Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, died during childbirth on the night of 2 to 3 January 1497. Bad omens preceded the event, and many historians believe it led to the downfall of her husband, Duke Ludovico Sforza, who lost power a few years later.Gaspare Visconti, Rodolfo Renier, Tip. Bortolotti di Giuseppe Prato, 1886, pp. 6–7.. It had a big impact in Italy and abroad, upsetting the previously established political balance and becoming the subject of many works of art and literature.

The deceased experienced a kind of symbolic deification by her husband, who manifested "an almost maddening mourning." Another version of the event, handed down by the historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori, suggests that she died by poisoning..

Background Beatrice had already given birth, without any complications, of two sons. By spring-summer 1496, in her twenties, she was pregnant for the third time, despite the ill-feeling caused by her husband's notorious affair with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Lucrezia Crivelli, who had become his favorite...

Unlike other women, often confined to bed as soon as the pregnancy was evident, Beatrice did not stop following her husband around and continuing her favourite activities of hunting, riding and dancing. During her first pregnancy in 1492, when she was about five or six months pregnant, she shot a "very dangerous wild boar",. and then she had been afflicted with a severe form of malaria and in danger of dying, but her delivery in January 1493 had been quick and easy, and, according to her mother Eleanor, Beatrice seemed not to have been affected at all. During her second pregnancy in 1494, between about the fifth and seventh month, she had traveled through northern Italy and accompanied the French army as far as Tuscany:. also in January 1495, a few days after giving birth, she was "so agile" that she astonished the ambassador Benedetto Capilupi; above all, she astonished the whole court because, within a few weeks of giving birth, she had already left home and returned to her usual activities, although custom dictated that noblewomen should rest for about a month..

Also in the summer of 1496 she went to Mals to meet Emperor Maximilian there, undertaking a journey over the Alps described by sources as strenuous and taking part in hunts, without any nefarious signs.... Still in November she was in Pavia, to greet the emperor who was returning to Germany, and did not leave for Milan with her husband until 7 December 1496, arriving there on the 10th...

Some historians attribute the cause of her death to malaria, which had afflicted her in 1492 during her first pregnancy, but no new relapses appear relative to 1496; others note that, a few months after her, Lucrezia Crivelli also became pregnant, and that this must have caused Beatrice's displeasure; others, finally, link the event to the tragic and untimely death of her beloved stepdaughter Bianca Giovanna Sforza, which occurred only a month before that of her stepmother.. She was the illegitimate daughter of Ludovico and a close friend of hers from the first day of her arrival in Milan: Beatrice showed her great affection and always wanted her by her side. Although she was already in an advanced state of pregnancy, the news of her death was not kept from her; on the contrary, she had been informed in advance and it was left to her to decide the painful task of how to tell Ludovico without upsetting him.. To her sister she later confessed that "we have felt such grief and sorrow over her death.".

The only sign that suggests any concern for the pregnancy was a vow made by Beatrice to visit the Shrine of the Madonna of Loreto after childbirth. This vow was later dissolved by Ludovico with the donation to that shrine of 100 gold ducats..

It is possibly significant that Emperor Maximilian, when he learned of her death, told the Ferrarese ambassador that, the last time he had seen her, she had not seemed to him the same cheerful and lively Beatrice he had first known, and that she seemed almost to know that she was about to die. However, this last meeting between the two took place after Bianca Giovanna's death, in the atmosphere of an already desolate and mourning court.Paolo Negri. Milano, Ferrara e Impero durante l'impresa di Carlo VIII in Italia, Archivio Storico Lombardo: Giornale della società storica lombarda (1917 dic, Serie 5, Fascicolo 3 e 4), pp. 483–484 e 541.

Another singular case was that Beatrice had long insisted on having with her the same midwife who had assisted her during the first two births, Frasina da Ferrara, despite the fact that she was ill and despite the fact that her father had suggested another equally good midwife from Ferrara. The Duchess's insistence and the mobilisation of the people were such that Frasina finally set off on a mule and arrived in Milan on time..

Portents The death was preceded by sinister omens: according to the Venetian chronicler Marin Sanudo, Beatrice was walking through Milan on that day and when she came to the church where her mother-in-law Bianca Maria Visconti was buried, she stayed there for a long time contemplating her funeral, and those who were with her were unable to move her. (however, historians interpret this passage as referring to the burial not of her mother-in-law, Bianca Maria Visconti, but of her beloved stepdaughter, Bianca Giovanna Sforza); thus at night, shortly before she died, the walls of her garden collapsed without any earthquake or breath of wind.. The collapse of the wall in particular, according to historian Robert de La Sizeranne, was a premonition of the imminent collapse of Moro's power, caused precisely by the loss of his wife.Robert de La Sizeranne, Béatrice d'Este et sa cour, 1920, p. 60.

