Bianca Maria Sforza


Bianca Maria Sforza was Queen of Germany and Empress of the [Holy Roman Empire] as the third spouse of Maximilian I. She was the eldest legitimate daughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan by his second wife, Bona of Savoy.

Early life

Bianca was born in Pavia as the eldest daughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, by his second wife, Bona of Savoy. She was named after her paternal grandmother, Bianca Maria Visconti. When Bianca was not yet five years old, her father was assassinated inside the Church of Santo Stefano in Milan on 26 December 1476, which was the Feast Day of St. Stephen. He was stabbed to death by three high-ranking officials of the Milanese court.
On 6 January 1474 the 21-month-old Bianca was betrothed to her first cousin Duke Philibert I of Savoy, the son of her uncle Amadeus IX of Savoy, and Yolande of France. Duke Philibert I died in the spring of 1482, leaving Bianca a widow at the age of ten. She returned to Milan, under the tutelage of her uncle Ludovico Il Moro, who cared little about her education and allowed her to indulge her own interests, mainly needlework.
On 31 July 1485, the engagement between Bianca and John Corvinus, the only son of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, was formally announced. With this marriage, the Hungarian ruler wanted to secure his son's future inheritance of Hungary and Bohemia and to make him Duke of Austria. The marriage by proxy was signed on 25 November 1487, and according to the terms of the contract, Bianca received several Hungarian counties. However, due to the opposition and intrigues of Queen Beatrix, wife of King Matthias, the formal marriage never took place. In March 1492, a marriage between Bianca and King James IV of Scotland was considered, but the idea was soon abandoned.

Queen and empress

On 16 March 1494 in Hall, Tyrol, Bianca married her second husband, the widowed King Maximilian I of Germany. Bianca's second marriage was arranged by her uncle Ludovico Sforza, who wanted recognition and the title of duke confirmed by Maximilian; in exchange, Maximilian received a large dowry along with Bianca, 400,000 ducats. Her magnificent retinue on her way to her wedding aroused much attention. At her wedding, Bianca wore a bodice "with eighty pieces of the jeweler's art pinned thereon, with each piece consisting of one ruby and four pearls". Maximilian's claim to overlordship of Milan angered Anne of France, regent for her brother, King Charles VIII of France, and brought about French intervention in Italy, thus inaugurating the lengthy Italian Wars.
The union was unhappy: shortly after the consummation of the marriage, Maximilian complained that Bianca may have been more beautiful than his first wife, Duchess Mary of Burgundy, but was not so wise. It was impossible for the young bride to win the affection of her husband, who considered her too uneducated, talkative, naive, wasteful with money, and careless. She very much liked her stepchildren Philip the Handsome and Margaret of Austria|Margaret], but, as was remarked by Hermann Wiesflecker, Bianca Maria remained "all her life a child who played while sitting on the floor" and was criticized for forgetting the dignity of her position as Maximilian's spouse. According to Daniel Unterholzner, although there was early rumours of pregnancies, Bianca apparently could not become pregnant. The reasons for this were not certain, although she seemed to be angry with her doctor Battista Baldironi for this problem; however, according to Italian biographer and journalist Daniela Pizzagalli, Bianca in fact became pregnant soon after her wedding, but she had a miscarriage three months later on her way to Flanders in June 1494; if this event really took place, it probably impaired Bianca's ability to conceive again. Maximilian had always concentrated on the children of his first marriage in terms of succession politics from the beginning, despite this policy being very risky as he had only one male child, Philip the Handsome. Her childlessness made Bianca lose one of her important areas of responsibility as the female head of their family. Although the marriage was a failure even in the beginning, at this point Maximilian was eager to show his subjects in the Low Countries that he had a new wife. It was also the period in which Philip turned 16 and had fully taken charge of the government. Thus various events were staged to celebrate these facts.
After 1500, Maximilian lost all interest in Bianca. She lived with her own court of Milanese people in various castles in Tyrol. On several occasions he left her behind as security when he could not pay for his rooms on trips Maximilian took the title of emperor-elect of the Holy Roman Empire in 1508, making Bianca empress.
Recent research, however, indicates that Bianca was an educated woman who had a political role as a mediator for different kinds of agenda both involving Ludovico Sforza and Maximilian. Unterholzner notes that while the emperor did not love her and sent few letters, there was contact between them and he supported her rights in numerous cases, notably concerning her preces primariae. Sometimes, he sent her deceiving words, such as in 1508, when he explained to her that she should not appear at his coronation ceremony because he would bring her along when crowned at Rome next year anyway. At this point, the once richest bride of Europe had become an emaciated woman who lost all sense of etiquette and all will to live. When he knew that she was near her death, he sent a medicus who tried to give her a bloodletting, but she refused. Maximilian did not try to soothe her with words.
Empress Bianca died at Innsbruck on 31 December 1510. She was buried at Stams. Her husband did not attend her funeral or even dedicate a gravestone to her. The official cause of death was given as excessive consumption of snails. Joseph Grünpeck, the court historian of Maximilian, said that she died "dehydrated" and the ultimate blame laid with the husband's neglect of her. Maximilian and his court wore black in commemoration of her death however, and they still wore black at the Battle of the Spurs.
In Maximilian's horoscope, the astrologer had predicted that in his third epoch of life, he would meet a very young woman of good faith, "devoted to her husband, decent, and righteous", and who would bring him benefits and prosperity, but she would be sickly and unhappy. Größing remarks that this reflects Bianca very well.

