Filippo Maria Visconti

Filippo Maria Visconti was the last Visconti duke of Milan, and the succession crisis his death caused let a mercenary captain make himself a prince. He inherited a duchy that had fallen apart after his father's death and rebuilt it by hiring the best condottieri in Italy - Carmagnola, then Piccinino, then Francesco Sforza - and setting them against Venice, Florence and each other for thirty years. He was said never to leave the Castello di Porta Giovia in the last decades of his life, to be so ashamed of his appearance that he would not be painted, and to keep astrologers who decided his movements; the portrait of a suspicious recluse comes mostly from Pier Candido Decembrio, who worked for him and wrote after his death. He married Sforza to his illegitimate daughter Bianca Maria in 1441 to keep him loyal, which is the decision that mattered. He died in August 1447 with no legitimate heir, and Milan declared itself the Ambrosian Republic. The republic hired Sforza to fight Venice for it, he took the Venetian side instead, starved the city he was supposed to be defending, and entered it as duke in 1450 on the strength of his wife's claim and his army. The Visconti viper stayed on the Sforza arms and is still on the badge of an Italian car company. Pisanello's medal of him survives and is one of the few likenesses, which sits oddly with the claim that he refused to be portrayed. He married three times and had his first wife executed on a charge of adultery that was almost certainly manufactured to get her lands. His court employed Decembrio and collected manuscripts, so the recluse was also a patron.

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