Of southern origins but without a homeland, the chronicler Andrea Prato alludes to him, when he reproaches Ludovico for his bad choices:[7][...] He favored foreigners far more than his own; and some of those he loved with so much fervor that, in a short time, from less than mediocre he made them very rich [...]Already in 1486 King Ferrante of Aragon instructed his Milanese ambassador to greet Galeazzo on his part, telling him that he had heard "of his virtues, of his good bearings, and of the great affection that he brings us" and saying he was willing to gladly give him some benefit, if the opportunity had arisen.

[11] Covered with benefits and often in charge of very delicate missions by the Moro, who trusted him blindly, in 1489 he married Ludovico's illegitimate daughter- legitimized for the occasion: Bianca Giovanna.

In the same years he was given the castle of Mirabello.If as a general he then proved unhappy, he was personally most valiant and esteemed the most righteous jouster and the most tasky knight of the court: handsome of the person, like his other three brothers in the service of the Moor, he was certainly such as to please the princely bride, even almost a child.When in 1491, after ten years of engagement, Ludovico finally decided to take Beatrice d'Este as his wife, Galeazzo knew with his affability and his natural charm to earn the favor of the new duchess, becoming his most faithful servant in perpetuity.

[13]«Beatrice immediately began a life of violent entertainment mostly in the company of the very elegant Galeazzo Sanseverino, spending February and March in sometimes risky hunts and games in the surrounding castles.» (Achille Dina, Isabella of Aragon Duchess of Milan and Bari.

)In his letters Galeazzo used to sign himself with the triple surname Sfortia Vicecomes de Sancto Severino, or because through his marriage with Bianca Giovanna he had been "adopted" within the Sforza family or because of his descent from Muzio Attendolo.

[16][17] He tells of having accompanied the Duchess Beatrice on holiday in Cusago and being mounted with her in a cart, where during the journey they sang more than twenty-five songs, "doing a lot of crazy things", then fished, hunted and played ball with many other amusements, returning to Milan after sunset, so much so that - he adds jokingly - in the star behind Beatrice he had almost gone crazy:[19] [20]We returned to Milan an hour after sunset and presented the whole hunt to the illustrious Lord my Duke of Bari, who took so much pleasure in it that more could not be said, much more than if he had been there in person, and I believe that my Duchess will have made a greater profit than I, because I believe that the illustrious Lord Ludovico will give him Cusago [...] but I have broken my boots and, as I said above, I have gone mad, and these it is the earnings that are made to serve women [...] nevertheless I will have patience, making it successful for my Duchess, to whom I promised not to lack in anything until death.He also enjoyed the rare privilege of free access to the ducal apartments, if at the end of the letter he reminds the Marquise Isabella of those times when, entering Beatrice's private dressing room, he found the ladies still undressed and intent on styling their hair:[19] My Madonna Marquise, I just can't forget our life in the evening, and her sweet company, and so I also go to Madama's dressing room, thinking I will find her combing her hair and next to her His Lordship, Theodora [Angelini] and Beatrice [dei Contrari] in shirt sleeves, and with her Violante [de 'Preti] and Maria also undressed, and when I can't find her, I feel sad.There was no meeting, public or private, at which Galeazzo was not present.

[26] On the other hand, a link of a sexual nature should not be excluded, if - as Achille Dina, a twentieth-century historian, recalled - this was referred to by that accusation of Francesco Guicciardini, who said of Ludovico: "he was dishonest in the sin of sodomy and, as many say, still as an old man no less patient than agent".

Achille Dina, however, insists on the strong "intimacy" that Galeazzo had rather with the Duchess Beatrice and insinuates - but without adducing any concrete evidence to support this hypothesis - that the two were lovers, arguing that "some intimate remorse" was due to her deep sorrow for the death of her stepdaughter:[28]She, who was expecting the birth of another child, went every day to the church of S. Maria delle Grazie, staying there for long hours to pray and cry over Bianca's tomb.

More easily one would look at their relationship as the classic one between knight and lady, as his biographer interprets it[10] and as Galeazzo himself declares in one of his letters, referring to his eternal and absolute servitude to Beatrice.

King Ferrante, informed on the matter, replied that it was impossible that Isabella had tried to poison Galeazzo, who was "loved by them as a son and always proved to be a good servant and relative"; as for Rozone, he said he was surprised that his niece "out of desperation" had not done worse.

Unbeatable champion of the rides, he was a perfect courtier, loved by women not only for his charm, elegance and well-groomed physique, but also for his culture and way of speaking, he was an esteemed friend of Pacioli, he knew Latin, French and German.

Since Galeazzo was sluggish, and there were rumors that his brother Fracasso was playing a double game with the king of France, Beatrice herself went to the military camp to urge him to move against the enemy.

On November 23, 1496, a few months after the transductio ad maritum, the young Bianca Giovanna died of a "stomach disease", or according to some for poisoning perpetrated by a certain Francesca Dal Verme, a woman who fiercely hated the Moro for personal reasons.

