The storm which suddenly broke upon Alexander did not disturb Lucretia, for on the eighth of June, 1494, she and her spouse entered Pesaro. In a pouring rain, which interrupted the reception festivities, she took possession of the palace of the Sforza, which was now to be her home.

The history of Pesaro up to that time is briefly as follows:

Ancient Pisaurum, which was founded by the Siculi, received its name from the river which empties into the sea not far from the city, and which is now known as the Foglia. In the year 570 of Rome the city became a Roman colony. From the time of Augustus it belonged to the fourth department of Italy, and from the time of Constantine to the province of Flaminia. After the fall of the Roman Empire it suffered the fate of all the Italian cities, especially in the great war of the Goths with the Eastern emperor. Vitiges destroyed it; Belisarius restored it.

After the fall of the Gothic power, Pesaro was incorporated in the Exarchate, and together with four other cities on the Adriatic—Ancona, Fano, Sinigaglia, and Rimini—constituted the Pentapolis. When Ravenna fell into the hands of the Lombard King Aistulf, Pesaro also became Lombard; but later, by the deed of Pipin and Charles, it passed into the possession of the Pope.

The subsequent history of the city is interwoven with that of the Empire, the Church and the March of Ancona. For a long time imperial counts resided there. Innocent III invested its title in Azzo d'Este, the Lord of the March. During the struggles of the Hohenstaufen with the papacy it first was in the possession of the emperor and later in that of the Pope, who held it until the end of the thirteenth century, when the Malatesta became podestas, and subsequently lords of the city. This famous Guelph family from the castle of Verrucchio, which lies between Rimini and S. Marino, fell heir to the fortress of Gradara, in the territory of Pesaro, and by degrees extended its power in the direction of Ancona. In 1285 Gianciotto Malatesta became lord of Pesaro, and on his death, in 1304, his brother Pandolfo inherited his domain.

From that time the Malatesta, lords of nearby Rimini, controlled not only Pesaro, but a large part of the March which they appropriated to themselves when the papacy was removed to Avignon. They secured themselves in the possession of Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, and Fossombrone by an agreement made during the life of the famous Gil d'Albornoz, confirming them in their position there as vicars of the Church. A branch of this house resided in Pesaro until the time of Galeazzo Malatesta. Threatened by his kinsman Sigismondo, the tyrant of Rimini, and unable to hold Pesaro against his attack, he sold the city in 1445 for twenty thousand gold florins to Count Francesco Sforza, and the latter gave it as a fief to his brother Alessandro, the husband of a niece of Galeazzo. Sforza was the great condottiere who, after the departure of the Visconti, ascended the throne of Milan as the first duke of his house. While he was there establishing the ducal line of Sforza, his brother Alessandro became the founder of the ruling house of Pesaro.

This brave captain took possession of Pesaro in March, 1445; two years later he received the papal investiture of the fief. He was married to Costanza Varano, one of the most beautiful and intellectual women of the Italian Renaissance.

To him she bore Costanzo and also a daughter, Battista, who later, as the wife of Federico of Urbino, won universal admiration by her virtues and talents. The neighboring courts of Pesaro and Urbino were connected by marriage, and they vied with each other in fostering the arts and sciences. Another illegitimate daughter of Alessandro's was Ginevra Sforza—a woman no less admired in her day—celebrated, first as the wife of Sante and then as that of Giovanni Bentivoglio, Lord of Bologna.

After the death of his wife, Alessandro Sforza married Sveva Montefeltre, a daughter of Guidantonio of Urbino. After a happy reign he died April 3, 1473, leaving his possessions to his son.

A year later Costanzo Sforza married Camilla Marzana d'Aragona, a beautiful and spirituelle princess of the royal house of Naples. He himself was brilliant and liberal. He died in 1483, when only thirty-six, leaving no legitimate heirs, his sons Giovanni and Galeazzo being natural children. His widow Camilla thenceforth conducted the government of Pesaro for herself and her stepson Giovanni until November, 1489, when she compelled him to assume entire control of it.

Such was the history of the Sforza family of Pesaro, into which Lucretia now entered as the wife of this same Giovanni.

The domain of the Sforza at that time embraced the city of Pesaro and a number of smaller possessions, called castles or villas; for example, S. Angelo in Lizzola, Candelara, Montebaroccio, Tomba di Pesaro, Montelabbate, Gradara, Monte S. Maria, Novilara, Fiorenzuola, Castel di Mezzo, Ginestreto, Gabicce, Monteciccardo, and Monte Gaudio. In addition, Fossombrone was taken by the Sforzas from the Malatesta.

The principality belonged, as we have seen, for a long time to the Church, then to the Malatesta, and later to the Sforza, who, under the title of vicars, held it as a hereditary fief, paying the Church annually seven hundred and fifty gold ducats. The daughter of a Roman pontiff must, therefore, have been the most acceptable consort the tyrant of Pesaro could have secured under the existing circumstances, especially as the popes were striving to destroy all the illegitimate powers in the States of the Church. When Lucretia saw how small and unimportant was her little kingdom, she must have felt that she did not rank with the women of Urbino, Ferrara, and Mantua, or with those of Milan and Bologna; but she, by the authority of the Pope, her own father, had become an independent princess, and, although her territory embraced only a few square miles, to Italy it was a costly bit of ground.

