Portrait of Francesco Sforza

Francesco Sforza was a soldier for hire who took Milan. The city's republic engaged him as its captain in 1447, and by February 1450, after he had cut off its grain, the same city let him in as its duke. He held it for 16 years, but the emperor, whose fief Milan legally was, never granted him investiture. That is worth knowing in front of this small panel, painted around 1460. He is shown in strict profile in a red cap, the format of a commemorative medal and of a head on an ancient coin, which is the image a ruler with a title nobody had signed would want in circulation. Six years earlier the shape of Italy had been settled without any help from the emperor, by the peace agreed at Lodi in 1454 and the league that followed, and Sforza was one of the men who signed it. The Brera shows the panel as Bembo's, though that name is traditional rather than documented.