The Milanese historian Bernardino Corio then reports strange celestial phenomena, namely that just before the misfortune, the sky above the castle became a brazier of flames..

This apparition has been compared by some historians to the one that took place on the same days in the sky of Parma, as described by Ludovico Cavitelli in his Annals: a "fax ignea", that is to say a torch, with three stars at the bottom and as many at the top, green in colour, with terrible human faces, appeared in the sky and was heard to murmur; at the same time the fields were filled with caterpillars. The same event is mentioned by Elia Cavriolo in his History of Brescia, although he refers to the following year: "There appeared in the sky a scythe, above which were three bloody stars, and under which were three others of green colour, and there appeared a terrible face of man, which, to the greatest horror of those present, murmured in the air. And many worms attacked the grass and the men".Storia della città di Parma continuata: 1484 – 1500. 5, Angelo Pezzana, Ducale Tip., 1859, pp. 342–343.

Death

On the day of 2 January, according to Sanudo, Beatrice was "cheerful" in Milan and danced in the castle until eight o'clock in the evening. From Ludovico's subsequent letter to the marquis of Mantua, his brother-in-law, it is possible to reconstruct the event succinctly, counting the hours according to the ancient system: between seven and eight o'clock in the evening Beatrice was in labor, between ten and eleven o'clock she gave birth to an already dead male child, and around midnight she died, at the age of twenty-one:"Everyone senses that this letter is not one of the usual eulogies. Deep and intense sorrow radiates from every line. And indeed, this was the strongest grief Moro had to suffer, for Beatrice was perhaps the only person in the world whom he loved with a living, unselfish, and tenacious passion. This woman, snatched from life so young, while she was the soul of all her husband's exploits and joys, the mother for a few years of two adored little boys, touched the hearts of all." ().

A similar chronology is offered by the Mantuan ambassador in the letter warning her sister Isabella d'Este, with the difference that he states that the child died soon after, rather than before birth:

In truth, the epitaph assures that the child was actually born dead. In other parts of Italy the story is told differently: the chroniclers of Ferrara – Bernardino Zambotti and the anonymous Ferrarese – speak of an abortion, that is to say a premature birth, although they give the erroneous news that Beatrice had lost a female child.. This aspect also seems to be confirmed by the letter written by the secretary Bartolomeo Calco on behalf of Ludovico to the city of Pavia, if "maturo pariendi tempore" is indeed to be understood in the sense of a premature birth.Ricerche intorno a Leonardo da Vinci: Volume primo. Serie prima, Volume 1, Di Gustavo Uzielli, p. 251.

Johann Burchard, the papal protonotary, in his Liber notarum, even reports the birth of a "quoddam monstrum", a monstrous creature that was not buried but kept in the castle.Liber notarum, ab anno MCCCCLXXXIII usque ad annum MDVI, Volume 2, Di Johann Burchard, pp. 13–14.

Moro's grief Although he cheated on her with other women, Ludovico had a sincere and deepest love for his wife. Her loss was devastating to him, and he was never able to recover. For weeks at a time, he would remain locked in his own apartments in the dark, with the windows closed and by candlelight, accepting very few visitors. He came out for the first time on 31 January, secretly, only to visit the tomb of his wife.Viglevanum, Anno VI, Marzo 1996, periodico annuale, Società Storica Vigevanese: Beatrice d'Este, lutto e Propaganda, Luisa Giordano, pp. 6–11. His hair turned greyish-white, losing its usual black colour, and he grew a beard,. wearing only black clothes and a tattered beggar's cloak.. Even after the first year of mourning, when he was allowed to wear other colours again, he declared that he would "continue to wear black", not only for himself but for the whole court. Neither he nor Galeazzo Sanseverino ever wore silk.

He had ordered that no relatives should attend the funeral, but at the last moment he changed his mind and summoned the Ferrarese ambassador, Antonio Costabili. The latter found him lying in bed, grieving and regretting "as much as ever" and, at the request of some counsellors, tried to console him to be patient. Ludovico replied that he "did not think he could ever endure so bitter a wound" and that he had sent for him to report to Duke Ercole that "if he had not been the good companion to your daughter that she deserved, and even if he had ever offended her in any way", as he knew he had done, "he would beg forgiveness from Your Excellency and from her, finding himself displeased to his soul," for "in all his prayers he had always prayed to Our Lord God that he would leave her after him, and then, if God did not like it, he would pray to him, and would always pray, that if it were possible that ever a living person could see a dead one, that he would grant him the grace to see her and to speak to her once, as he loved her more than himself.". At the end of the speech, "after much lamenting and sobbing" and "mourning with words that would have broken stones", he invited the ambassador to accompany the body to the church.Leonardo da Vinci e tre gentildonne milanesi del secolo XV, Gustavo Uzielli, Tipografia sociale, pp. 43–45.