title: Organ donation

text: Some organizations, such as the National Kidney Foundation, oppose financial incentives associated with organ donation claiming, "Offering direct or indirect economic benefits in exchange for organ donation is inconsistent with our values as a society." One argument is it will disproportionately affect the poor. The $300–3,000 reward may act as an incentive for poorer individuals, as opposed to the wealthy who may not find the offered incentives significant. The National Kidney Foundation has noted that financial incentives, such as this Pennsylvania statute, diminish human dignity.


title: Organ donation

text: Deontological issues are issues about whether a person has an ethical duty or responsibility to take an action. Nearly all scholars and societies around the world agree that voluntarily donating organs to sick people is ethically permissible. Although nearly all scholars encourage organ donation, fewer scholars believe that all people are ethically required to donate their organs after death. Similarly, nearly all religions support voluntary organ donation as a charitable act of great benefit to the community. Certain small faiths such as Jehovah Witnesses and Shinto are opposed to organ donation based upon religious teachings; for Jehovah Witnesses this opposition is absolute whereas there exists increasing flexibility amongst Shinto scholars. The Roma People, are also often opposed to organ donation based on prevailing spiritual beliefs and not religious views per se. Issues surrounding patient autonomy, living wills, and guardianship make it nearly impossible for involuntary organ donation to occur.


title: Organ donation

text: From the standpoint of deontological ethics, the primary issues surrounding the morality of organ donation are semantic in nature. The debate over the definitions of life, death, human, and body is ongoing. For example, whether or not a brain-dead patient ought to be kept artificially animate in order to preserve organs for donation is an ongoing problem in clinical bioethics. In addition, some have argued that organ donation constitutes an act of self-harm, even when an organ is donated willingly.


title: Organ donation

text: Further, the use of cloning to produce organs with a genotype identical to the recipient is a controversial topic, especially considering the possibility for an entire person to be brought into being for the express purpose of being destroyed for organ procurement. While the benefit of such a cloned organ would be a zero-percent chance of transplant rejection, the ethical issues involved with creating and killing a clone may outweigh these benefits. However, it may be possible in the future to use cloned stem-cells to grow a new organ without creating a new human being.


title: Organ donation

text: A relatively new field of transplantation has reinvigorated the debate. Xenotransplantation, or the transfer of animal (usually pig) organs into human bodies, promises to eliminate many of the ethical issues, while creating many of its own. While xenotransplantation promises to increase the supply of organs considerably, the threat of organ transplant rejection and the risk of xenozoonosis, coupled with general anathema to the idea, decreases the functionality of the technique. Some animal rights groups oppose the sacrifice of an animal for organ donation and have launched campaigns to ban them.


title: Organ donation

text: On teleological or utilitarian grounds, the moral status of "black market organ donation" relies upon the ends, rather than the means. In so far as those who donate organs are often impoverished and those who can afford black market organs are typically well-off, it would appear that there is an imbalance in the trade. In many cases, those in need of organs are put on waiting lists for "legal" organs for indeterminate lengths of time—many die while still on a waiting list.


title: Organ donation

text: Organ donation is fast becoming an important bioethical issue from a social perspective as well. While most first-world nations have a legal system of oversight for organ transplantation, the fact remains that demand far outstrips supply. Consequently, there has arisen a black market trend often referred to as "transplant tourism." The issues are weighty and controversial. On the one hand are those who contend that those who can afford to buy organs are exploiting those who are desperate enough to sell their organs. Many suggest this results in a growing inequality of status between the rich and the poor. On the other hand, are those who contend that the desperate should be allowed to sell their organs and that preventing them from doing so is merely contributing to their status as impoverished. Further, those in favor of the trade hold that exploitation is morally preferable to death, and in so far as the choice lies between abstract notions of justice on the one hand and a dying person whose life could be saved on the other hand, the organ trade should be legalized. Conversely, surveys conducted among living donors postoperatively and in a period of five years following the procedure have shown extreme regret in a majority of the donors, who said that given the chance to repeat the procedure, they would not. Additionally, many study participants reported a decided worsening of economic condition following the procedure. These studies looked only at people who sold a kidney in countries where organ sales are already legal.


title: Organ donation

text: A consequence of the black market for organs has been a number of cases and suspected cases of organ theft, including murder for the purposes of organ theft. Proponents of a legal market for organs say that the black-market nature of the current trade allows such tragedies and that regulation of the market could prevent them. Opponents say that such a market would encourage criminals by making it easier for them to claim that their stolen organs were legal.


title: Organ donation

text: Legalization of the organ trade carries with it its own sense of justice as well. Continuing black-market trade creates further disparity on the demand side: only the rich can afford such organs. Legalization of the international organ trade could lead to increased supply, lowering prices so that persons outside the wealthiest segments could afford such organs as well.


title: Organ donation

text: "The New Cannibalism" is a phrase coined by anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes in 1998 for an article written for The New Internationalist. Her argument was that the actual exploitation is an ethical failing, a human exploitation; a perception of the poor as organ sources which may be used to extend the lives of the wealthy.


title: Organ donation

text: Economic drivers leading to increased donation are not limited to areas such as India and Africa, but also are emerging in the United States. Increasing funeral expenses combined with decreasing real value of investments such as homes and retirement savings which took place in the 2000s have purportedly led to an increase in citizens taking advantage of arrangements where funeral costs are reduced or eliminated.


title: Organ donation

text: Brain death may result in legal death, but still with the heart beating and with mechanical ventilation, keeping all other vital organs alive and functional for a certain period of time. Given long enough, patients who do not fully die in the complete biological sense, but who are declared brain dead, will usually start to build up toxins and wastes in the body. In this way, the organs can eventually dysfunction due to coagulopathy, fluid or electrolyte and nutrient imbalances, or even fail. Thus, the organs will usually only be sustainable and viable for acceptable use up until a certain length of time. This may depend on factors such as how well the patient is maintained, any comorbidities, the skill of the healthcare teams and the quality their facilities. A major point of contention is whether transplantation should be allowed at all if the patient is not yet fully biologically dead, and if brain death is acceptable, whether the person's whole brain needs to have died, or if the death of a certain part of the brain is enough for legal and ethical and moral purposes.


title: Organ donation

text: Most organ donation for organ transplantation is done in the setting of brain death. However, in Japan this is a fraught point, and prospective donors may designate either brain death or cardiac death – see organ transplantation in Japan. In some nations such as Belgium, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore and Spain, everyone is automatically an organ donor unless they opt out of the system. Elsewhere, consent from family members or next-of-kin is required for organ donation. The non-living donor is kept on ventilator support until the organs have been surgically removed. If a brain-dead individual is not an organ donor, ventilator and drug support is discontinued and cardiac death is allowed to occur.


title: Organ donation

text: In the United States, where since the 1980s the Uniform Determination of Death Act has defined death as the irreversible cessation of the function of either the brain or the heart and lungs, the 21st century has seen an order-of-magnitude increase of donation following cardiac death. In 1995, only one out of 100 dead donors in the nation gave their organs following the declaration of cardiac death. That figure grew to almost 11 percent in 2008, according to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. That increase has provoked ethical concerns about the interpretation of "irreversible" since "patients may still be alive five or even 10 minutes after cardiac arrest because, theoretically, their hearts could be restarted, [and thus are] clearly not dead because their condition was reversible."


title: Organ donation

text: The majority of organ donors are women. For example, in the United States, 62% of kidney donors and 53% of liver donors are women. In India, women constitute 74% of kidney donors and 60.5% of liver donors. Additionally, the number of female organ recipients is conspicuously lower than that of male recipients. In the U.S., 35% of liver recipients and 39% of kidney recipients are women. In India, the figures are 24% and 19% respectively.


title: Organ donation

text: There are also controversial issues regarding how organs are allocated to recipients. For example, some believe that livers should not be given to alcoholics in danger of reversion, while others view alcoholism as a medical condition like diabetes. Faith in the medical system is important to the success of organ donation. Brazil switched to an opt-out system and ultimately had to withdraw it because it further alienated patients who already distrusted the country's medical system. Adequate funding, strong political will to see transplant outcomes improve, and the existence of specialized training, care and facilities also increase donation rates. Expansive legal definitions of death, such as Spain uses, also increase the pool of eligible donors by allowing physicians to declare a patient to be dead at an earlier stage, when the organs are still in good physical condition. Allowing or forbidding payment for organs affects the availability of organs. Generally, where organs cannot be bought or sold, quality and safety are high, but supply is not adequate to the demand. Where organs can be purchased, the supply increases.


title: Organ donation

text: Healthy humans have two kidneys, a redundancy that enables living donors ("inter vivos") to give a kidney to someone who needs it. The most common transplants are to close relatives, but people have given kidneys to other friends. The rarest type of donation is the undirected donation whereby a donor gives a kidney to a stranger. Less than a few hundred of such kidney donations have been performed. In recent years, searching for altruistic donors via the internet has also become a way to find life saving organs. However, internet advertising for organs is a highly controversial practice, as some scholars believe it undermines the traditional list-based allocation system.


title: Organ donation

text: The National Transplant Organization of Spain is one of the most successful in the world (Spain has been the world leader in organ donation for decades), but it still cannot meet the demand, as 10% of those needing a transplant die while still on the transplant list. Donations from corpses are anonymous, and a network for communication and transport allows fast extraction and transplant across the country. Under Spanish law, every corpse can provide organs unless the deceased person had expressly rejected it. Because family members still can forbid the donation, carefully trained doctors ask the family for permission, making it very similar in practice to the United States system.


title: Organ donation

text: In the overwhelming majority of cases, organ donation is not possible for reasons of recipient safety, match failures, or organ condition. Even in Spain, which has the highest organ donation rate in the world, there are only 35.1 actual donors per million people, and there are hundreds of patients on the waiting list. This rate compares to 24.8 per million in Austria, where families are rarely asked to donate organs, and 22.2 per million in France, which—like Spain—has a presumed-consent system.


