DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.36838#0342
MARRIAGE OFFERS
271
September that he felt very weak and that health
did not come as quickly as illness. By way of raising
money to meet the expenses of his illness, he sold
his old horses at the fair of Recanati, and sent for
others from Casatico.
Here his mother was still busy making new plans
for his marriage, and some half a dozen different
brides were proposed to him during the course of the
year. While the union with Clarice de' Medici was still
in the air, Madonna Luigia received proposals from
a Count Lodovico Visconti who had a marriageable
daughter, and when the negotiations with the Medici
were finally broken off, Duchess Elisabetta suggested
one of Count Borromeo's daughters as a suitable
bride, and in the kindness of her heart wrote to
ascertain the amount of her dowry. For some reason
the Visconti marriage did not attract him, but he
was quite inclined to entertain the idea of an alliance
with the Borromeo family. His friend Madonna
Emilia's brother, Lodovico Pio of Carpi, who came to
Urbino on the Pope's business, interested himself in the
matter, and assured Castiglione that all the members
of the Borromeo family, men and women alike, asked
nothing better than to form an alliance with him.
But a malicious report reached him that the maiden
in question was exceedingly ugly, and he at once
recoiled from the plan. ' However rich she may be/
he wrote to his mother, ' I would not, for anything
in the world, take a devil to be my partner.
This, however, seems to have been a calumny, and
a year later, when he was at Bologna in June, 1510,
we find him reverting to the idea and seriously con-
templating the marriage. One Messer Visconti, who
was related to the Borromei, had apparently re-
* Cod. Vat. Lat., 8210.
271
September that he felt very weak and that health
did not come as quickly as illness. By way of raising
money to meet the expenses of his illness, he sold
his old horses at the fair of Recanati, and sent for
others from Casatico.
Here his mother was still busy making new plans
for his marriage, and some half a dozen different
brides were proposed to him during the course of the
year. While the union with Clarice de' Medici was still
in the air, Madonna Luigia received proposals from
a Count Lodovico Visconti who had a marriageable
daughter, and when the negotiations with the Medici
were finally broken off, Duchess Elisabetta suggested
one of Count Borromeo's daughters as a suitable
bride, and in the kindness of her heart wrote to
ascertain the amount of her dowry. For some reason
the Visconti marriage did not attract him, but he
was quite inclined to entertain the idea of an alliance
with the Borromeo family. His friend Madonna
Emilia's brother, Lodovico Pio of Carpi, who came to
Urbino on the Pope's business, interested himself in the
matter, and assured Castiglione that all the members
of the Borromeo family, men and women alike, asked
nothing better than to form an alliance with him.
But a malicious report reached him that the maiden
in question was exceedingly ugly, and he at once
recoiled from the plan. ' However rich she may be/
he wrote to his mother, ' I would not, for anything
in the world, take a devil to be my partner.
This, however, seems to have been a calumny, and
a year later, when he was at Bologna in June, 1510,
we find him reverting to the idea and seriously con-
templating the marriage. One Messer Visconti, who
was related to the Borromei, had apparently re-
* Cod. Vat. Lat., 8210.