Here is a story about an honourable soldier called Bartolomeo Colleoni, and his home city of Bergamo. A few years ago we were staying near Verona and decided to take a trip along the very busy A4 motorway to visit Bergamo. There was a particular building I wanted to visit – the Colleoni Chapel – of which more later, but first, something about the city itself.
Bergamo is situated northeast of Milan, right at the point where the Alps come down to the Lombard plain, and where, at the greatest extent of the Ice Age, the glaciers which carved the lakes of Maggiore, Como, Iseo and Garda finally stopped. Go to Bergamo and you can see this very clearly. Not perhaps in the new Lower Town, which is down in the valley, and which features a good deal of 1930s fascist-style architecture. But take the funicular up to the older Città Alta (Upper Town), and from the Medieval and Renaissance walls, to the north on a clear day you will see the ever-rising ramparts of the Alps. And to the south you will see what Shelley aptly called
The waveless plain of Lombardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair.
As with everywhere across northern Italy from Piedmont to the Slovenian border, where the Alps come down from the north the transition between mountain and plain is abrupt. And to the south are the Apennines, marking a more recent tectonic collision. Between the Alps and the Apennines is the Po Valley, the inhabitants of which, since before antiquity, have grown wealthy from the rich productive soils, and put up with the terrible weather – cold and damp in winter, and suffocatingly hot in summer, with frequent thunderstorms on a Wagnerian scale. Both the fertility and the weather are products of the topology; the mountains channel all the rivers and their sediments together, but also keep the vaporous air in.
Each summer in Italy there are distressing news stories of property and even lives lost in the Po Valley due to flash floods, but these are not new. Ferrara was once on the banks of the Po, before a medieval flood redirected the course of the river some distance away, and doubtless the same has been happening for millennia: when it comes to floodplains, the hint is in the name. But whether on the banks of the Po or the slopes of Vesuvius, the risk of a calamity at some unknown time in the future tends to take second place to the promise of a bumper harvest next year.
Fertile lands, wealthy towns and ease of movement made the Po Valley a standard invasion route as well. This way came the Celts, the Goths, the Lombards that gave their name to the region, and then waves of other northerners in the Middle Ages and later.
This inevitably left its mark in the form of a more genetically diverse population. Further south, the complexions of modern Umbrians, Abruzzese and Calabrians tend to be darker and reminiscent of portraits one might see on a fresco in Pompeii. But here in the north, it is easy to imagine the traces of multiple migrations in the varied faces of the people you see about you. Does that girl with red hair and freckles have distant relatives in Ireland? Did the ancestors of that tall fair young man take part in the long migration of the Lombards from southern Sweden? Or is he the result of a more recent dalliance between a local girl and one of Charles V’s landesknechte, who sang “Matona mia cara” beneath her window?
This isn’t just in the imagination of an overexcited history enthusiast. There have been genetic studies in Lombardy that show strong Lombard and Celtic admixtures to earlier Ligurian and Etruscan populations, as well as other non-specific Germanic elements, while similar studies in Umbria, for example, show more continuity with ancient populations.
Bergamo, situated right beside the fertile plain, yet on a defensible hill, does rather reflect that history. Settled by Ligurians in the Iron Age, then conquered by the Celts on their way westwards around 550 BC, then a Roman municipium, it was destroyed by Attila at the end of the Roman period. In the 6th Century it became a Lombard duchy, then in the Middle Ages it spent a period as an independent commune before coming under Milanese rule. Then – bringing us up to the period I wish to discuss today – in 1428 it was ceded by Milan to the Republic of Venice, becoming the most westerly town in Venice’s empire, which at that time stretched as far as the Aegean in the east.
And that brings us to the historical figure at the heart of today’s post.
Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400-1475)
Bartolomeo Colleoni was born just outside Bergamo, then in Milanese territory, and trained to be a soldier – not just a member of the city militia, but a condottiere or mercenary soldier. You cannot talk about Medieval or Renaissance Italian history without dealing with these guys, and I have written about them several times, most recently in the article The Witch, the Warrior and the Preacher – the Story of Matteuccia da Todi. And it was with the warrior of that story, Braccio “Fortebraccio” da Montone, that Colleoni’s career really got started. As I mentioned in that earlier post, Braccio fought on the side of Alfonso of Aragon, but was defeated by the forces of Francesco Sforza, who was fighting for Louis of Anjou at the start of a career that would take him to the Dukedom of Milan.
It had not occurred to me until I started researching this, but the name “Colleoni” sounds a bit like coglioni which is a very vulgar word, still used in Italian, for testicles. If he was teased about it at school, it obviously did not worry him all that much, as you may see from the coat of arms he adopted.