title: Organ donation

text: In the United States, prisoners are not discriminated against as organ recipients and are equally eligible for organ transplants along with the general population. A 1976 U.S. Supreme Court case ruled that withholding health care from prisoners constituted "cruel and unusual punishment". United Network for Organ Sharing, the organization that coordinates available organs with recipients, does not factor a patient's prison status when determining suitability for a transplant.


title: Organ donation

text: An organ transplant and follow-up care can cost the prison system up to one million dollars. If a prisoner qualifies, a state may allow compassionate early release to avoid high costs associated with organ transplants. However, an organ transplant may save the prison system substantial costs associated with dialysis and other life-extending treatments required by the prisoner with the failing organ. For example, the estimated cost of a kidney transplant is about $111,000. A prisoner's dialysis treatments are estimated to cost a prison $120,000 per year.


title: Organ donation

text: Because donor organs are in short supply, there are more people waiting for a transplant than available organs. When a prisoner receives an organ, there is a high probability that someone else will die waiting for the next available organ. A response to this ethical dilemma states that felons who have a history of violent crime, who have violated others' basic rights, have lost the right to receive an organ transplant, though it is noted that it would be necessary "to reform our justice system to minimize the chance of an innocent person being wrongly convicted of a violent crime and thus being denied an organ transplant".


title: Organ donation

text: Prisons typically do not allow inmates to donate organs to anyone but immediate family members. There is no law against prisoner organ donation; however, the transplant community has discouraged use of prisoner's organs since the early 1990s due to concern over prisons' high-risk environment for infectious diseases. Physicians and ethicists also criticize the idea because a prisoner is not able to consent to the procedure in a free and non-coercive environment, especially if given inducements to participate. However, with modern testing advances to more safely rule out infectious disease and by ensuring that there are no incentives offered to participate, some have argued that prisoners can now voluntarily consent to organ donation just as they can now consent to medical procedures in general. With careful safeguards, and with over 2 million prisoners in the U.S., they reason that prisoners can provide a solution for reducing organ shortages in the U.S.


title: Organ donation

text: While some have argued that prisoner participation would likely be too low to make a difference, one Arizona program started by former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio encourages inmates to voluntarily sign up to donate their heart and other organs. As of 2015, there have been over 16,500 participants. Similar initiatives have been started in other US states. In 2013, Utah became the first state to allow prisoners to sign up for organ donation upon death.


title: Organ donation

text: There are several different religions that have different perspectives. Islam has a conflicting view regarding the issue, with half believing that it is against the religion. Muslims are commanded to seek medical attention when in need and saving life is a very important factor of the Islamic religion. Christianity is lenient on the topic of organ donation, and believe it is a service of life.


title: Organ donation

text: All major religions accept organ donation in at least some form on either utilitarian grounds ("i.e.", because of its life-saving capabilities) or deontological grounds ("e.g.", the right of an individual believer to make his or her own decision). Most religions, among them the Roman Catholic Church, support organ donation on the grounds that it constitutes an act of charity and provides a means of saving a life. One religious group, The Jesus Christians, became known as "The Kidney Cult" because more than half its members had donated their kidneys altruistically. Jesus Christians claim altruistic kidney donation is a great way to "Do unto others what they would want you to do unto them." Some religions impose certain restrictions on the types of organs that may be donated and/or on the means by which organs may be harvested and/or transplanted. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses require that organs be drained of any blood due to their interpretation of the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament as prohibiting blood transfusion, and Muslims require that the donor have provided written consent in advance. A few groups disfavor organ transplantation or donation; notably, these include Shinto and the Romani.


title: Organ donation

text: Orthodox Judaism considers organ donation obligatory if it will save a life, as long as the donor is considered dead as defined by Jewish law. In both Orthodox Judaism and non-Orthodox Judaism, the majority view holds that organ donation is permitted in the case of irreversible cardiac rhythm cessation. In some cases, rabbinic authorities believe that organ donation may be mandatory, whereas a minority opinion considers any donation of a live organ as forbidden.


title: Organ donation

text: The demand for organs significantly surpasses the number of donors everywhere in the world. There are more potential recipients on organ donation waiting lists than organ donors. In particular, due to significant advances in dialysis techniques, patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) can survive longer than ever before. Because these patients do not die as quickly as they used to, and as kidney failure increases with the rising age and prevalence of high blood pressure and diabetes in a society, the need especially for kidneys rises every year.


title: Organ donation

text: , about 121,600 people in the United States are on the waiting list, although about a third of those patients are inactive and could not receive a donated organ. Wait times and success rates for organs differ significantly between organs due to demand and procedure difficulty. , three-quarters of patients in need of an organ transplant were waiting for a kidney, and as such kidneys have much longer waiting times. As stated by the Gift of Life Donor Program website, the median patient who ultimately received an organ waited 4 months for a heart or lung—but 18 months for a kidney, and 18–24 months for a pancreas because demand for these organs substantially outstrips supply. An increased prevalence of self-driving cars could exacerbate this problem: In the US, 13% of organ donations come from car crash victims, and autonomous vehicles are projected to reduce the frequency of car crashes.


title: Organ donation

text: In Australia, there are 10.8 transplants per million people, about a third of the Spanish rate. The Lions Eye Institute, in Western Australia, houses the Lions Eye Bank. The Bank was established in 1986 and coordinates the collection, processing and distribution of eye tissue for transplantation. The Lions Eye Bank also maintains a waitlist of patients who require corneal graft operations.


title: Organ donation

text: About 100 corneas are provided by the Bank for transplant each year, but there is still a waiting list for corneas. "To an economist, this is a basic supply-and-demand gap with tragic consequences." Approaches to addressing this shortfall include:


title: Organ donation

text: In hospitals, organ network representatives routinely screen patient records to identify potential donors shortly in advance of their deaths. In many cases, organ-procurement representatives will request screening tests (such as blood typing) or organ-preserving drugs (such as blood pressure drugs) to keep potential donors' organs viable until their suitability for transplants can be determined and family consent (if needed) can be obtained. This practice increases transplant efficiency, as potential donors who are unsuitable due to infection or other causes are removed from consideration before their deaths, and decreases the avoidable loss of organs. It may also benefit families indirectly, as the families of unsuitable donors are not approached to discuss organ donation.


title: Organ donation

text: The United States has two agencies that govern organ procurement and distribution within the country. The United Network for Organ Sharing and the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (OPTN) regulate Organ Procurement Organizations (OPO) with regard to procurement and distribution ethics and standards. OPOs are non-profit organizations charged with the evaluation, procurement and allocation of organs within their Designated Service Area (DSA). Once a donor has been evaluated and consent obtained, provisional allocation of organs commences. UNOS developed a computer program that automatically generates donor specific match lists for suitable recipients based on the criteria that the patient was listed with. OPO coordinators enter donor information into the program and run the respective lists. Organ offers to potential recipients are made to transplant centers to make them aware of a potential organ. The surgeon will evaluate the donor information and make a provisional determination of medical suitability to their recipient. Distribution varies slightly between different organs but is essentially very similar. When lists are generated many factors are taken into consideration; these factors include: distance of transplant center from the donor hospital, blood type, medical urgency, wait time, donor size and tissue typing. For heart recipients medical urgency is denoted by a recipients "Status" (Status 1A, 1B and status 2). Lungs are allocated based on a recipients Lung Allocation Score (LAS) that is determined based on the urgency of clinical need as well as the likelihood of benefit from the transplant. Livers are allocated using both a status system and MELD/PELD score (Model for End-stage Liver Disease/Pediatric End-stage Liver Disease). Kidney and pancreas lists are based on location, blood type, Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) typing and wait time. When a recipient for a kidney or pancreas has no direct antibodies to the donor HLA the match is said to be a 0 ABDR mismatch or zero antigen mismatch. A zero mismatch organ has a low rate of rejection and allows a recipient to be on lower doses of immunosuppressive drugs. Since zero mismatches have such high graft survival these recipients are afforded priority regardless of location and wait time. UNOS has in place a "Payback" system to balance organs that are sent out of a DSA because of a zero mismatch.


title: Organ donation

text: Location of a transplant center with respect to a donor hospital is given priority due to the effects of Cold Ischemic Time (CIT). Once the organ is removed from the donor, blood no longer perfuses through the vessels and begins to starve the cells of oxygen (ischemia). Each organ tolerates different ischemic times. Hearts and lungs need to be transplanted within 4–6 hours from recovery, liver about 8–10 hours and pancreas about 15 hours; kidneys are the most resilient to ischemia. Kidneys packaged on ice can be successfully transplanted 24–36 hours after recovery. Developments in kidney preservation have yielded a device that pumps cold preservation solution through the kidneys vessels to prevent Delayed Graft Function (DGF) due to ischemia. Perfusion devices, often called kidney pumps, can extend graft survival to 36–48 hours post recovery for kidneys. Recently similar devices have been developed for the heart and lungs, in an effort to increase distances procurement teams may travel to recover an organ.


title: Organ donation

text: People committing suicide have a higher rate of donating organs than average. One reason is lower negative response or refusal rate by the family and relatives, but the explanation for this remains to be clarified. In addition, donation consent is higher than average from people committing suicide.


title: Organ donation

text: Attempted suicide is a common cause of brain death (3.8%), mainly among young men. Organ donation is more common in this group compared to other causes of death. Brain death may result in legal death, but still with the heart beating, and with mechanical ventilation all other vital organs may be kept completely alive and functional, providing optimal opportunities for organ transplantation.


title: Organ donation

text: In 2008, California transplant surgeon Hootan Roozrokh was charged with dependent adult abuse for prescribing what prosecutors alleged were excessive doses of morphine and sedatives to hasten the death of a man with adrenal leukodystrophy and irreversible brain damage, in order to procure his organs for transplant. The case brought against Roozrokh was the first criminal case against a transplant surgeon in the US, and resulted in his acquittal. Further, Dr. Roozrokh successfully sued for defamation stemming from the incident.


