Bartolomeo Colleoni

Bartolomeo's father Paolo Colleoni had seized the castle of Trezzo, until he was assassinated by his cousins, probably acting on the orders of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan.

He recaptured many towns and districts for Venice from the Milanese, and when Gonzaga went over to the enemy, Colleoni continued to serve the Venetians under Erasmo of Narni (known as Gattamelata) and Francesco I Sforza, winning battles at Brescia, Verona, and on the Lake of Garda.

[citation needed] Although he often changed sides, no act of treachery is imputed to him, nor did he subject the territories he passed through to the raping and robbery practiced by other soldiers of fortune.

At his death in 1475, at Malpaga, he left a large sum to the republic for the Turkish war, with a request that an equestrian statue of himself should be erected in the Piazza San Marco.

The statue was modelled by Andrea del Verrocchio and cast in bronze after his death by Alessandro Leopardi, but, as no monument was permitted in the piazza, it was placed near the Scuola Grande of St Mark outside the Church of SS Giovanni e Paolo.