e are told, was
awarded to a Tuscan maiden.

On the 26th, the Giostra, which was to be the crowning event of the
week's festivities, began. At the tournament held in Pavia in honour of
Giangaleazzo's wedding, the knights had for the most part appeared in
their ordinary attire; but this time, to add greater splendour to the
occasion, they entered the lists in companies, clad in fancy costumes
and bearing symbolical devices after the fashion of the day. First of
all came the Mantuan troop of twenty horsemen clad in green velvet and
gold lace, bearing golden lances and olive boughs in their hand, with
Isabella's kinsman, Alfonso Gonzaga, at their head. Then came Annibale
Bentivoglio, the young husband of Lucrezia d'Este, with the Bologna
knights, riding on a triumphal car drawn by stags and unicorns, the
badge of the House of Este. These were followed by Gaspare di
Sanseverino, with a band of twelve riders in black and gold Moorish
dress, bearing Lodovico's device of the Moor's head on their helmets and
white doves on their black armour. Last of all came a troop of wild
Scythians, mounted on Barbary steeds, who galloped across the _piazza_,
and then, halting in front of the ducal party, suddenly threw off their
disguise and appeared in magnificent array, with the captain of the
Milanese armies, Galeazzo di Sanseverino, at their head. He planted his
golden lance in the ground, and at this sign a giant Moor, advancing to
the front, recited a poem in honour of Duchess Beatrice.[6]

These pageants and masques formed an important feature of Renaissance
_fetes_, and were evidently regarded as such by the chroniclers of these
wedding festivities, but to us the chief interest of this tournament
lies in the knowledge that the Scythian disguise assumed by Galeazzo di
Sanseverino and his companions was designed by no less a personage than
Leonardo da Vinci. Some of the drawings of savages and masks which we
see to-day on the stray leaves of his sketch-books may relate to these
figures, but we know for certain that he was actually employed by Messer
Galeazzo to arrange this masquerade. In a note in his own handwriting,
on the margin of the "Codex Atlanticus," we read, "Item, 26 of January,
being in the house of Messer Galeazzo di San Sev^o, ordering the festa
of his Giostra, certain men-at-arms took off their vests to try on some
clothes of savages, upon which Giacomo" (the apprentice whom he had
already caught thieving at Pavia) "to