title: Organ donation

text: At California's Emanuel Medical Center, neurologist Narges Pazouki, MD, said an organ-procurement organization representative pressed her to declare a patient brain-dead before the appropriate tests had been done. In September 1999, eBay blocked an auction for "one functional human kidney" which had reached a highest bid of $5.7 million. Under United States federal laws, eBay was obligated to dismiss the auction for the selling of human organs which is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine.


title: Organ donation

text: On June 27, 2008, Indonesian Sulaiman Damanik, 26, pled guilty in a Singapore court for sale of his kidney to CK Tang's executive chair, Mr. Tang Wee Sung, 55, for 150 million rupiah (US$17,000). The Transplant Ethics Committee must approve living donor kidney transplants. Organ trading is banned in Singapore and in many other countries to prevent the exploitation of "poor and socially disadvantaged donors who are unable to make informed choices and suffer potential medical risks." Toni, 27, the other accused, donated a kidney to an Indonesian patient in March, alleging he was the patient's adopted son, and was paid 186 million rupiah (US$21,000).


title: Organ donation

text: Marketing for organ donation must walk a fine line between stressing the need for organ donation and not being too forceful. If the marketing agent is too forceful, then the target of the message will react defensively to the request. According to psychological reactance theory, a person will perceive their freedom threatened and will react to restore the freedom. According to Ashley Anker, the use of transportation theory has a positive effect on target reactions by marketing attempts. When public service announcements use recipient-focused messages, targets were more transported. Individuals who watched recipient-focused messages were more transported because potential donors experience empathy for the potential recipient. Future public service announcements should use recipient-focused stories to elicit relationship formation between potential donors and recipients.


title: Organ donation

text: Awareness about organ donation leads to greater social support for organ donation, in turn leading to greater registration. By starting with promoting college students' awareness of organ donation and moving to increasing social support for organ donation, the more likely people will be to register as organ donors.


title: Organ donation

text: The United States Department of Health funded a study by the University of Wisconsin Hospital to increase efforts to increase awareness and the number of registered donors by pursuing members of the university and their family and friends through social media. The results of the study showed a 20% increase in organ donation by creating support and awareness through social media.


title: Sebastian de Souza

text: Sebastian Denis de Souza (born 19 April 1993) is an English actor. He is best known for playing Matty Levan in the E4 teen drama series "Skins". He has since starred in the period television series "The Borgias" from 2012 to 2013, "" (2018), and "The Great" (2020).


title: Sebastian de Souza

text: De Souza is the second of the two sons of Elinor Kelly and Chris de Souza, an opera producer of Goan Indian descent. He was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, and has an older brother named Tristan. He grew up in Boxford, Berkshire, and was a boarder at Brockhurst and Marlston House School developing a fascination with theatre, music, and writing. At the age of 11 he decided to dramatise "The Willows at Christmas", William Horwood's adaptation of "The Wind in the Willows", and performed it in the barn with his classmates. In 2006, when he was 13, he starred in the short film "Hangman", premiered at the Corn Exchange. It was a story of witchcraft in the mould of "Macbeth", that he co-wrote with the Prep School's Film Club.


title: Sebastian de Souza

text: He went on to St Edward's School, Oxford, where in 2006 he won a music award as a pianist, clarinettist and singer. He later completed A-levels in English, History and Philosophy. He also attended acting workshops at the Watermill Theatre, near Newbury. At the North Wall Arts Centre, he performed lead roles in school productions of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" playing Puck, "Great Expectations" as Pip, C. P. Taylor's "Good" as Maurice, and "Henry V" as Henry, which earned him a drama prize in 2010. In the same year he became a member of the National Youth Theatre.


title: Sebastian de Souza

text: After a brief appearance in Nick Ross's documentary series "The Truth About Crime", de Souza got his break on television at the age of 17, when he was cast as Matty Levan in the fifth and sixth instalment of cult drama "Skins". In 2012, he joined the cast of historical drama "The Borgias", created by Neil Jordan for the American TV network Showtime and filmed at Korda Studios, near Budapest. His character, Alfonso d'Aragona, first appeared in The Confession and closed his run at the end of the third and final season. While in Hungary, he was filmmaker with photographer Benjamin Lebus for "Evelyne's World", a concept short film about the allegory of the Cave starring Evelyne Brochu.


title: Sebastian de Souza

text: De Souza's first big screen role is in Julian Gilbey's thriller "Plastic". Production took place in early 2013 on location in Miami and London. As a screenplay writer, he made his cinematic debut in "Kids in Love", a film produced by Ealing Studios with de Souza also taking a title role. In 2014, he was cast as the male lead in a new Freeform show called "Recovery Road", which was broadcast for a single season in 2016.


title: Sebastian de Souza

text: In addition to his acting career, de Souza is a singer and musician. In 2011 he's featured as a guest vocalist for "Cubiq" in their "Say" EP released by Hidden Label. The tune, related to current electro club music, has been remixed by Matanza and Timmy P in an alternative version that fits the traditional house template. In 2016, the "Recovery Road" cast including Sebastian performed for the spring finale a musical ensemble version of "Lean On Me" by Bill Withers.


title: Sebastian de Souza

text: De Souza also works in the field of producing. In 2013 he co-founded with actor Will Poulter the TV and film production company "Good Soil". The following year he created his own brand management called "de Souza" aimed at helping young storytellers, producers or filmmakers develop their scripts.


title: Sebastian de Souza

text: In March 2021 de Souza's first novel, "Kid: A History of The Future", was published by Offliner Press, a publisher established and owned by de Souza himself.


title: Sebastian de Souza

text: With his family, de Souza annually runs drama courses for 9 to 16 year olds at a home-based Centre for Music Drama and Art. In 2013 he has been made a patron of The Globe Theatre Education Fund, which runs drama projects for schools around the country, mostly Shakespearean. Through a practical experience provided by orchestras he can sing in the tenor range and play different instruments.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink (electronic ink) is a brand of electronic paper (e-paper) display technology commercialized by the E Ink Corporation, which was co-founded in 1997 by MIT undergraduates JD Albert and Barrett Comiskey, MIT Media Lab professor Joseph Jacobson, Jerome Rubin and Russ Wilcox.


title: E Ink

text: It is available in grayscale and color and is used in mobile devices such as e-readers, digital signage, smartwatches, mobile phones, electronic shelf labels and architecture panels.


title: E Ink

text: The notion of a low-power paper-like display had existed since the 1970s, originally conceived by researchers at Xerox PARC, but had never been realized. While a post-doctoral student at Stanford University, physicist Joseph Jacobson envisioned a multi-page book with content that could be changed at the push of a button and required little power to use.


title: E Ink

text: Neil Gershenfeld recruited Jacobson for the MIT Media Lab in 1995, after hearing Jacobson's ideas for an electronic book. Jacobson, in turn, recruited MIT undergrads Barrett Comiskey, a math major, and J.D. Albert, a mechanical engineering major, to create the display technology required to realize his vision.


title: E Ink

text: The initial approach was to create tiny spheres which were half white and half black, and which, depending on the electric charge, would rotate such that the white side or the black side would be visible on the display. Albert and Comiskey were told this approach was impossible by most experienced chemists and materials scientists and they had trouble creating these perfectly half-white, half-black spheres; during his experiments, Albert accidentally created some all-white spheres.


title: E Ink

text: Comiskey experimented with charging and encapsulating those all-white particles in microcapsules mixed in with a dark dye. The result was a system of microcapsules that could be applied to a surface and could then be charged independently to create black and white images. A first patent was filed by MIT for the microencapsulated electrophoretic display in October 1996.


title: E Ink

text: The scientific paper was featured on the cover of "Nature", something extremely unusual for work done by undergraduates. The advantage of the microencapsulated electrophoretic display and its potential for satisfying the practical requirements of electronic paper were summarized in the abstract of the "Nature" paper:


title: E Ink

text: It has for many years been an ambition of researchers in display media to create a flexible low-cost system that is the electronic analogue of paper ... viewing characteristic[s] result in an "ink on paper" look. But such displays have to date suffered from short lifetimes and difficulty in manufacture. Here we report the synthesis of an electrophoretic ink based on the microencapsulation of an electrophoretic dispersion. The use of a microencapsulated electrophoretic medium solves the lifetime issues and permits the fabrication of a bistable electronic display solely by means of printing. This system may satisfy the practical requirements of electronic paper.


title: E Ink

text: Subsequently, Albert, Comiskey and Jacobson along with Russ Wilcox and Jerome Rubin founded the E Ink Corporation in 1997, two months prior to Albert and Comiskey's graduation from MIT.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink Corporation (or simply "E Ink") is a subsidiary of E Ink Holdings (EIH), a Taiwanese Holding Company (8069.TWO) manufacturer. They are the manufacturer and distributor of electrophoretic displays, a kind of electronic paper, that they market under the name E Ink. E Ink Corporation is headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts. The company was co-founded in 1997 by two undergraduates J.D. Albert and Barrett Comiskey, along with Joseph Jacobson (professor in the MIT Media Lab), Jerome Rubin (LexisNexis co-founder) and Russ Wilcox. Two years later, E Ink partnered with Philips to develop and market the technology. Jacobson and Comiskey are listed as inventors on the original patent filed in 1996. Albert, Comiskey, and Jacobsen were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2016. In 2005, Philips sold the electronic paper business as well as its related patents to one of its primary business partners, Prime View International (PVI), a Hsinchu, Taiwan-based manufacturer.


title: E Ink

text: At the E Ink Corporation, Comiskey led the development effort for E Ink's first generation of electronic ink, while Albert developed the manufacturing methods used to make electronic ink displays in high volumes. Wilcox played a variety of business roles and served as CEO from 2004 to 2009.


