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and letters entitles him to a place among the most illustrious patrons of the Renaissance. To his keen intellect and discerning eye, to his fine taste and quick sympathy with all forms of beauty, we owe the production of some of the noblest works of art that human hands have ever fashioned. To his personal encouragement and magnificent liberality we owe the grandest monuments of Lombard architecture, and the finest development of Milanese painting, the facade of the Certosa and the cupola of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, the frescoes and altar-pieces of the Brera and the Ambrosiana. Above all, it was at the Milanese court, under the stimulating influence of the Moro, that Leonardo da Vinci's finest work was done. As a man, Lodovico Sforza is profoundly interesting. Burckhardt has called him the most complete among the princely figures of the Italian Renaissance, and there can be no doubt that alike in his virtues and in his faults, he was curiously typical of the age in which he lived. Guicciardini, who was certainly no friend to him, and regarded him as the inveterate foe of Florence, describes him as "a creature of very rare perfection, most excellent for his eloquence and industry and many gifts of nature and spirit, and not unworthy of the name of milde and mercifull;" and the Milanese doctor Arluno, the author of an unpublished chronicle in the Biblioteca Marciana at Venice, says, "He had a sublime soul and universal capacity. Whatever he did, he surpassed expectation, in the fine arts and learning, in justice and benevolence. And he had no equal among Italian princes for wisdom and sagacity in public affairs." Contemporary writers describe him as very pleasant in manner and gracious in speech, always gentle and courteous to others, ready to listen, and never losing his temper in argument. He shared in the laxity of morals common to his age; but was a man of deep affections as well as strong passions, fondly attached to his children and friends, while the profound and lasting grief with which he lamented his dead wife amazed his more fickle contemporaries. Singularly refined and sensitive by nature, he shrank instinctively from bloodshed, and had a horror of all violent actions. In this he differed greatly from his elder brother Galeazzo Maria, who was a monster of lust and cruelty, intent only on gratifying his savage instincts, and as callous to human suffering as he was reckless of human life. Lodovico, as his most
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