Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second SeriesSymonds, John Addington
History
Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series
Symonds, John Addington
Greece -- Description and travel; Italy -- Description and travel
In 1459 Duke Frederick married his second wife, Battista, daughter of
Alessandro Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. Their portraits, painted by Piero
della Francesca, are to be seen in the Uffizzi at Florence. Some years
earlier, Frederick lost his right eye and had the bridge of his nose
broken in a jousting match outside the town-gate of Urbino. After this
accident, he preferred to be represented in profile--the profile so
well known to students of Italian art on medals and basreliefs. It was
not without medical aid and vows fulfilled by a mother's
self-sacrifice to death, if we may trust the diarists of Urbino, that
the ducal couple got an heir. In 1472, however, a son was born to
them, whom they christened Guido Paolo Ubaldo. He proved a youth of
excellent parts and noble nature--apt at study, perfect in all
chivalrous accomplishments. But he inherited some fatal physical
debility, and his life was marred with a constitutional disease, which
then received the name of gout, and which deprived him of the free use
of his limbs. After his father's death in 1482, Naples, Florence, and
Milan continued Frederick's war engagements to Guidobaldo. The prince
was but a boy of ten. Therefore these important _condotte_ must be
regarded as compliments and pledges for the future. They prove to what
a pitch Duke Frederick had raised the credit of his state and war
establishment. Seven years later, Guidobaldo married Elisabetta,
daughter of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. This union, though a
happy one, was never blessed with children; and in the certainty of
barrenness, the young Duke thought it prudent to adopt a nephew as
heir to his dominions. He had several sisters, one of whom, Giovanna,
had been married to a nephew of Sixtus IV., Giovanni della Rovere,
Lord of Sinigaglia and Prefect of Rome. They had a son, Francesco
Maria, who, after his adoption by Guidobaldo, spent his boyhood at
Urbino.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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