title: E Ink

text: On June 1, 2008, E Ink Corp. announced an initial agreement to be purchased by PVI for $215 million, an amount that eventually reached US$450 million following negotiations. E Ink was officially acquired on December 24, 2009. The purchase by PVI magnified the scale of production for the E Ink e-paper display, since Prime View also owned BOE Hydis Technology Co., Ltd and maintained a strategic partner relationship with Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. (now Chimei InnoLux Corporation, part of the Hon Hai-Foxconn Group). Foxconn is the sole ODM partner for Prime View's Netronix Inc., the supplier of E Ink panel e-readers, but the end-use products appear in various guises, e.g., as Bookeen, COOL-ER, PocketBook, etc.


title: E Ink

text: PVI renamed itself E Ink Holdings Inc. after the purchase. In December 2012, E Ink acquired SiPix, a rival electrophoretic display company.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink is made into a film and then integrated into electronic displays, enabling novel applications in phones, watches, magazines, wearables and e-readers, etc.


title: E Ink

text: The Motorola F3 was the first mobile phone to employ E Ink technology in its display to take advantage of the material's ultra-low power consumption. In addition, the Samsung Alias 2 uses this technology in its keypad in order to allow varying reader orientations.


title: E Ink

text: The October 2008 limited edition North American issue of "Esquire" was the first magazine cover to integrate E Ink. This cover featured flashing text. It was manufactured in Shanghai and was shipped refrigerated to the United States for binding. The E Ink was powered by a 90-day integrated battery supply.


title: E Ink

text: In July 2015, New South Wales Road and Maritime Services installed road traffic signs using E Ink in Sydney, Australia. The installed e-paper traffic signs represent the first use of E Ink in traffic signage. Transport for London made trials of E Ink displays at bus stops to offer timetables, route maps and real-time travel information. Some Whole Foods 365 stores have employed E Ink-powered electronic shelf labels that can be adjusted and updated remotely and include additional information, such as whether a product is gluten-free. E Ink Prism was announced in January 2015 at International CES and is the internal name for E Ink's bistable ink technology in a film that can dynamically change colors, patterns and designs with architectural products. E Ink displays can also be made flexible, just like LCDs, OLEDs and microLED.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink has since partnered with various companies, including Sony, Motorola and Amazon. E Ink's "Vizplex" technology is used by Sony Reader, MOTOFONE F3, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kindle, txtr Beagle, and Kobo eReader. E Ink's "Pearl" technology is claimed to have a 50% better contrast ratio. It is used by 2011-2012 Kindle models, Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch, and Sony PRS-T1. E Ink's "Carta" technology is used by Kindle Paperwhite (2nd and 3rd generation), Kindle Voyage, Kobo Glo HD, Kobo Aura H2O and Kindle Oasis.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink Pearl, announced in July 2010, is the second generation of E Ink displays. The updated Amazon Kindle DX was the first device announced to use the screen, and the Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, and Kindle Touch also incorporate the Pearl display. Amazon still uses this display technology in the Kindle (all generations, minus the Paperwhite, Voyage, and Oasis series). Sony has also included this technology into its latest release of the Sony Reader Touch edition. This display is also used in the Nook Simple Touch, Kobo eReader Touch, Kobo Glo, Onyx Boox M90, X61S and Pocketbook Touch.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink Mobius is an E Ink display using a flexible plastic backplane, so it can resist small impacts and some flexing. Products using this include Sony Digital Paper DPT-S1, Pocketbook CAD Reader Flex, Dasung Paperlike HD and Onyx Boox MAX 3.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink Triton, announced in November 2010, is a color display that is easy to read in high light. The Triton is able to display 16 shades of gray, and 4,096 colors. E Ink Triton is used in commercially available products such as the Hanvon color e-reader, JetBook Color made by ectaco and PocketBook Color Lux made by PocketBook.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink Triton 2 is the last generation of E Ink Triton color displays. The e-readers featuring it appeared in 2013. They include Ectaco Jetbook Color 2 and Pocketbook Color Lux.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink Carta, announced in January 2013 at International CES, features 768 by 1024 resolution on 6-inch displays, with 212 ppi pixel density. Named Carta, it is used in the Kindle Paperwhite 1st (2012) and 2nd (2013) generations, the Pocketbook Touch Lux 3 (2015), and the Kobo Nia (2020).


title: E Ink

text: E Ink Carta HD features a 1080 by 1440 resolution on a 6" screen with 300 ppi. It is used in many eReaders including the Kindle Voyage (2014), Tolino Vision 2 (2014), Kindle Paperwhite 3rd and 4th generation (2015 and 2018), Kobo Glo HD (2015), Nook Glowlight Plus (2015), Cybook Muse Frontlight, Kindle Oasis (2016), PocketBook Touch HD (2016), PocketBook Touch HD 2 (2017), and the Kobo Clara HD (2018).


title: E Ink

text: The original E Ink Carta display was renamed to Carta 1000, and refinements in Carta 1100 and Carta 1200 improved response times and display contrast. A later refinement in Carta 1250 improved response times and contrast again.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink Carta and Carta HD displays support Regal waveform technology, which reduces the need for page refreshes.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink Spectra is a three pigment display. The display uses microcups, each of which contains three pigments. It is available for retail and electronic shelf tag labels. It is currently produced with black, white and red or black, white and yellow pigments.


title: E Ink

text: Advanced Color ePaper (ACeP) was announced at SID Display Week in May 2016. The display contains four pigments in each microcapsule or microcup thereby eliminating the need for a color filter overlay. The pigments used are cyan, magenta, yellow and white, enabling display of a full color gamut and up to 32,000 colors. Initially targeted at the in-store signage market, with 20-inch displays with a resolution of 1600 by 2500 pixels at 150 ppi with a two-second refresh rate, it began shipping for signage purposes in late 2018 but is years away from being available for e-readers.


