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A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galleazzo Maria Sforza

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Those who seek scholarly works in English on the Italian Renaissance are likely to soon find out that most of the work is centered on two republics and an atypical ecclesiastical state - Venice, Florence and Rome. Naples and Sicily, which made up over a third of the peninsula, get little attention, and the same applies to Genoa, Pisa or the dozens of lesser signories and city-states that dotted the Italian landscape. Thus, Lubkin's work is a welcome look at what was for a time the most powerful of the Italian states, one that caused even Venice to fear for its survival. Why the otherwise not well-known Galeazzo Maria Sforza? As Lubkin points out, his reign of ten years is a manageable space of historical time, and his emphasis on art, enjoyment and spending money makes him a bit of an oddity among his foreign policy-obsessed predecessors Francesco and Gian Galeazzo and his successor Lodovico il Moro. Flamboyent, hot-tempered, free-spending and somewhat sinister at times, Galeazzo Maria was perhaps more typical of the average Italian Renaissance despot than his capable Sforza or Visconti predecessors, and Lubkin suggests he left Milan not only poorer but politically weaker in an Italy about to be buffeted by a French storm from over the Alps.

One slight complaint: while scholarly monographs can be expected to be more expensive than popular works, fifty-five dollars is a fairly high cost for a book. So it helps if potential buyers, like Galeazzo Maria, are not totally averse to conspicuous consumption.

These are a few simple words to describe this man and his entire extended family the Sforzas. The Sforzas were a ruling clan in Renaissance Milan who were extravagant beyond their means with a powerful dictatorial streak. Think of a royal family that was hardcore, treacherous and living up what we called today "keeping up with the Joneses". The Sforzas wanted to be like the Medicis and the other rulers in Renaissance Italy when it came to diplaying ostentatious wealth that was typical of its day. Unlike the Medicis who were bankers and their creditors, the Sforzas were always in debt since they had to borrow massive amounts of money to fund their extravagant lifestyle. Their other vice was their unreasonably ruthless nature, the sons would be plotting to dispose each other for the ducal court, and Galeazzo Maria would stand out amongst all of them, rumors that he had poisoned his own mother to seize power.

Galeazzo Maria was described as what we called today a sociopath. He was narcissistic, fickle, had a tendency for cruelty, and was extremely lustful in both the material and sexual realm, which would be his ultimate downfall as he betrayed his friends, employees and people throughout Milan. Yet this is the first book to describe Galeazzo Maria's reckoning of his court life, his particpation in the patronage of the arts, the treatment of his servants and his involvement with the daily affairs of the people in the city. A welcome for anyone who wants to look deeper into this man who was both destructive and progressive at the same time. This book is also the first of its kind as the previous reviewer have noted. Most works in English have been centered on Renaissance Florence and Venice, and very little has been written on the other Italian states of the same time.