Ludovico Sforza
Ludovico Sforza governed Milan for two decades, employed Leonardo da Vinci, and lost everything by inviting France into Italy. Born in 1452, the second surviving son of Francesco Sforza, he was called il Moro — the Moor — for his dark complexion, and adopted the mulberry as his emblem on the pun. He was not the heir. His nephew Gian Galeazzo became duke as a child in 1476 after his father's assassination, and Ludovico took the regency in 1480 by displacing the boy's mother, and simply never gave it up. His court was the most brilliant in Europe. Leonardo spent seventeen years in his service, painting the Last Supper, designing pageants and a bronze horse that was never cast, and writing to him in a letter of application that listed nine military engineering skills before mentioning painting at all. Bramante rebuilt churches for him; Donato Montorfano, Luca Pacioli and the humanists were kept on salary. He married Beatrice d'Este in 1491, and her death in childbirth in 1497 broke him. His fatal move came in 1494. Threatened by Naples, whose king was the grandfather of Gian Galeazzo's wife, he encouraged Charles VIII of France to press his own claim to Naples and let a French army cross the Alps. Gian Galeazzo died conveniently that October and Ludovico took the title. The French returned in 1499 under Louis XII, who claimed Milan itself through his Visconti grandmother. Ludovico was betrayed by his Swiss mercenaries in 1500 and died a French prisoner in 1508.
- Lived: 1452 CE – 1508 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: duke, patron_of_arts