title: E Ink

text: E Ink Kaleido, originally announced in December 2019 as "Print Color", is the first of a new generation of color displays based on one of E Ink's greyscale displays with a color filter layer. E Ink Kaleido uses a plastic color filter layer, unlike the glass filter layer used in the E Ink Triton family of displays.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Ludovico Maria Sforza (; 27 July 1452 – 27 May 1508), also known as Ludovico il Moro (; "the Moor"). "Arbiter of Italy", according to the expression used by Guicciardini, was an Italian Renaissance nobleman who ruled as Duke of Milan from 1494 to 1499.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Endowed with rare intellect and very ambitious, he managed, although fourth son, to acquire dominion over Milan, first subtracting the regency from his unwary sister-in-law Bona, then taking over from his late nephew Gian Galeazzo who, it is said, he had poisoned. An enlightened, generous and peaceful prince, he became the patron of artists and writers. During his government Milan experienced the full Renaissance and his court became one of the most splendid in Europe. However, he was nervous and inconsistent in nature. To face the threats of King Alfonso of Naples, he called the French to Italy; threatened even by the French, he could not face the danger, and escaped it only thanks to the intervention of his wife Beatrice. When Beatrice died, he went into depression, his court turned "from glad heaven to dark hell", and he finally succumbed to the King of France Louis XII, who took him prisoner to France, where he ended his days miserably.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Ludovico Sforza was born on 27 July 1452 at Vigevano, in what is now Lombardy. His position as the fourth son of Francesco I Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti meant that he was not expected to become ruler of Milan, but his mother still encouraged a broad education.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Under the tutelage of the humanist Francesco Filelfo, Ludovico studied painting, sculpture and letters along with methods of government and warfare.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Despite being a fourth-born son and therefore without great hopes of rising to the ducal dignity, his mother Bianca wanted him to be educated in the name of the Renaissance spirit and to receive a vast education, especially in the field of classical letters. Under the tutelage of many preceptors, including the humanist Francesco Filelfo and the poet Giorgio Valagussa, Ludovico received lessons in Greek, Latin, theology, painting, sculpture, as well as being instructed in matters of government and administration of the state. To the humanities alternated physical exercise in the form of the scrima, hunting, wrestling, horseback riding, jumping, dancing and the game of rope ball.Cicco Simonetta describes him as the most versed and rapid in learning among the children of Francesco Sforza who, as well as his mother Bianca, showed him particular attention, witnessed by the extensive correspondence. At the age of seven, in Mantua, together with his mother and brothers, he welcomed Pope Pius II on a visit to the city, making the first public outing on an official occasion. At the age of eleven, he dedicated an oration in Latin to his father.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: When their father Francesco died in 1466, the family titles devolved upon Galeazzo Maria, the elder brother. Ludovico was conferred the courtesy title of Count of Mortara.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: After ten days Ludovico was already in Cremona to keep the lands of the duchy united and encourage the inhabitants of the city to pay tributes of loyalty to the new duke.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: He continued to deal with diplomatic missives, remaining in Cremona until the following year, when he went to Genoa to welcome his sister Ippolita, wife of Alfonso of Aragon, receiving that same year the title of Count of Mortara. On 6 June 1468 he was again in Genoa to welcome Bona of Savoy and escorted her together with his brother Tristan to Milan where, on July 7, the wedding with Duke Galeazzo Maria took place. He was again ambassador then to the King of France and then to Bologna. In January 1471 he went to Venice, on behalf of the duke, with a rich procession and gave a speech very well received by the doge and which helped to improve diplomatic reactions between the Duchy of Milan and the Republic of Venice. In March 1471 he accompanied Galeazzo Maria on his sumptuous journey to Florence, he passed in August of the same year to Rome for the coronation of Pope Sixtus IV and then in September to the court of Turin.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Galeazzo Maria seemed to have a particular predilection for him: in 1471 he had established in his will that, dying without grandchildren, the Duchy of Milan passed to Ludovico even before the other brothers. The latter covered his well-known relationship with Lucia Marliani, signing the deeds of donation for the countess. A clear change occurred in 1476, when he was sent to France together with his brother Sforza Maria, in a sort of disguised exile. Bona later accused the two brothers-in-law of having plotted to assassinate the duke, only to deny the accusation once he had made peace with Ludovico, so that it is not possible to establish the reasons for that exile. According to the official version of Galeazzo Maria, it was his own brothers who asked him for permission to "go and see the world".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The assassination of Duke Galeazzo Maria then took place on December 26, 1476, at the hands of other authors. He was succeeded by his son Gian Galeazzo Maria, then only seven years old. Upon hearing the news, Ludovico and Sforza hastily returned from France. Together with two other brothers, Ascanio and Ottaviano, as well as the condottieri Roberto Sanseverino, Donato del Conte and Ibletto Fieschi, Sforza and Ludovico tried to oppose the regency of Bona, since the duchy was in fact in the hands of the ducal councilor Cicco Simonetta. The attempt failed. Ludovico was exiled to Pisa, Sforza Maria to Bari, Ascanio to Perugia. Octavian instead tried to wade the Adda in full and drowned there. Roberto Sanseverino fled to France, Donato del Conte was imprisoned in the "ovens" of Monza and Ibletto Fieschi in the Castello Sforzesco.In February 1479 the Moro and Sforza Maria, induced by Ferrante of Aragon, entered with an army in the Republic of Genoa, where they joined Roberto Sanseverino and Ibletto Fieschi. The Duchess Bona of Savoy and Cicco Simonetta convinced Federico Gonzaga and Ercole d'Este to gather an army and come to their rescue against the payment of a large sum of money. A second army led by Roberto Malatesta and Costanzo Sforza, supporting the Florentines, would have faced the troops of the pontiff and the Neapolitan ones.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: On 1 March Ludovico and his brother were declared rebels and enemies of the Duchy and were revoked the income they received by virtue of their mother's dowry. After carrying out looting in Pisa, the two returned to La Spezia. However, already in mid-May peace negotiations were established between the two sides.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: On July 29 Sforza Maria died near Varese Ligure, according to many poisoned on commission of Cicco Simonetta, according to others of natural death, and Ferrante appointed the Moro Duke of Bari. Following Roberto Sanseverino, on 20 August Ludovico resumed the march to Milan at the head of an army of 8,000 men, crossing the Passo di Centocroci and going up the Sturla Valley. On 23 August he took the citadel of Tortona after having corrupted the Castellan Rafagnino Donati. He then went up to Sale, Castelnuovo Scrivia, Bassignana and Valenza.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: After these successes, Simonetta sent Ercole d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, to stop the rebels with weapons. However, many nobles close to the duchess pushed for reconciliation. Bona finally allowed himself to be persuaded by his lover, Antonio Tassino, probably in league with Ludovico, to forgive his brother-in-law, and so on September 7, Ludovico entered the castle of Milan. Simonetta, knowing his cunning, firmly opposed reconciliation and prophesied to the Duchess Bona of Savoy:"I will lose my head and you in the process of time will lose the state".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The Milanese Ghibelline nobility, which had Pietro Pusterlaas as a reference, took advantage of Ludovico's presence in Milan to try to convince him to get rid of Simonetta, reminding him of all the sufferings that he and his brothers had had to suffer because of Cicco: exile, war, the death of Octavian and Donato del Conte and finally the poisoning of Sforza Maria, to which Ludovico had been very attached. However, he did not consider Cicco a danger and judged it unnecessary to condemn to death a man now quite old and moreover sick with gout. Therefore, Pietro Pusterla planned an armed revolt against the ducal secretary and seeking the support of the Marquis of Mantua and Monferrato as well as Giovanni Bentivoglio and Alberto Visconti.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Ludovico, fearing a popular uprising, was forced to imprison Cicco and his brother Giovanni, who were transferred on a cart to the prisons of the castle of Pavia, while the other family members were released.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Having obtained power, Ludovico recalled his brother Ascanio and Roberto Sanseverino to Milan; then he sent speakers to forge or re-establish alliances with Lorenzo de' Medici, King Ferrante and Pope Sixtus IV, and averted an alliance against him between the Swiss and the Republic of Venice.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Meanwhile, the Ghibelline nobility, who had helped him in his rise to power, had become unpopular with Ludovico and had found in Ascanio Sforza the defender of his interests. The Moor, persuaded by Sanseverino, ordered the arrest of his brother and his exile in Ferrara. Pietro Pusterla, Giovanni Borromeo, Antonio Marliani and many other illustrious exponents of the Ghibelline faction were also exiled.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: On October 30 Cicco Simonetta was beheaded at the ravelin of the castle of Pavia overlooking Visconteo Park. His death of Simonetta took away the main opponent of Antonio Tassino, who became increasingly arrogant. The Corio tells that when the Moro or other Milanese nobles went to visit him, he used to make them wait a long time outside the door until he had finished combing his hair. The Tassino managed to convince Duchess Bona, now subservient to the man, to replace Filippo Eustachi, prefect of the castle of Porta Giovia, with his father Gabriello, resorting to the intermediation of Giovanni Botta. The prefect did not let himself be corrupted and kept the oath made to the late Duke Galeazzo Maria to keep the castle until the age of majority of Gian Galeazzo.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Ludovico then devised the expedient of secretly leading his nephews Gian Galeazzo and Ermes in the rocca of the castle, under the pretext of protecting them from the ambition of the Tassino, and there he convened the council. Bona was forced to sign the sentence to exile for Antonio and his family but, due to the forced separation from her lover, she gave signs of hysteria: she pretended to leave the duchy and threatened suicide if she was prevented, so that Ludovico and Roberto Sanseverino were persuaded to let her leave for France. On 3 November 1480 Bona ceded the regency to his brother-in-law, who was appointed tutor of the young duke Gian Galeazzo, however, at the insistence of his son, he stopped to reside in Abbiategrasso.In 1481, perhaps by mandate of Bona, there was an attempt at poisoning against Ludovico and Roberto Sanseverino perpetrated by Cristoforo Moschioni, in turn, instigated by the secretary of the Duchess Luigi Becchetti and the doctor Ambrogio Grifi. Moschioni was found innocent. The same year there was a second conspiracy planned by the Duchess against Ludovico, but once again it failed. The intercession of the Kingdom of France and the Duchy of Savoy prevented Bona from the scandal of the trial.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Ludovico initially planned to become Duke of Milan by marrying his sister-in-law Bona, but the latter, in love with the Tassino, thought of getting rid of him by giving him a wife. Thus, in September 1480, she asked Ercole d'Este for the hand of his eldest daughter Isabella. This was not possible because a few days earlier her father had already promised her in marriage to Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. The second daughter Beatrice, five years old, was then proposed to the Moro. Ludovico, consulted by his sister-in-law only in negotiations already underway, could only be happy. The engagement indeed promised to be more convenient, as Beatrice lived at that time at the Aragonese court of Naples, raised as a daughter by King Ferrante her grandfather, who was very fond of her, and this meant for Ludovico an alliance also with the king of Naples as well as with the Duke of Ferrara. Consulted on the question of the wedding, Ferrante accepted the engagement and on April 30 of that same year the spousals between the two were held. Subsequently, Ludovico no longer wanted the bride to be raised in Naples and so in 1485 Beatrice returned to Ferrara to her father's court.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: In May 1482 the Republic of Venice took advantage of the War of the Reds, in which the Duchy of Milan was engaged, to open a new front against the Duchy of Ferrara, supported by the pontiffs and the Genoese, and entrusted the command of the army to Roberto Sanseverino.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Ludovico entered the war in favour of his future father-in-law, Ercole d'Este, and first sent Federico da Montefeltro, then, at the death of this, his half-brother Sforza Secondo. On 6 January 1483, Sixtus IV abandoned the alliance with the Venetians and moved to Ferrara. The Venetians through Costanzo Sforza, who had passed to their pay, devised a plan to make Ludovico abandon the league: on July 15 Roberto crossed the Adda and fortified the bridge; despite the success, there were no revolts; The Moor met in Cremona with Alfonso of Aragon and other representatives of the league and decided to immediately counterattack the Venetians. On July 22, Alfonso gathered the army of the league in Monza, and the next day Roberto, realizing that the operation had now failed, retired to Bergamo.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: In the summer of 1483 Gian Francesco and Galeazzo Sanseverino, Roberto's sons, defected from the Venetian camp to pass respectively to the service of Alfonso of Aragon and Moro. The result was a friendship, the one between Ludovico and Galeazzo, destined to last a lifetime.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: On August 10, the Moor and his brother Ascanio marched to the head of their army in Bergamo, forcing the surrender of many castles and threatening Bergamoitself, and then capturing Romano after three days of siege.Despite repeated successes, none of the armies of the league exploited Venetian weakness to inflict a decisive blow; in fact, the Moor, after capturing Romano, returned to Milan. On 24 April 1484 a council of war of the main exponents of the anti-Venetian league, meeting in the castle of Porta Giovia, decided to continue the war against the Republic of Venice. However, disagreements soon arose between Ludovico and Alfonso of Aragon, who had understood the danger of the Moro and feared he wanted to subjugate his nephew Gian Galeazzo who, being betrothed to Isabella of Aragon, was his son-in-law. The Venetians, knowing that Ludovico had incurred excessive expenses in favour of his father-in-law, offered him peace in exchange for a certain amount of money, provided that the Polesine remained in their hands. Ludovico accepted, despite the peace, signed on August 7 in Bagnolo, went against Ercole d'Este, who went on a rampage.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: In the meantime, his fiancée Beatrice had reached an age suitable for the wedding and his father had been pressing since 1488 for a date to be set. Ludovico, however, as the omnipresent Este ambassador informs, had taken with him a girl "very beautiful [...] who goes after him everywhere, and wants all her well and makes every demonstration of it", that is Cecilia Gallerani. For this reason, he postponed the marriage three times, baffling the future in-laws, who believed that he no longer intended to marry their daughter. Hercules had been exhorting the Moor for years to replace his nephew in the effective possession of the Duchy of Milan, for this purpose Beatrice should have procreated a legitimate heir to him as soon as possible. In 1490, however, after thirteen months of total default, Gian Galeazzo had consummated the marriage with his wife Isabella of Aragon, who within a few days found herself pregnant. This event caused on the one hand the irritation of Hercules, on the other, he had to convince the Moor of the need to take a wife.The wedding was set for the following January and on December 29, 1490, during a winter that turned out to be very rigid enough to force the use of sleds, the wedding procession left Ferrara to lead the betrothed to Milan. She was accompanied by her mother and her other relatives. His brother Alfonso and cousin Ercole would have equally married two princesses of the Sforza house on the same occasion: the first Anna Maria, daughter of the late Galeazzo Maria and therefore niece of Ludovico (and sister of Gian Galeazzo), the second Angela, daughter of Carlo Sforza and Bianca Simonetta (daughter of Cicco Simonetta).