[33] Some courtiers of Ludovico, namely the castellan Bernardino da Corte, the first secretary Bartolomeo Calco and the Archbishop of Milan, very worried about his approval, then went to visit him and found him "so shocked and dejected [...] full of tears and sobs so that he could hardly express the words of pain".

After these nefarious events he went to Innsbruck to the court of Emperor Maximilian I, here the chronicles tell him sad melancholic, poor, little considered and always dressed in black as a sign of pain for the fate of his father-in-law.

Francesco did not accept the duel, but responded with a long letter full of insults and vulgarity, in which he essentially accused Galeazzo of being a recommended without art or part, of having always lived at the expense of others, without enjoying anything of his own, opposing him instead his own noble and deserved hereditary condition.

Among other things, he claims his military qualities and the merits acquired with weapons, reminding him vice versa of his shortcomings in this discipline, for which he accuses him of having been the cause of the ruin of all Italy:[41]Prù!

You as a gypsy have been in a begotten place, in another born and educated elsewhere, without any domain or territory, and even if luck has graciously granted you some happy following, you have lost it for your lack, so that now [ ...] you have to live like dogs do, at the expense of others [...].

You, on the contrary, every time you made the war you came out or defeated or driven out, although you were against the enemy with a greater and much stronger army, when like a rabbit you fled from it, and you were the infamy, the ruin and destruction of the beautiful Italian dominion!He goes on to say that, even accepting the duel and winning, he would not bring back any glory, except that of having won "a prostitute, a female of ill repute, miserable, brazen and fugitive!

However, it appears clear from this that Francesco did not want to face him in a duel fearing to be defeated, and that the resentment was still alive in him for having seen himself repeatedly undermined by Galeazzo in the conduct with the Moro.

[41] Francesco also commits the mistake, in order to insult the enemy, of offending even the memory of his father Roberto, saying that he was "with little praise led to death", and putting his father Federico before him,[41] when in truth the majority of historians and chroniclers agree in saying that Roberto Sanseverino died fighting valiantly and with honor,[42][43] and was undoubtedly esteemed the first and most experienced among the Italian leaders of his time, a record that certainly did not belong to Federico Gonzaga.

[44][45] A series of accusations, therefore, exaggerated and partially false, dictated by a visibly envious soul, which even blames Galeazzo for having made him lose his conduct with the Lordship of Venice in 1497, when this actually happened due to ambiguous behavior of Francesco himself, as well as to put him in a bad light with the emperor Maximilian I.

His numerous attempts to mediate with King Louis XII the release of his friend and father-in-law Ludovico Sforza, who died a prisoner in Loches in 1508, were in vain.

[46] The restitution took place following the new expulsion of the Dal Verme counts, but did not regain the lordships of Castel San Giovanni and Val Tidone, already assigned by the French in 1504 to the Pallavicino, becoming the Piacenza territory and later passing to the Farnese.

[38] Galeazzo was a good-looking man, unbeatable champion of the rides, loved by women not only for his charm, elegance and well-groomed physique, but also for his culture and way of speaking; he knew Latin, French and German.

[48] Although, as Rosmini would later say, among all the Sanseverino brothers he was "the least experienced in arms and military art the least learned",[49] he could still count courage and fidelity among his virtues, and, to be most loved by Duke Ludovico and Duchess Beatrice, he had the title of captain general of the Sforza militias and kept it until the end.

[50] Messer Galeazzo Sanseverino, who was a beautiful jouster, but for cowardice and little experience in the military art not at all capable of leading a military camp.Galeaz de San Severino, smooth talker, skilful in hunting and body exercises, fine courtier, who did not hesitate to undress to play ball with the king [Charles VIII].He was persuasive, elegant in his language as well as in his habits, expert in matters of war, and passed for the most skilful joust that could be seen.A portrait of him is found in an incunabulum of the Divine Comedy edited by the Franciscan Pietro da Figino and illuminated by Antonio Grifo, at folio 271 v. The original is kept in the library of Dante's House in Rome.

[52] In the first case, the identification had already been proposed at the end of the 19th century by German scholars such as Muller-Walde, having perhaps more familiarity with the features of Roberto, whose tombstone can be found in the Cathedral of Trento.

[5] In support of this thesis, Piero Misciatelli recalls that Galeazzo was in fact a great friend and protector of Leonardo, who frequented his home in Milan, and fra' Luca Pacioli and that, just like Ludovico and Beatrice, he must certainly have been passionate about music.

[55] Since Galeazzo had entrusted Leonardo with the creation of wild costumes for himself and his men to be worn on the occasion of the aforementioned joust,[56] some critics have hypothesized that it was a portrait of him,[57] which in this case would probably be a caricature; however some marble bas-reliefs, attributed to Verrocchio's workshop and dated 1480-90, show an almost identical figure of a leader, if not for the much more harmonious features of his face.