His marriage with Gentile being hopelessly barren, he had followed the example of his father by obtaining papal briefs of legitimation, in 1454, for his natural sons Buonconte and Antonio. With the latter we shall make acquaintance by and by; the former, a youth of remarkable promise, is supposed to have been his destined heir,[100] but having been sent on a mission to Alfonso at Naples, in October, 1458, he died there of the plague; and another brother, Bernardino, who had accompanied him on that journey, scarcely survived his return. Berni, speaking from personal knowledge of these two princes, applies to them Virgil's high-flown compliment to Marcellus:-- "Ah, couldst thou break through Fate's severe decree, A new Marcellus shall arise in thee! Full canisters of fragrant lilies bring, Mixed with the purple roses of the spring; Let me with funeral flowers his body strew."[101] [Footnote 100: BALDI, II., p. 48.] [Footnote 101: DRYDEN'S translation of _Æneid_, VI., p. 810.] [Illustration: _P. della Francesca, pinx. L. Ceroni, sculp._ _Alinari_ FEDERIGO, DUKE OF URBINO, AND BATTISTA, HIS WIFE _From the picture by Piero della Francesca in the Uffizi Gallery_] These bereavements probably predisposed their father to a proposal made to him at Mantua by the Duke of Milan, that he should marry his niece Battista Sforza, daughter of the Lord of Pesaro, whose descent we have already explained, and who was now about thirteen years of age.[102] Her mother's death, when she was but eighteen months old, had occasioned her being carried at an early age to the court of Milan, where those gifts and endowments were well cultivated for which her mother and great-grandmother had been renowned. Nearly of an age with her cousin Hippolita Maria, one of the paragon princesses of her age, whose marriage to the heir presumptive of the Neapolitan crown we have noticed, she shared her laborious education, and amply redeemed her own hereditary claim to the talents and classical acquirements then in vogue among the pedantic dames of Italy. With the like showy scholarship and precocious command of Latin rhetoric to which her female predecessors had been trained, she was put forward to welcome illustrious visitors at Milan and Pesaro, in harangues which we are assured were sometimes prepared, sometimes extempore, but always elegant and appropriate.[103] The same contemporary authority attributes her engagement with Federigo to the influence of King Alfonso immediately upon Gentile's death; but the dispensation is dated the 4th of October, 1459,[104] and in the following month the betrothal took place at Pesaro, where great satisfaction was displayed, and a donation of 3000 bolognini, or 75 florins, was voted by the council to Alessandro, of which he would accept but two-thirds. The marriage was celebrated at Urbino, on the 10th of February, 1460; and we turn to Sanzi's Chronicle, in the hope of finding some