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: On 18 January 1491, with little pomp, Ludovico married Beatrice in the Ducal Chapel of the castle of Pavia. He had wanted the wedding to be celebrated in Pavia and not in Milan precisely so as not to give the impression of wanting to bully Gian Galeazzo, legitimate Duke of Milan, who had married Isabella of Aragon in the Duomo a few months earlier.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The marriage was declared immediately consummated and already the next morning Ludovico left for Milan to finish the preparations for the wedding party, in truth it remained secretly blank for over a month, as the spouses had had the opportunity to know each other only the day before and Ludovico, who at the time was thirty-eight years old, had respect for the youth and innocence of his bride, then fifteen, and did not want to force her to consume in a hurry. He, therefore, waited patiently for Beatrice to give herself to him spontaneously, which required a lot of commitment on his part and which aroused new concerns in his father-in-law Ercole, who pressed through Ambassador Trotti for the marriage to be consummated immediately.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The relationship between the two spouses soon became idyllic: "S.r Ludovico hardly ever takes his eyes off the Duchess of Bari" wrote Tebaldo Tebaldi in August 1492; and already a short time after the wedding Galeazzo Visconti declared: "there is such a great love between them that I don't think two people can love each other more". Ludovico was seen dedicating continuous kisses and caresses to his wife, he stood beside her "over the bed" for most of the day when she was sick and in a letter he wrote of her: "she is dearer to me than the light of the sun". It is not certain that his wife reciprocated him with the same transport, but some clues lead us to believe so. On the other hand, the contemporaries themselves noted, not without amazement, that Beatrice followed him everywhere, even in the course of her pregnancies, sometimes endangering her life, contrary to the custom of women who were, during the absences of their husbands, to remain to govern the house. They constituted, in the short years they lived together, a model of an ideal couple, united by a love that goes far beyond death.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The 15-year-old princess quickly charmed the Milanese court with her joy in life, her laughter, and even her extravagance. She helped to make Sforza Castle a centre of sumptuous festivals and balls and she loved entertaining philosophers, poets, diplomats and soldiers. Beatrice had good taste, and it is said that under her prompting her husband's patronage of artists became more selective and the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Donato Bramante were employed at the court. She would become the mother of Maximilian Sforza and Francesco II Sforza, future Dukes of Milan.The correspondence preserves moments of great tenderness, like a letter written to his mother-in-law a few months after the birth of the first-born Ercole Massimiliano, in which Ludovico tells her about the baby's approval and how "my wife and I so naked and naked we let him carry him sometimes and we keep him between the two of us". What is striking is the concern to satisfy his wife in every whim and the concern, manifested to the in-laws, not to let her discover the times when he lied to her, for fear that she "would not love me", as well as the utmost delicacy in participate in mournful events: in 1493 he apologized to his father-in-law for the delay in mourning in Milan, as he was waiting for a better moment to communicate his mother's death to Beatrice, and not to have written to him in his own hand, "because I doubted that my Illustrissima consort "just as he was writing the letter.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Gian Galeazzo and his wife Isabella, after the sumptuous marriage, left Milan to create their own court in Pavia. The young Gian Galeazzo did not seem to wish to rule in place of his uncle Ludovico, but his wife Isabella came into conflict with her cousin Beatrice, as the latter turned out to be more ambitious than her husband and, after giving birth on 25 January 1493, the first son, Ercole Massimiliano, wished that these, and not Isabella's son, was appointed Count of Pavia (title reserved for the heir to the Duchy of Milan).


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Isabella then requested the intervention of her grandfather Ferrante, king of Naples, so that her husband, now of age, was entrusted with the effective control of the duchy. Ferrante, however, had no intention of starting a war, on the contrary, he declared that he loved both granddaughters in the same way and invited them to prudence so that the situation remained stable until the king was alive. When Ferrante died, his successor Alfonso did not hesitate, in defence of his daughter Isabella, to occupy the city of Bari as the first act of hostility towards the Moro.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: To respond to this manoeuvre, Ludovico then allied himself with Emperor Maximilian and with the King of France Charles VIII, to whom he left the green light to go down to Italy to conquer the kingdom of Naples, which Charles considered his legitimate possession as it was stolen by the Aragonese from the Angevins. Maximilian promised Ludovico il Moro to publicly recognize his succession to the duchy and to defend his rights, thus legitimizing the usurpation that many claimed to the Sforza, and to seal this promise he married Bianca Maria Sforza, sister of the young Gian Galeazzo, who brought him the amazing sum of 400,000 ducats as a dowry. plus another 100,000 for the investiture, as well as many gifts.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: On 11 September 1494 Charles VIII arrived in Asti, received with great honours by Ludovico and Beatrice. With him also came his cousin Louis d'Orléans, who was entitled Duke of Milan iure hereditary and aimed at the conquest of that duchy, being a descendant of Valentina Visconti. Despite the latent hostilities, the first months passed under the sign of friendship and the Moor used the charm of his wife to placate the French and thus distract them. However, the jealousies aroused by the handsome Baron of Beauvau convinced him, it seems, to remove Beatrice from Asti.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: On October 22, 1494, Duke Gian Galeazzo died in mysterious circumstances: formally for not having followed the treatment prescribed by his personal doctors for an illness that had been dragging on for some time and for the immoderate life he led, but in the opinion of many prominent contemporaries, such as Machiavelli or Guicciardini, the person responsible for this death was his uncle Ludovico, for poisoning; Malaguzzi Valeri strongly disagrees with this opinion, pointing out how Ludovico was really interested in the approval of his nephew, how he often sent him gifts such as dogs, horses and falcons, and how he was kept constantly informed of the care given to him; he also recalls that Gian Galeazzo had begun to manifest the first stomach disorders already at the age of 13 and that in fact he continuously disobeyed the prescriptions of doctors, continuing to pour wine out of measure and to fatigue in continuous hunting trips and in a disordered sexual life.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The Moro immediately succeeded him by the will of the Milanese nobles, to the detriment of the legitimate heirs, thus touching the apex of political power.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Charles VIII meanwhile easily arrived in Naples, however, neither Ludovico nor his wife had ever really wanted to favour him in the conquest, but rather to frighten King Alfonso II and keep him engaged on another front, so as to distract him from Milan. Ludovico had counted on the fact that the lords of Italy, and especially Florence, would not let Charles pass, which instead happened, as Piero il Fatuo, who until then had been the strongest ally of the king of Naples, frightened ended up throwing himself at the feet of the king of France, granting him not only free passage to Tuscany but even Pisa and Livorno, plus the sum of 120,000 florins. Ludovico, at this point, began to seriously worry about the excessive interference of the French and the blatant threats of the Duke of Orléans, so he decided once again to overthrow the alliances, siding with the Holy League.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: To respond to the obvious threats of the Duke of Orléans, Louis thought of attacking his fief of Asti, but the move had the opposite effect: Louis d'Orléans anticipated it by occupying with his troops, on June 11, the city of Novara, going as far as Vigevano.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Ludovico hastened to close himself with his wife and children in the Rocca del Castello in Milan but, not feeling equally safe, he combined with the Spanish ambassador to leave the duchy to take refuge in Spain. As Bernardino Corio writes, this was not followed only by the iron opposition of his wife Beatrice and some members of the council, who convinced him to desist. The situation, however, remained critical: due to the very high expenses incurred for the investiture and dowry of Bianca Maria, the state was on the verge of financial collapse, there was no money to maintain the army and there was fear of a popular uprising. The Comines writes that, if the Duke of Orleans had advanced only a hundred steps, the Milanese army would have passed the Ticino, and he would have managed to enter Milan, since some noble citizens had offered to introduce it.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Some historians speculated that it was a stroke, as he had a paralyzed hand, never left the bedroom and was rarely seen. "The Duke of Milan has lost his feelings," Malipiero writes, "he abandons himself". To worsen the situation contributed to the ambiguity of the father-in-law Ercole d'Este, who was said together with the Florentines to secretly subvert the Orleans, and of the moro leaders themselves.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The disaster was averted by his wife Beatrice who, appointed for the occasion governor of Milan, ensured the loyalty of the nobles, then went in person to the military camp of Vigevano to supervise the order and animate the captains to move against the Duke of Orleans. Guicciardini's opinion is that if the latter had attempted the assault at that time, he would have taken Milan since the defence resided only in Galeazzo Sanseverino, but Beatrice's demonstration of strength was perhaps worth confusing him in making him believe the defences superior to what they were so that he did not dare to try his luck and retreated into Novara. The hesitation was fatal to him, as it allowed Galeazzo to reorganize the troops and surround him, thus forcing him to a long and exhausting siege.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: On July 6, 1495, the famous battle of Fornovo took place, the League forces took heavier casualties and were unable to stop Charles' march to Asti. It was on the occasion of this that Ludovico had urgently obtained cannons from a pile of 70 tons of bronze originally prepared for an equestrian statue designed by Leonardo da Vinci.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: At the beginning of August also Ludovico, finally healed, returned to deal with the war, and together with his wife went to reside at the Novara camp. On the occasion of their visit, for the pleasure of the Duchess who greatly appreciated the facts of arms, a memorable magazine of the full army was held.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: On the 24th September, a violent brawl broke out for unclear reasons, following which Francesco Gonzaga invited the Moro to lock up his wife "in the coffers". Since the Germans wanted to make "cruel revenge" against the Italians, Ludovico begged Francesco to save Beatrice, fearing that she would be raped or killed. The marquis "with an intrepid spirit" rode among the Germans and not without great effort managed to mediate peace. "Understanding success, Ludovico became the happiest man in the world, seeming to him that he had recovered the State and his life, and together with honour his wife, for whose safety he feared more than for everything else".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: In the meantime, the capitulation of the enemy was awaited, since the Novara garrison was decimated by famine and epidemics; Louis d'Orleans himself was ill with malarial fevers, but in order not to give up every day he urged his men to resist with the false promise that the king would soon come to their rescue. This did not happen and he finally had to declare himself defeated, accepting the safe conduct to reach the camp of King Charles. Of the few surviving soldiers, many died soon after from eating too much fruit after prolonged fasting.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Meanwhile, in 1496 Beatrice was expecting a third child and it was in this period that Ludovico met Lucrezia Crivelli, lady-in-waiting to his wife, who became his mistress. Beatrice until that moment had not shown herself too jealous of the frequent betrayals of her husband, considering them fleeting distractions and of little importance, but when she realized that Ludovico had this time seriously fallen in love with Lucrezia, she tried to oppose the relationship with all her strength. However, there was no way to distract her husband and throughout 1496 Ludovico continued to attend more or less secretly the Lucrezia, in a regime of substantial bigamy, so much so that he ended up impregnating both his wife and lover within a couple of months. Beatrice, who was also sincerely in love with her husband, reacted by refusing him her own and the relationship between the couple reached a breaking point. Finally, deeply humiliated, disappointed, embittered, especially saddened by the premature and tragic death of the very young Bianca Giovanna, her dearest friend, Beatrice died in childbirth in the night between 2 and 3 January 1497.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Ludovico, who had betrayed her so brazenly, went mad with grief, never recovered from the death of his wife, who had until then been his strength and support in the government of the state. He had always been convinced that he would die before her and in his abilities he had placed all his hopes for the maintenance of the state during the minority of the children."And true, the death of Beatrice, the superb and intelligent Ferrarese, was a serious disaster for Ludovico il Moro. She was the soul of all his undertakings, she was the true queen of his heart and his court [...]. If the Duke of Bari [...] managed to represent on the theater of Europe a scene of much superior, as was observed, to his condition, it is largely due to this woman, vain feminally, if you will, and cruel, especially with the Duchess Isabella, but of resolute and tenacious character, of ready ingenuity, of soul open to all the seductions of luxury and to all the attractions of art. When it [...] failed [...] it was like a great storm that came to upset the soul of Ludovico. Nor did he ever recover from it; that death was the beginning of his misfortunes. Gloomy premonitions crossed his mind; it seemed to him that he had remained alone in a great stormy sea and inclined, fearfully, to asceticism. [...] the ghost of his beautiful and poor dead man was always before his spirit."