Pesaro lies free and exposed in a wide valley. A chain of green hills sweeps half around it like the seats in a theater, and the sea forms the stage. At the ends of the semicircle are two mountains, Monte Accio and Ardizio. The Foglia River flows through the valley. On its right bank lies the hospitable little city with its towers and walls, and its fortress on the white seashore. Northward, in the direction of Rimini, the mountains approach nearer the water, while to the south the shore is broader, and there, rising out of the mists of the sea, are the towers of Fano. A little farther Cape Ancona is visible.

The sunny hills and their smiling valley under the blue canopy of heaven, and near the shimmering sea, form a picture of entrancing loveliness. It is the most peaceful spot on the Adriatic. It seems as if the breezes from sea and land wafted a lyric harmony over the valley, expanding the heart and filling the soul with visions of beauty and happiness. Pesaro is the birthplace of Rosini, and also of Terenzio Mamiani, the brilliant poet and statesman who devoted his great talents to the regeneration of Italy.

The passions of the tyrants of this city were less ferocious than were those of the other dynasties of that age, perhaps because their domain was too small a stage for the dark deeds inspired by inordinate ambition—although the human spirit does not always develop in harmony with the influences of nature. One of the most hideous of evil doers was Sigismondo Malatesta of mild and beautiful Rimini. The Sforzas of Pesaro, however, seem generous and humane rulers in comparison with their cousins of Milan. Their court was adorned by a number of noble women whom Lucretia may have felt it her duty to imitate.

If, when Lucretia entered Pesaro, her soul—young as she was—was not already dead to all agreeable sensations, she must have enjoyed for the first time the blessed sense of freedom. To her, gloomy Rome, with the dismal Vatican and its passions and crimes, must have seemed like a prison from which she had escaped. It is true everything about her in Pesaro was small when compared with the greatness of Rome, but here she was removed from the direct influence of her father and brother, from whom she was separated by the Apennines and a distance which, in that age, was great.

The city of Pesaro, which now has more than twelve thousand, and with its adjacent territory over twenty thousand inhabitants had then about half as many. It had streets and squares with substantial specimens of Gothic architecture, interspersed, however, even then, with numerous palaces in the style of the Renaissance. A number of cloisters and churches, whose ancient portals are still preserved, such as S. Domenico, S. Francesco, S. Agostino, and S. Giovanni, rendered the city imposing if not beautiful.

Pesaro's most important structures were the monuments of the ruling dynasty, the stronghold on the seashore and the palace facing the public square. The last was begun by Costanzo Sforza in 1474 and was completed by his son Giovanni. Even to-day his name may be seen on the marble tablet over the entrance. The castle with its four low, round towers or bastions, all in ruin, and surrounded by a moat, stands at the end of the city wall near the sea, and whatever strength it had was due to its environment; in spite of its situation it appears so insignificant that one wonders how, even in those days when the science of gunnery was in its infancy, it could have had any value as a fortress.

The Sforza palace is still standing on the little public square of which it occupies one whole side. It is an attractive, but not imposing structure with two large courts. The Della Rovere, successors of the Sforza in Pesaro, beautified it during the sixteenth century; they built the noble faÇade which rests upon a series of six round arches. The Sforza arms have disappeared from the palace, but in many places over the portals and on the ceilings the inscription of Guidobaldus II, duke, and the Della Rovere arms may be seen. Even in Lucretia's day the magnificent banquet hall—the most beautiful room in the palace—was in existence, and its size made it worthy of a great monarch. The lack of decorations on the walls and of marble casings to the doors, like those in the castle of Urbino, which fill the beholder with wonder, show how limited were the means of the ruling dynasty of Pesaro. The rich ceiling of the salon, made of gilded and painted woodwork, dates from the reign of Duke Guidobaldo. All mementos of the time when Lucretia occupied the palace have disappeared; it is animated by other memories—of the subsequent court life of the Della Rovere family, when Bembo, Castiglione, and Tasso frequently were guests there. Lucretia and the suite that accompanied her could not have filled the wide rooms of the palace; her mother, Madonna Adriana, and Giulia Farnese remained with her only a short time. A young Spanish woman in her retinue, DoÑa Lucretia Lopez, a niece of Juan Lopez, chancellor and afterward cardinal, was married in Pesaro to Gianfrancesco Ardizio, the physician and confidant of Giovanni Sforza.

In the palace there were few kinsmen of her husband besides his younger brother Galeazzo, for the dynasty was not fruitful and was dying out. Even Camilla d'Aragona, Giovanni's stepmother, was not there, for she had left Pesaro for good in 1489, taking up her residence in a castle near Parma.

