Summer Travels, Troubling Portents; From Forli to Venice and Rome:1481

One way to describe the picture of Girolamo Riario that becomes clear is through his failures. Failures it seems true, by his own recurring examples, in Elizabeth Lev's biography of his wife Caterina Sforza. Failures measured by what may have been important then, with regard to personal status and the hierarchical, the political, and the military, the guards, the horses, real-estate, dice. Time after time, especially toward the end he is seen, again and again not measuring up. Because his position in that world was so very powerful and he, seemed never able to fill the shoes of the office, but also, he just as often seemed to make things worse, it seems even easier to condemn his rather dramatic fall from grace. A series of dramatic examples were part of Caterina's life too, and she, somehow managed to not just act extraordinarily, but even save him and all the wealth they'd accumulated and retire to Forli.

So in that sense it may be fitting to draw Girolamo so darkly. On the other hand it makes the 'perfection' of Caterina stand out that much brighter. Always happy, obedient and acting just as she should in all offices and appearances, and then when circumstances forced the issue, she could then triumph over her husband's failings and save them both anyway, despite his mismanagement. But this is the story of the slow downfall of Girolamo Riario that Elizabeth Lev tells.

A thread of that tapestry starts with Ferrara in that summer that the Count and Countess went to Forli, in 1481. In August that same year they took a bunch of their belongings and went to nearby Imola, which they also were lord and lady to. Passing around Faenza the small town between them. Both Forli and Imola were part of the inheritance for Caterina, but they were also newly won for the papal lands of pope Sixtus IV, Girolamo's uncle. Previously, her father the duke of Milan had wanted to cement relations with this pope and his family. The idea was to form an alliance between Milan in securing these as papal lands. The region known as Romagna lay between Venice and everywhere else, near to Florence, halfway to Naples, bordered the important city of Bologna and could suport the eastern coast if needed to. A strong papacy, acting in the interests of Milan and hopefully France as well, could act as a strong check on any of the other strong impulses vying for control of central Italy there. Ferrara, sat on the edge of all this.

The couple stayed only a month in Imola but, the Count set in motion a number of building projects in the style of the Florentines there, and a massive project to pave the muddy roads. He also decided to take the entourage to Venice with his wife Caterina eight months pregnant.

"A mighty baggage train of thirty-six mules and twenty-one carts announced the arrival of the couple in Ravenna, and on September 8 [1481] they cruised into Venice on special gondolas constructed for the arrival of exalted guests." [p. 70]

Lev reports that Lorenzo de'Medici knew that Girolamo was asking Venice for help in squeezing Ercole d'Este, the duke of Ferrara. If the Venetians could help him, they could keep Reggio or all they took from Ferrara. He only wanted Faenza, the small town disrupting the route between Forli and Imola, between what were now his holdings. The Venetians threw parties for them, gave him honorable titles but would not commit on any future plans. All this Lev, says came from the personal archives of Lorenzo de'Medici in the Florence state archives. [p. 71]

When the couple returned to Forli in late September, they took a route that went around Ferrara. Even so, before they got home they were attacked. It was called the Artisan Uprising but Lev says they were acting on the impetus of the duke of Ferrara and Lorenzo de'Medici.  Instead, the local loyal captain Gian Francesco Maruzzi, Il Tolentino quashed the tumult and the next day, Girolamo went to mass with three hundred armed guards. [p. 72]

This is really only the first chapter of the story of what would become the War on Ferrara and the slow demise of Girolamo Riario. Continuing home, as the summer travel turned fall, they left children and treasure in Imola, the safer town. By the end of October, and within a few days of their arrival back in Rome, Caterina gave birth to a healthy baby girl, named for her grandmother Bianca. Girolamo waited until November to give the order to hang those implicated in the uprising back in Forli. [p.73]
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quotes and pagination from Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy's most courageous and notorious countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de'Medici : 2011, USA, Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Publishing Company