterarie inedite o rare Dispensa, 223, Bologna, 1888). And see C.M. Ady, Milan under the Sforza (Methuen, 1907), pp. 18 and 24-5.