Gian Galeazzo Visconti

Gian Galeazzo Visconti nearly united northern Italy under Milan and died of fever with Florence surrounded and the work three weeks from finishing. He took power in 1385 by inviting his uncle and co-ruler Bernabo to a friendly meeting outside Milan, arresting him on the road with a large escort he had brought for the purpose, and imprisoning him until he died, probably poisoned. He then spent seventeen years acquiring cities - Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Pisa, Siena, Perugia, Bologna - by a combination of mercenary captains, money, marriage and the systematic exploitation of every quarrel between his neighbours. He bought the title of Duke of Milan from the emperor Wenceslaus in 1395 for a hundred thousand florins, which converted a usurped lordship into a legitimate principality. He built a genuinely modern state by the standards of the day: a professional chancery, a codified tax system, and public works including the Milan cathedral and the Certosa di Pavia, both begun under him. He also arranged the marriage of his daughter Valentina to the Duke of Orleans, which gave the French crown the claim to Milan that brought French armies into Italy a century later and opened the Italian Wars. In 1402 his forces beat the Florentines at Casalecchio and took Bologna, and Florence stood alone and without allies; the plague took him in September at Melegnano. His state was divided among his sons and much of it lost within a decade. Florentine humanists afterwards wrote the story of their republic as liberty saved from a tyrant, which is where a good deal of civic humanism comes from. He was reclusive, rarely appeared in public and governed by written order from Pavia, where he kept one of the great libraries of Europe. His son Filippo Maria recovered much of the state and is in this collection. The Visconti viper remains on the arms of Milan and on Alfa Romeo cars.

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