Colleoni’s career took a definitive turn when he enlisted with one of the leading condottieri of the day, Francesco Bussone, known as Carmagnola, fighting for Venice – mostly against the Milanese. History remembers Carmagnola mainly for his death – he lost a few battles, showed a general lack of urgency, and was known to be in correspondence with the Visconti in Milan. The Venetian Council of Ten (which controlled the secret service) started to doubt his loyalty, and summoned him back to Venice on the pretext of consultations. After a meeting in the Doge’s Palace, he was on his way out when a courtier motioned him towards the corridor that led to the prisons. “That is not the way”, said Carmagnola. “Your pardon, my lord, but it is”, answered the official. “Son perduto” (I am lost) muttered Carmagnola as he was led to the cells. After a trial, he was taken to the Piazzetta San Marco and beheaded. It was apparently a fair trial by the standards of the day, with some of the council voting for imprisonment rather than execution, and they did give him a formal funeral and his wife a pension. Falling foul of the Visconti, in contrast, usually just meant poison or disappearance and a discreet strangulation.
Despite this example of robust Venetian performance feedback, Colleoni chose to remain in their employment. Notionally serving under Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua, Colleoni was the real military brains of the operation, and presumably the Venetian authorities noticed. When Gonzaga changed sides, Colleoni stayed loyal, and presumably the Venetians noticed that too. In their employment he served under other famous mercenaries such as Erasmo di Narni (who went by the wonderful name of Gattamelata – the Honeyed Cat) and his former foe Francesco Sforza.
When the war between Venice and Milan ended, Colleoni worked for the Milanese for a while, but the Visconti distrusted him and briefly imprisoned him, so he returned to Venice. But still the Venetians would not put him in charge, and he went back to Sforza, assisting him to take the Dukedom of Milan after the death of the last of the Visconti and a short-lived Milanese republic.
But the Venetians eventually realized both that they could not do without him, and also that he was one of the few mercenary commanders who it seemed could be trusted not to betray his employers. And so in 1455, not only was he appointed Captain-General of the Venetian Republic, but the appointment was for life, and on a salary so substantial that it would be pointless for an enemy to try and bribe him.
One of the other things I remembered about Colleoni is how his military career ended. He did not fall in battle, like Fortebraccio, and of course he was not executed for treachery like Carmagnola. Nor, unlike Sforza, did he “wade through slaughter to a throne”. Instead, he simply retired to a farm. At least that is how I remembered it. In fact, he bought, or was granted, a large estate called Malpaga near Bergamo, still in Venetian territory, which did indeed contain farms, but also a run-down castle.
The castle he restored, enlarged and modernised. It served not just as a magnificent residence, but as a headquarters for his soldiers when they were not active in the field. When he himself was not on active service, he spent his time on more extensions to the castle, on introducing agricultural improvements to his estate, or on charitable works.
While researching A Traveller in Italy (1964), H.V. Morton visited Malpaga and found it still the centre of a working farm, after almost five hundred years. I regret that I have yet to do the same, and the photographs below are not mine, but one day I hope to do so.
I have not seen this noted anywhere in relation to Malpaga, but it occurs to me that mal paga could be translated as “badly paid”. I can think of few things less appropriate in Colleoni’s case.
The Colleoni Chapel
One of Colleoni’s final projects was the commissioning of a chapel, next to the Duomo of Bergamo, that was to serve as his mausoleum and memorial. It is in a beautiful little square in the centre of the old town, next to the Duomo and a baptistry.
There is a campanile – not part of the Duomo but actually the town hall, that you can climb and from which you not only get a good view of the chapel, but of the mountains to the north and the endless plain to the south.
The chapel was probably started before Colleoni’s death, but finished some time afterwards. It contains not only Colleoni’s tomb, but that of one of his daughters, who predeceased him. One curiosity is the columns that make up part of the façade. If you look at the photograph below you will see that the two central columns in each group are rather oddly-shaped, a bit like candlesticks. This is because they are not supposed to be candlesticks, but cannons. Perhaps a strange decoration for a chapel, but apparently not in contemporary eyes.
Although cannons had been around for a century or so already, in the 15th Century improvements in metallurgy and the manufacture of gunpowder meant that they were now more powerful, but also smaller and lighter, so rather than only being useful as static siege engines they could be towed by horses or mules and move with comparative speed from place to place with the armies that deployed them. They were also less likely to burst and kill the gun-laying crew. I read that Colleoni made much use of these more versatile weapons, and hence their commemoration in his chapel.
Just behind the Duomo, history nerds can find something as exciting, in its own way, as the later structures. This is the tiny Tempietto of Santa Croce. Much redecorated on the inside, the outside, in what is known as the Lombard Gothic style, looks much as it would have done when built shortly after 1000 AD. And the young Colleoni must have passed it many times, as he would have done again in old age, perhaps while inspecting the site of his future chapel.
