With all his occupations of war and statesmanship, Gian Galeazzo found time to continue his father’s patronage of Letters. He had as a youth studied deeply himself in the University of Pavia. An early fresco at Pavia, now long lost, represented him as a child standing in a crowd of nobles and distinguished men in his father’s palace, and in answer to the question, who was the greatest man present, pointing to the poet Petrarca. This allegory recorded the honour which he paid all his life to intellect and learning. He called the greatest scholars to the Chairs of the University, including Emanuel Chrysoloras, who thus brought to Milan the newly reviving knowledge of Greek. He made these men his councillors and familiar associates. They read poetry to him and discussed the new discoveries of antiquity, so that his castle has been called a temple of wisdom. Architecture, sculpture, painting were equally fostered by him. There was no sort of human activity which he did not seek to stimulate for the advantage and glory of his State. Though its operations meant destruction to lesser powers, Gian Galeazzo’s brain was essentially kingly and creative. This was the moment in Italy of the formation of great States. The old faction struggles of the era of freedom had come to an end with the establishment of tyrannies, and of these the lesser were now being swallowed up by the greater. In this process Milan under the Visconti was the leader. Its natural outcome seemed to be the foundation of a great settled kingdom in the peninsula, like France and England in the North. The patriotic spirits of the time dreamed of such a kingdom as the redemption of Italy from her woes of constant dissension and warfare. The idea took practical shape in the mind of the great Matteo’s descendant and heir, in whom character and circumstance united to carry the large political thought and ambition of the Visconti nearest to its supreme fulfilment. And it was to Gian Galeazzo that the dreamers looked for the realisation of their desire, as perhaps Petrarca had looked to the earlier generation. Fazio degli Uberti, the fourteenth century Florentine poet and exile, who lived long at the Viscontean Court, in one of his canzoni makes Rome cry— ‘O figliuol mio, da quanta crudel guerra Tutti insieme verremo a dolcie pace Se Italia soggiace A un solo re....’[2] Footnote 2: ‘Oh my son, from what cruel warfare Should we come all together to sweet peace Could Italy be subject To one sole king....’