his dining
and robing room. The second ambassador, Jean Roux de Visque, was to
occupy Lodovico's apartments; and the third, King Charles's doctor, the
Italian Teodoro Guainiero of Pavia, would be lodged in the rooms of
Madonna Beatrice, Niccolo da Correggio's mother, and of the duke's
secretary, Jacopo Antiquario. All of these rooms had been decorated and
hung with rich tapestries and curtains of velvet and brocade for
Lodovico's wedding a year before, but on this occasion he desired that
canopies adorned with the _fleur-de-lys_ should be placed over the beds,
and that other changes should be made in the hangings and furniture. And
since there was not room in the Castello, where the court officials and
servants who were daily lodged and fed within its precincts already
numbered some two hundred, for the whole of the suite, the remainder
were to be entertained at the duke's expense at the different inns of
the city, at the sign of the Stella, the Fontana and Campana.

A few weeks later the ambassadors arrived at Milan, and were
magnificently received by Lodovico and his nephew, both of whom wore
sumptuous vests of white Lyons brocade, presented to them in the French
king's name, at the ceremony of investiture which followed. Giangaleazzo
was formally invested with the Duchy of Genoa, and did homage to the
representative of his suzerain, the French king, in the presence of the
whole court. Among the members of the ducal family present on this
occasion was the duke's elder sister, Bianca Maria, who still remained
unmarried since her affianced husband, the son of Matthias Corvinus, had
been driven from the throne of Hungary, after his father's death in
1490. The splendour of the ceremony, and the dazzling white velvet suits
worn by her brother and uncle, were long remembered by this princess of
seventeen, who spent most of her time with her mother, Bona, at
Abbiategrasso. More than seven years afterwards, when poor Giangaleazzo
was dead, and the Sforzas' throne was already tottering to its fall,
Bianca Maria, then the wife of the Emperor Maximilian, wrote from
Fribourg, begging her uncle to try and procure her a robe of the white
velvet woven at Lyons, "like the vests worn by yourself and my brother,
of blessed memory, on the day when he was invested with the Duchy of
Genoa."[18] The young empress, whose mind, as her husband complained,
never rose above childish things, and who, in the lonely splendour of
her grim castles