In 1475 news reached Venice that Colleoni was dying, and emissaries were sent to Malpaga to pay their respects. Venice was facing hard times after a ruinously expensive war against the Turks in the east, so it would have come as a very pleasant surprise when Colleoni told them that he was leaving the bulk of his vast fortune to the Venetian treasury. It is said that they then asked the old warrior for some words of advice on securing the safety of the Republic. His answer was sobering: “Never again give anyone as much power as you gave me. I could have done you much harm”.
The Verrocchio Sculpture
Colleoni’s generous bequest to Venice came with one condition: that they erect a statue of him in St Mark’s Square. This was a problem, as by tradition no statue had ever been placed in the square (and never would be – even Victor Emmanuel had to put up with a location round the corner on the Riva degli Schiavoni). But they needed the money, so a solution had to be found. The solution – which John Julius Norwich describes as typically Venetian, was to place the statue not in St Mark’s Square, but outside the Scuola Grande of St Mark – then the home of one of Venice’s wealthy confraternities, and now the hospital.
So it was a bit sneaky, but on the other hand the Scuola Grande is a very impressive building, and the statue itself, by the Florentine master Andrea del Verrocchio, the teacher of Leonardo da Vinci, is magnificent. Casting free-standing equestrian figures in bronze was still a newly-rediscovered technique (Donatello’s recent statue of Gattamelata in Padua was the first since antiquity).
Verrocchio’s statue has both the horse and its rider radiating power and determination, with Colleoni’s armoured shoulder thrust forward purposefully on his way to vanquish another enemy of Venice. While not taking away from Donatello’s Gattamelata, I think that Verrocchio’s Colleoni is the superior work. Firstly because of the vigour and air of command of its subject, but also technically. You can’t see it in my earlier photograph of Gattamelata because of my artful composition, but in fact the leading hoof of Gattamelata’s horse rests on a bronze sphere, thus the statue is supported on four points. Verrocchio, on the other hand, manages the trickier problem of balancing the whole (doubtless very heavy) statue on three points, with the front hoof defiantly held aloft. This of course adds considerably to the sense of movement.
So while the signoria of Venice may not have entirely met their obligations under the bequest, one hopes that Colleoni wouldn’t have been too upset.
Insults
There are some negative stereotypes which the unfortunate Bergamaschi have had to put up with over the centuries – the politest form of which is that they are a bit unsophisticated. At worst they are portrayed as uncouth, ignorant bumpkins. In music, a bergamasca is a rustic dance, and in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare has his “rude mechanicals” perform a “Bergomask”.
I had assumed that the origin of this prejudice was among the snooty Milanese (perhaps a bit jealous of Bergamo’s cool hilltop in summer). As a former resident of Queanbeyan, I know what it is to be looked down upon by one’s neighbours.
That may well be true, but more recently I discovered that a prime culprit was Baldassare Castiglione, who while he didn’t invent the insult, certainly gave it wide publicity in his book Il Cortegiano or The Book of the Courtier. I mentioned this book in my first post on the “Ideal Renaissance City” of Urbino and it was a real 16th-Century bestseller, spreading the novel idea that aristocrats needed to cultivate skills other than bashing each other over the head.
While I suppose Castiglione needed some homespun hearties to contrast with the elegant and refined courtiers of jewel-like Urbino, he could perhaps have made the location a bit less specific. I think a little less of him now (and I bet he wouldn’t have had the nerve to say it in front of Colleoni).
Odds and Ends
The name Bartolomeo Colleoni rang a faint bell in my memory, and eventually I realised that it was familiar to me from naval history. In the 1920s the Italian government commissioned a new class of light cruisers, named after Renaissance military leaders, and one of them was the Bartolomeo Colleoni. Unfortunately, as with all light cruisers, they compromised on the armour for the sake of speed and firepower, and the Colleoni was sunk by the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney and a force of British destroyers in the Battle of Cape Spada in 1940.
Another thing associated with Bergamo is that this was one of the first places outside China where COVID-19 hit hard early on, overwhelming the local mortuaries and forcing the Italian Army to lay on convoys to take the many bodies away at night, while the world looked on in horror. At least the ordeal of the people of Bergamo allowed the rest of the world a little warning of what to prepare for.
A final fact about Bergamo is that it is probably not the origin of the word bergamotto (French bergamot) – referring to the highly-perfumed citrus that is responsible for the talcum-powder scent of Earl Grey tea. It is more likely to be an Italianisation of the Turkish name of the fruit, which just happens to sound a bit similar.
