During his regency the Moro spent enormous sums on the various works which he undertook in the Castle. He formed a vast piazza around it, in the midst of which he apparently intended to place Leonardo’s great equestrian statue of Duke Francesco. The clay model of this statue was in fact set up there on the occasion of Bianca Maria Sforza’s marriage with the Emperor Maximilian, and remained there till, with the passing of the Moro’s ephemeral glory, it too perished for the wanton amusement of a foreign invader. In 1494, when the death of Gian Galeazzo removed the last shadowy limitation of Lodovico’s sovereignty, the tyrant pressed on with new eagerness the incessant labours of his architects and engineers on the great building. The Rocchetta was finally completed by a portico on the north-east side; and among many other alterations and additions a set of exquisite camerini opening into a loggia were built across a bridge over the moat on the north-east side of the Corte Ducale. The picturesque exterior of this structure, which has been attributed to Bramante—groundlessly, it appears—may be seen in restored form to-day. The great gardens which extended on the north and west of the Castle were a special object of the Moro’s care. He enlarged them continually, absorbing without mercy all the Naboths’ vineyards adjacent. Both Leonardo and Bramante were employed by him at this time for various works in the Castello—chiefly of defence and utility—though Leonardo was also charged with the decoration of rooms in his character of painter. There are jottings in his notebooks referring to work of this sort, estimates in fact of the cost of the materials and labour required. Other existing documents show him frescoing the Sala delle Asse and a certain Saletta Negra in the Corte Ducale. But in spite of the most painstaking research and every effort of restoration, there is nothing now remaining in these rooms which can be considered Leonardo’s handiwork. Neither of Bramante is there any undoubted trace left, except a precious fragment of a painting in one of the rooms of the Rocchetta.