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: (Rodolfo Renier, Gaspare Visconti)For two weeks he was locked in the dark in his apartments, after which he allowed his beard to grow, wearing from then on only black clothes with a cloak torn up by a beggar. His only concern became the embellishment of the family mausoleum and the neglected state fell into disrepair, at a time when the Duke of Orléans, driven by fierce hatred, threatened a second expedition against Milan.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: With these few words on that same night, he announced the departure of his wife to the Marquis of Mantua Francesco Gonzaga, husband of his sister-in-law Isabella:He told the Ferrarese ambassador that "he never thought he could ever tolerate such a bitter plague", and that he had had him summoned to report to Duke Ercole that if what had ever offended her, as he knew he had done, he asks forgiveness from your ex. your and her, finding himself discontented to the soul ", since" in every prayer, he had always prayed to our Lord God that she left after him, as the one in whom he had assumed all his rest, and since God did not like it, he prayed to him and would always pray to him continually, that if it is ever possible for a living person to see a dead, grant him the grace that he may see her and speak to her one last time, as the one he loved more than himself ".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Even the Sanudo writes that "Whose death the duke could not bear for the great love that brought her, and said that he no longer wanted to take care of either his children, or the state, or worldly things, and just wanted to live [...] and since then this duke began to feel great troubles, while before he had always lived happily".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The Anonymous Ferrarese even reports that Ludovico, during the funeral, wanted to remarry the deceased as if she were alive, confirming the wedding vows, an act perhaps unprecedented. He begged his brother-in-law Francis not to send anyone to condolersi with him, "not to renew the pain"; likewise, he refused, with a few exceptions, to receive condolences from anyone. To the ambassadors he imposed that no one should appoint Beatrice anymore, nor "did he grieve, nor make a sign of sadness; but they should speak of state matters".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Conversely, and in contradiction, he did not miss an opportunity to remember his wife himself, of whom he created almost a cult: in addition to having a coin minted with the effigy of her on the reverse - something very singular, since before then it had never happened that the face of the wife accompanied that of the lord in the coinage - he adopted more and more often the coat of arms bipartite with the Este and Sforza weapons (which was the one used by his wife), and had the effigy of her reproduced on the carnelian of the ring with the seal she wore on her finger, replacing a previous head of the Roman emperor.  To Cristoforo Solari he commissioned a magnificent funeral monument with their two lying figures carved in marble, declaring that "pleasing to God he would one day rest next to his wife until the end of the world".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: For a whole year, he vowed to eat standing, on a tray supported by a servant and imposed fasting at court every Tuesday, the day of his wife's death. In the castle he had a room all decorated in black prepared, which was then known as "Saletta Negra", where he retired to mourn his wife in solitude, and wherever he went he wanted his quarters to be paraded in black. Every day he went at least twice to visit his tomb, never missing, so that the ambassadors who wanted to talk to him found him more often in Santa Maria delle Grazie than in the castle. He became convinced that God was punishing him for his sins and, if on the one hand his religiosity increased, on the other he began to take an interest in necromancy.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Such exasperated manifestations of mourning struck all contemporaries, although they were later interpreted by some historians as a farce conducted artfully, due to the fact that although it seems that at first Ludovico had interrupted the relationship with Lucrezia Crivelli, however in 1500 the woman found herself pregnant again. If this were the case, however, it is not clear to whom this farce could be addressed, nor what sense it would have had to continue it for so long. Even in the most critical moments, that is, on the day of his escape from Milan, his last thought - as Corio reports - was to visit his wife's tomb before leaving.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Charles VIII died childless in 1498, so the Duke of Orleans succeeded him as Louis XII of France. He then decided to take revenge for the humiliation suffered by undertaking a second expedition against the Duchy of Milan. Lacking this time the valuable help of his wife, Ludovico proved unable to face the enemy.Louis XII entrusted the leadership of the army for the conquest of Milan to the famous leader Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, a personal enemy of the Moro, against whom he meditated on vengeance purposes.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Since the Pisans preferred the protection of Venice (the city had already been subject to the Lord of Milan under the Visconti), Ludovico withdrew his troops from Pisa, having lost all hope of being able to take charge of the Tuscan city. He then reversed the alliance with Venice, militarily helping Florence for the reconquest of Pisa, hoping that the Florentine Republic would help him at least with diplomacy against the arrival of King Louis XII.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The move turned out to be wrong, indeed it deprived him of a precious ally, Venice, which had helped him concretely since the battle of Fornovo, certainly not making him the help of Florence, of which the Duchy of Milan had always been a proud opponent since the fifteenth century before Sforza and Medici started a personal friendship. All this was evident at the second descent into Italy of the King of France: Louis XII allied himself with Venice, which at this point was eager to take revenge for Ludovico's about-face in Pisa, and Gian Giacomo Trivulzio passed with the exercise in Italy.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Ludovico preferred to flee and together with his sons and his brother Ascanio took refuge in Innsbruck with Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg, leaving Milan on September 1, 1499. Of the Sanseverino brothers, Galeazzo, and had followed him, was instead with a blatant about-face passed to the service of the King of France. Immediately after the departure of the duke, also thanks to the revolt of the Milanese people oppressed by taxes, the Trivulzio entered triumphantly in Milan. Of this tragic event, which inaugurated a period of wars and foreign invasions on the peninsula, Machiavelli directly blamed Ludovico il Moro and the policy he carried out, a historical judgment with which many historians agreed over the centuries, but which today many tend to review.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: In Venice there were rumors that Ludovico, in Germany, had gone mad: that he had converted to Islam, had stabbed his son-in-law Galeazzo to death and wounded his brother Ascanio, then he had been chained, but these were false rumors. Having learned that the population had now in hatred of foreign oppression, due to the abuses of the French, Ludovico hired in Germany a mercenary army of Swiss and at the beginning of 1500, assisted by his brother Ascanio and the Sanseverino, he tried to regain possession of Milan. Here, almost redeemed, he declared to the people that he was now much delighted by the "craft of arms", and that "he liked the name of captain more than of lord". you won't be able to keep me here!".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: However, the situation backfired during the siege of Novara, when the Swiss refused to participate in the battle. On 10 April, the Swiss garrison was leaving Novara, passing a cordon formed by the Swiss on the French side. French officers were posted to oversee their exit. As the disguised Sforza passed the cordon, one mercenary Hans (or Rudi) Turmann of Uri made signs giving away Sforza's identity and he was apprehended by the French along with the Sanseverino brothers. A few days later, Ascanio, who had attempted to escape to Germany, was also captured.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Girolamo Priuli comments in this regard: "Trivulzio, seeing these prisoners, and above all Signor Lodovico, thinks, oh reader, what joy!!"


