Loyalty Doubled.
The true story of Bianca Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza
In the photo: a detail of the fresco on the central nave pillar (unknown artist) depicting Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Clare of Montefalco in the church of Santa Maria Incoronata in Milan. My thanks to Maurizio Calì of the Association "Italia Medievale" for the excellent guided tour on March 7, 2020.
Popular among people of Milan but perhaps lesser-known to outsiders, the church of Santa Maria Incoronata was born from the love story of two medieval nobles. Through their marriage, they ensured the continuity and launched the definitive ducal dynasty of the Visconti-Sforza.
The story features Bianca Maria Visconti, the sole heir of the infamous Filippo Maria Visconti. At just five years old, her father betrothed her to Francesco Sforza, a shrewd and enterprising military commander from the region of ‘Marche’, who was twenty-five years her senior. Their lavish wedding, followed by the traditional seven days of public banquets and festivities, was celebrated in 1441 in Cremona, where Bianca Maria Visconti ruled as "comitissa", i.e. countess.
However, the death of Filippo Maria Visconti in 1447 plunged Milan into a political chaos and a civil war. The municipality attempted to defend itself by proclaiming the Golden Ambrosian Republic. Besieged by Bianca Maria's able husband - who went so far as to drain the ‘Navigli canals’ to capture the city - Milan eventually surrendered without resistance. Francesco Sforza entered on horseback through Porta Nuova. Passing by the ‘first’ church of Milan, then called Santa Maria di Garegnano, he chose it as the site to be crowned Duke of Milan in 1451. Next to the church, the Augustinian fathers had already restored their convent, which still preserves today a magnificent cloister and an adjoining library.
In 1461, as a sign of gratitude and loyalty to her husband - who was the main architect of both the Peace of Lodi among Italian States and the renaissance of Milan - Bianca Maria Visconti decided to ‘double’ the church.
She ordered an identical church which would have been built on the right side of the first one, connected to the original one to form only one church with two naves and two apses. The construction continued until 1484, long after Francesco Sforza's death in 1466.
Today, the church remains an unusual and unique gem in Milan. Thanks to Bianca Maria Visconti, it took the name Santa Maria Incoronata.
The original left portal features an image of Mary next to the tombstone of Francesco Sforza. Meanwhile, the new right portal depicts Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, to whom Francesco Sforza was deeply devoted, alongside the tombstone of Bianca Maria Visconti.
The church is elegant, bright, and intimate all at once. It maintains the Late Gothic style typical of many Lombard churches while looking ahead to early Renaissance architecture and the magnificent Bernini.
In a chapel of the original church, visitors can admire a fragment of a rare and splendid fresco by Ambrogio da Fossano, known as ‘Il Bergognone’ (1453–1523), titled ‘Christ in the Winepress’ - perhaps the earliest example of this iconography in Italy - surrounded by scrolls detailing the mystery and miracle of the Eucharistic Sacrament and the Church.
Bianca Maria Visconti, who navigated numerous wars and disputes with great resourcefulness and diplomacy, was the mother of, among others, Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Ludovico il Moro.
Marina Bilotta Membretti/ Cernusco sul Naviglio - 8 marzo 2020
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