Lives of the Milanese Tyrants

The two works published in this volume were written at different times and under widely different circumstances. They also represent two very different moments in the career of their author, the once famed but now too often forgotten Milanese humanist Pier Candido Decembrio (1399-1477). The first work--a life of the Duke of Milan Filippo Maria Visconti (1392-1447)--was essentially a product of Decembrio's twenty-eight years of service, from 1419 to 1447, as secretary, envoy, and personal literary factotum to Duke Filippo Maria and his advisors: "The picture of the fifteenth century would be incomplete without this unique biography, which is characteristic down to its minutest details." The second work published here has attracted much less acclaim. It is an account of the deeds in arms of the condottiere Francesco Sforza (1401-1466), who through a combination of guile, force, and sheer willpower managed to secure for himself and his immediate heirs the succession to the Duchy of Milan. Decembrio wrote this second biography in the early 1460s, at a critical moment in his career.--