The queen's court and public events

Bianca had her own court of 150–200 people and she was considered extravagant, but Maximilian did not let her get control of her own finances and thus one minute she lived in luxury and the next her court was a show of poverty.
Church festivals gave the form of the annual cycle at Bianca's court. Easter, Christmas, as well as Pentecost and Corpus Christi were celebrated with particular lavishness. Carnivals, dances, tournaments, weddings, mummeries, music, entrances, theater, hunting, and fishing were integral parts of the queen's court life. Her first hofmeisterin, appointed in 1493, was Violanta Cayma, who followed her from Italy, enjoyed the trust of both Maximilian and Bianca, and played a key role in correspondence with the Milanese court. In 1494, Niklas von Firmian became the Hofmeister. His wife Paula Cavalli was Cayma's successor.
In 1503, Bianca was persuaded by the pseudo-mystic of Augsburg, Anna Laminit, to lead a penitent procession with the city's leading officials—probably the largest one the city had ever seen. Later Laminit's fraud would be exposed by Maximilian's younger sister Kunigunde in October 1512. In 1514, Maximilian expelled Laminit from Augsburg. After continuing to engage in fraudulent behaviours, she was condemned as a witch and executed by drowning.
She attended public events in Freiburg several times. In 1498, she inspected the troops together wỉth Maximilian. At the end of that year, she took care of the funeral of.

In current research

Joachim Whaley remarks that "Traditionally dismissed as unimportant compared with her predecessor, Maria of Burgundy, Bianca Maria now appears a much more interesting figure who made the best of a court plagued by money shortages and in some ways blighted by her lack of children."
Traditionally, Maximilian's administrative reforms in Austria and Germany have been believed to follow the Burgundian model. Today, there is a wider range of opinions. Franca Leverotti notes that there was a change after the wedding of Bianca and Maximilian in 1494 — the administrative reforms began to take shape under the influence of the Milanese model rather than the Burgundian one. Noflatscher opines that Bianca did have a moderating role vis-à-vis the influence of the Burgundian model, although she could never fully exert her power.
According to Nicole Riegel, after Bianca's death in 1510, building activities for Maximilian's imperial residence project in Innsbruck completely ceased, suggesting that the project was tied to their marriage. Only after 1506, when the Hungarian double wedding happened with the appearance of the two brides Mary of Hungary and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary, new reparations began again.

In arts and media

  • The Wedding Hours made for Bianca Maria Sforza and Maximilian I is a wedding gift from her uncle Ludovico. Only recently discovered after having been long lost, the work "not only testifies to the high level of Renaissance art made for the Sforza family in Milan, but also shows how art was used to link social, religious, and political life."
  • La Bella Principessa is attributed by several scholars to be a portrait of Bianca Maria by Leonardo da Vinci.
  • In 1993, Gernot and Barbara Rumpf created new imperial portrait for the Kaiserbrunner in Konstanz originally built by Konstanz's sculptor Hans Baur in 1892. The original portraits were those of four emperors representing four great dynasties: Heinrich III, Friedrich Barbarossa, Maximilian I und Wilhelm I. All the portraits were melted down during World War II. The Rumpfs reintroduced Maximilian and Barbarossa, with a touch of caricature. Bianca Maria and Emperor Otto I were added. c:File:Marktstätte mit "Kaiserbrunnen", [Konstanz (2016).jpg|Maximilian is shown extending his hand like a beggar, while a bird on the bonnet of the empress] sometimes spits water into his hand, seemingly symbolizing their loveless and money-based marriage and alluding to his neverending financial troubles.
  • Bianca Maria is the main character of the 2019 musical Schattenkaiserin by Jürgen Tauber und Oliver Ostermann. Bianca Maria is portrayed as a tragic character while Maximilian is portrayed as a cold, adulterous husband who married Bianca for money and then abandoned her to focus on wars, other lovers, and extravagant pursuits. The musical received three nominations for the German Musical Theater Price 2020/2021 for composition, stage design and costume and won the prize for stage design. The libretto writer Susanne Felicitas Wolf sees her as a traumatized child who had to deal with her scars, and also a person with great tenacity and capacity of love. She functioned for her husband only as a figurehead expected at certain occasions, while he sealed himself emotionally in order to be able to go his own way.
  • In 2019, The jewelry producer Swarovski created a replica of her lost bridal jewellery, displayed on her bust portrait created by Viennese artist Tibor Bogdan.

Commemoration