Life and Marriage
The illegitimate son of Costanzo I Sforza, he was a member of the powerful House of Sforza, in the line of Pesaro and Gradara (the Milanese line held the Duchy of Milan at the time). At the death of his father in 1483 he inherited the lordship of Pesaro and Gradara.
In 1489 Giovanni had married Maddalena Gonzaga, daughter of Federico I of Mantua, but she died the following year. He was thus viewed as a valuable link to Milan by the Borgia family. With the help of Giovanni's cousin, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, the family finalized marriage negotiations in February 1492 between Giovanni, then in his mid-twenties, and Lucrezia Borgia, the thirteen-year-old illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI. A proxy marriage took place on 12 June that year, as the wedding contract stipulated that Lucrezia would stay in Rome and not consummate the marriage for a year. Her dowry was 31,000 ducats. The official marriage was celebrated in the Vatican in 1493, and reputedly was a lavish and decadent affair.
He and Lucrezia spent two years in Pesaro, during which his importance to the ambitious Borgia family dwindled. Sforza tried to wield his proximity to the Borgias to Milan's advantage by acting as a spy, and was found out by Alexander VI. Meanwhile, other political advantages (particularly with Naples) were formed, rendering the strategic marriage useless. Lucrezia, used to privileged life in the Papal court, did not adjust to the provincial atmosphere of Pesaro. By Christmas 1495, both Giovanni and Lucrezia were present again in the court at Rome.
By then, Sforza was aware that his fortune was precarious. He left Rome to continue with a military campaign, and upon his return in February 1497 quickly fled the city in disguise. The accepted reason for this is that the Pope and his son Cesare had contrived a plot to murder Giovanni, but Lucrezia was informed in advance by Cesare and warned her husband to leave. This has not been proven, but remains a popular explanation.
Read more about this topic: Giovanni Sforza
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or marriage:
“We have got to know what both life and death are, before we can begin to live after our own fashion. Let us be learning our a-b- c’s as soon as possible.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Negro history must be studied, not only because it is the history of over 19 millions, but American life as a whole cannot be understood without knowing it.”
—Dorothy Allen Conley (b. 1904)
“Marriage is the clue to human life, but there is no marriage apart from the wheeling sun and the nodding earth, from the straying of the planets and the magnificence of the fixed stars.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)