Ludovico, to whom Leonardo was now court-painter, had married Beatrice
d'Este, in 1491, when she was only fifteen years of age. The young Duchess, who
at one time owned as many as eighty-four splendid gowns, refused to wear a
certain dress of woven gold, which her husband had given her, if Cecilia
Gallerani, the Sappho of her day, continued to wear a very similar one, which
presumably had been given to her by Ludovico. Having discarded Cecilia, who, as
her tastes did not lie in the direction of the Convent, was married in 1491 to
Count Ludovico Bergamini, the Duke in 1496 became enamoured of Lucrezia
Crivelli, a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess Beatrice. abstract art oil paintings
Leonardo, as court painter, perhaps painted a portrait, now lost, of
Lucrezia, whose features are more likely to be preserved to us in the portrait
by Ambrogio da Predis, now in the Collection of the Earl of Roden, than in the
quite unauthenticated portrait (Plate VII.), now in the Louvre (No. 1600).
On January 2, 1497, Beatrice spent three hours in prayer in the church of St.
Maria delle Grazie, and the same night gave birth to a stillborn child. In a few
hours she passed away, and from that moment Ludovico was a changed man. He went
daily to see her tomb, and was quite overcome with grief. original oil paintings wholesale
In April 1498, Isabella d'Este, Beatrice's elder, more beautiful, and more
graceful sister, "at the sound of whose name all the muses rise and do
reverence" wrote to Cecilia Gallerani, or Bergamini, asking her to lend her the
portrait which Leonardo had painted of her some fifteen years earlier, as she
wished to compare it with a picture by Giovanni Bellini. Cecilia graciously lent
the picture—now presumably lost—adding her regret that it no longer resembled
her. oil paintings for sale
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