In summer the beautiful landscape must have afforded the young princess much delight. She doubtless visited the neighboring castle of Urbino, where Guidobaldo di Montefetre and his spouse Elisabetta resided, and which the accomplished Federico had made an asylum for the cultivated. At that time Raphael, a boy of twelve, was living in Urbino, a diligent pupil in his father's school.

TASSO.
From an engraving by Raffaelle Morghen.

In summer Lucretia removed to one of the beautiful villas on a neighboring hill. Her husband's favorite abode was Gradara, a lofty castle overlooking the road to Rimini, whose red walls and towers are still standing in good preservation. The most magnificent country place, however, was the Villa Imperiale, which is a half hour's journey from Pesaro, on Monte Accio, whence it looks down far over the land and sea. It is a splendid summer palace worthy of a great lord and of people of leisure, capable of enjoying the amenities of life. It was built by Alessandro Sforza in the year 1464, its corner-stone having been laid by the Emperor Frederic III when he was returning from his coronation as Emperor of Rome; hence it received the name Villa Imperiale. It was enlarged later by Eleonora Gonzaga, the wife of Francesco Maria della Rovere, the heir of Urbino, and Giovanni Sforza's successor in the dominion of Pesaro. Famous painters decorated it with allegoric and historical pictures; Bembo and Bernardo Tasso sang of it in melodious numbers, and there, in the presence of the Della Rovere court, Torquato read his pastoral Aminta. This villa is now in a deplorable state of decay. Pesaro offered but little in the way of entertainment for a young woman accustomed to the society of Rome. The city had no nobility of importance. The houses of Brizi, of Ondedei, of Giontini, Magistri, Lana, and Ardizi, in their patriarchal existence, could offer Lucretia no compensation for the inspiring intercourse with the grandees of Rome. It is true the wave of culture which, thanks to the humanists, was sweeping over Italy did reach Pesaro. The manufacture of majolica, which, in its perfection, was not an unworthy successor of the pottery of Greece and Etruria, flourished there and in the neighboring cities on the Adriatic, and as far as Umbria. It had reached a considerable development in the time of the Sforza. One of the oldest pieces of majolica in the Correro Museum in Venice, Solomon worshiping the idol, bears the date 1482. As early as the fourteenth century this art was cultivated in Pesaro, and it was in a very nourishing condition during the reign of Camilla d'Aragona. There are still some remains of the productions of the old craftsmen of the city in the State-house of Pesaro.

There, too, the intellectual movement manifested itself in other fields, fostered by the Sforza or their wives, in emulation of Urbino and Rimini, where Sigismondo Malatesta gathered about him poets and scholars whom he pensioned during their lives, and for whom, when dead, he built sarcophagi about the outer wall of the church. Camilla interested herself especially in the cultivation of the sciences. In 1489 she invited a noble Greek, Giorgio Diplovatazio, of Corfu, a kinsman of the Laskaris and the Vatazes, who, fleeing from the Turks, had come to Italy, and taken up his abode in Pesaro, where were living other Greek exiles of the Angeli, Komnenen, and Paleologue families. Diplovatazio had studied in Padua. Giovanni Sforza made him state's advocate of Pesaro in 1492, and he enjoyed a brilliant reputation as a jurisprudent until his death in 1541.[35]

Lucretia, consequently, found this illustrious man in Pesaro and might have continued her studies under him and other natives of Greece if she was so disposed. A library, which the Sforzas had collected, provided her with the means for this end. Another scholar, however, no less famous, Pandolfo Collenuccio, a poet, orator, and philologist, best known by his history of Naples, had left Pesaro before Lucretia took up her abode there. He had served the house of Sforza as secretary and in a diplomatic capacity, and to his eloquence Lucretia's husband, Costanzo's bastard, owed his investiture of the fief of Pesaro by Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII. Collenuccio, however, fell under his displeasure and was cast into prison in 1488 and subsequently banished, when he went to Ferrara, where he devoted his services to the reigning family. He accompanied Cardinal Ippolito to Rome, and here we find him in 1494 when Lucretia was about to take up her residence in Pesaro. In Rome she may have made the acquaintance of this scholar.[36]

Nor was the young poet Guido Posthumus Silvester in Pesaro during her time, for he was then a student in Padua. Lucretia must have regretted the absence from her court of this soulful and aspiring poet, and her charming personality might have served him for an inspiration for verses quite different from those which he later addressed to the Borgias.

Sforza's beautiful consort was received with open arms in Pesaro, where she immediately made many friends. She was in the first charm of her youthful bloom, and fate had not yet brought the trouble into her life which subsequently made her the object either of horror or of pity. If she enjoyed any real love in her married life with Sforza she would have passed her days in Pesaro as happily as the queen of a pastoral comedy. But this was denied her. The dark shadows of the Vatican reached even to the Villa Imperiale on Monte Accio. Any day a despatch from her father might summon her back to Rome. Her stay in Pesaro may also have become too monotonous, too empty for her; perhaps, also, her husband's position as condottiere in the papal army and in that of Venice compelled him often to be away from his court.

Events which in the meantime had convulsed Italy took Lucretia back to Rome, she having spent but a single year in Pesaro.