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Immediately, having led the duke to his presence, Gian Giacomo addressed to him - according to Andrea Prato - these contemptuous words:


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: With the arrival of the French, Milan lost its independence and remained under foreign domination for 360 years. Among the spoils of war taken by the French, there was also the great Visconti-Sforza Library which was located (together with a part of the ducal archive) in the castle of Pavia and consisted of over 900 manuscripts, including some that belonged to Francesco Petrarca. Of the codices of the library of the Dukes of Milan,400 are still preserved today at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, while others ended up in Italian, European or American libraries.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The French rewarded Turmann for his treason with 200 gold crowns (corresponding to five years' salary of a mercenary); he escaped to France, but after three years (or, according to some sources, after one year) he returned home to Uri. Turmann was immediately arrested for treason, and on the following day he was executed by decapitation.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Ludovico was taken prisoner to France, passing through Asti, Susa and Lyon, where he arrived on 2 May. Louis XII of France, despite the insistence of Emperor Maximilian to free Ludovico, refused to comply with the requests, indeed humiliated the former duke, refusing even to meet him, while continuing to treat him as a special prisoner, allowing him to go fishing and receive friends. In Venice already in 1501 news arrived that "his brain was wavering a lot" and had become crazy, according to some because of the "melancholy", according to others for fiction, in order to obtain greater freedom. The king, therefore, sent his personal physician to treat him, along with a court dwarf to cheer him up.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: He was first detained at the castle of Pierre-Scize, then at Lys-Saint-Georges near Bourges. In 1504 he was moved to the castle of Loches where he was given even more freedom. In 1508, Ludovico attempted to escape; he was thereafter deprived of amenities including his books and spent the rest of his life in the castle's dungeon, where he died on 27 May 1508.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The Swiss later restored the Duchy of Milan to Ludovico's son, Maximilian Sforza. His other son, Francesco II, also held the duchy for a short period. Francesco II died in 1535, sparking the Italian War of 1536–1538, as a result of which Milan passed to the Spanish Empire.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The memory of Ludovico was clouded for centuries by Machiavelli's accusation that he 'invited' Charles VIII to invade Italy, paving the way for subsequent foreign domination. The charge was perpetuated by later historians who espoused the idea of national independence. More recent historians, however, placing the figure of Ludovico in its Renaissance setting, have reevaluated his merits as a ruler and given a more equitable assessment of his achievement.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Excellent duke in times of peace, very bad in times of war, Ludovico was never brought neither for weapons nor for the exercises of the body, he was indeed a man with a mild, conciliatory character, he detested all forms of violence and cruelty, and in fact, the more he could keep away from the battlefields, he held himself, and the more he could refrain from inflicting harsh punishments on the guilty, he abstained.He, therefore, does not deserve the fame of "tyrant" that is sometimes attributed to him, which if anything belonging to his brother Galeazzo Maria Sforza, duke before him, who used to torment his subjects and even his friends with unspeakable torture and cruelty (of which Bernardino Corio has handed down a summary list), and subtract for his own pleasure the women of others, to such an extent that this was the cause of his killing at the hands of noble conspirators in 1476.Perhaps just taking the fraternal example as a warning, Ludovico always refrained from any excess. It can be said that he was even unable to bring hatred, if in the last years of his life, now imprisoned in the prison of Loches by King Louis XII who had deprived him of the state, the title, the wealth and even his own children, Ludovico found nothing better to do than write a memorial "of the things of Italy" for Louis XII himself, in which he explained to the sovereign what was the best way to govern Lombardy and recommended him to caress the Florentines, not to antagonize the Pope and never to trust the Venetians, "who are too powerful and never die [...] nor should his Majesty trust them for any time, because he can well take an example from me, who was their ally, as they betrayed me".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Physically he was quite tall for the times, between and in height but he was not as well disposed physically, in fact he greatly appreciated good food and above all he was greedy for certain mullets in oil that his father-in-law Ercole sometimes sent him. Aliprando Caprioli says: "he was not well disposed of body, but beautiful of face; and of generous presence".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Over the years, without the necessary physical training, he gained more and more weight, then lost weight only after the death of his wife (due to the continuous fasting) and the capture, and then returned to being "fatter than ever", as described by ambassador Domenico Trevisan, after having become accustomed to imprisonment.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: He was therefore not used to wearing the tight-attillated farsetti typical of young men and condottieri, but rather clothes that reached him just above the knee. However, he had broad shoulders and highlighted them with solid gold chains, as can be seen in the so-called Sforza Altarpiece. However, he had broad shoulders that he highlighted with solid gold chains, as can be seen in the so-called Sforza Altarpiece. From an early age, he had eyes, hair and a dark complexion, which therefore derived his nickname. Even the Ferrarese chronicler Girolamo Ferrarini, who met him twenty-five years old in 1477, describes him as "of noble and beautiful appearance, although he is brown in the face". Still in 1492 the Venetian ambassadors called him a "beautiful man". After middle age he suffered from several diseases, such as gout and asthma.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Certainly, Ludovico was prodigal with his friends, very liberal, condescending, thoughtful and human, however, he turned out to be a very little energetic man, if not spurred on, and with the hereafter (perhaps as a result of the aforementioned stroke) he became increasingly contradictory and unstable. In this regard, Camillo Porzio's judgment is exemplary:Paolo Giovio, who instead has very harsh words for Beatrice, describes him as follows:


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Sometimes he knew how to be boastful, as when in 1496 he boasted that Pope Alexander was his chaplain, Emperor Maximilian his leader, Venice his chamberlain, and the King of France his courier who had to come and go to Italy at will. Guicciardini says it "a very vigilant prince of very acute ingenuity", and elsewhere: "I do not lack shy in adversity, which immoderate in prosperity, as almost always is combined in the same subject insolence with shyness, demonstrated with useless tears his cowardice".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: , angry at the peace of Bagnolo, calls him a man who "does not love a person except out of fear or need" and says: "he is mendacious, he is vindicative, very greedy, without shame, greedy for other people's things [...], in superlative pusillanimous, not to be trusted just [...] he is ambitious and never says good about anyone." He adds that he belongs to the kind of those who first say one thing, then do another; who has no love for anyone and no one loves him, and who is convinced that he can underestimate the other powerful of Italy, and for this reason he loses the friendship of all.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The chronicler Andrea Prato, who harshly reproaches him for having preferred Galeazzo Sanseverino to Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, paints a merciless picture, saying that he was indeed of rare and prudent intellect, but fearful, to such an extent that he seemed to abhor not only battles but even to hear about atrocious and cruel things, which is why he was not loved by soldiers, who want a spirited gentleman to stand by their side and expose himself to danger with them.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: In his wife, a woman of strong character and a lover of war, thus able to make up for her husband's failings, he found his most faithful and valid collaborator, so much so that her death marked her downfall. Beatrice trusted blindly, granted her great freedom and entrusted her with important tasks, making her always a participant in the councils and negotiations of war. As a husband he was, therefore, at least at the beginning, almost impeccable, and if it had not been for the continuous betrayals nothing could have been reproached in this regard. Some historians, wandering, claimed that he beat his wife, but the confusion arises from a letter of 1492, in which it is written that the Duke of Milan had "beaten" his wife: Duke of Milan was then called Gian Galeazzo, who in accordance with his character was in fact used to mistreat his wife Isabella, nor therefore Ludovico ever allowed himself to make such a gesture towards that woman who "loved more than himself".


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Even as a father he was attentive, loving and present, great was the love he nu nuded above all towards his own daughter, Bianca Giovanna, and unbearable the pain he showed for his untimely unexpected death.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: The great passion of Ludovico, more than women, more than food and more than the government, was indeed agriculture: Ludovico liked to remember that his grandfather, Muzio Attendolo, before becoming a leader was born a farmer, and he himself was an expert grower of vines and mulberries, the famous "moròn," with whom they fed the silkworms that made the Milanese industry famous. He gave life to his own farm near Vigevano, the so-called "Sforzesca," with adjacent "the Pecorara" where various species of cattle, sheep and other animals were bred, which Ludovico loved very much and where he often visited with his wife Beatrice, like him a lover of nature. It was no coincidence that he employed Leonardo da Vinci almost more as an engineer than as an artist, using his knowledge to build a series of aqueducts useful for irrigating those lands that are naturally arid. In the end he decided, by the official act of 28 January 1494, to donate the Sforzesca, along with many other lands, to his beloved Beatrice, and this seems even more significant if we consider that from that company alone Ludovico received annually very rich incomes.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: He invested also in horse and cattle breeding, and the metal industry. Some 20,000 workers were employed in the silk industry. He sponsored extensive work in civil and military engineering, such as canals and fortifications, continued work on the Cathedral of Milan and the Certosa of Pavia and had the streets of Milan enlarged and adorned with gardens. The University of Pavia flourished under him. There were some protests at the heavy taxation necessary to support these ventures, and a few riots resulted.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: Perhaps precisely because of his own insecurities, he was obsessed with astrology, so much so that the courtiers of Ferrara noticed that in Milan nothing was done without Ambrose of Rosate, astrologer and personal doctor of Ludovico, had first consulted the stars.


title: Ludovico Sforza

text: He was a cultured man, he knew Latin and French and whenever he could he stopped to listen to the daily reading and commentary of the Divine Comedy that the humanist Antonio Grifo kept at the behest of Duchess Beatrice, who was very passionate about it. After her death and her capture, Ludovico asked as his last wish to be able to keep with him a book of Dante's work which he read continuously during his captivity, whose triplets he delighted in writing, translated into French, on the walls of his cell, along with some of his other nostalgic thoughts imbued with wisdom.