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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2009
On 4 September 1497 Caterina Cornaro, the Queen of Cyprus, visited her brother Giorgio when he was podestà of Brescia. The visit was the occasion for a series of splendid pageants; Brescia had for years been more or less the headquarters of the Venetian army, and the military played a full role in the festivities. In the procession of entry for the queen rode Albanian stradiots, the mounted crossbowmen of the governor-general, Pitigliano, and the companies of men-at-arms of Marco da Martinengo, Luigi Avogadro and Gianfrancesco Gambara, all themselves Brescian nobles and Venetian captains. There followed the clergy of the city and a cortège of Venetian nobles. Alongside the podestà rode the governor-general himself. Caterina was escorted to the palace of Ludovico da Martinengo where she was to reside; this was the palace which had belonged to Colleoni, to whom it owed its redecoration and splendour.
A few days later Francassa and several of his brothers, the sons of Roberto da Sanseverino, arrived from Milan with their men. Some of the Sanseverineschi had until recently been in Venetian service and their presence gave an edge of military rivalry to the great joust that was to follow. This was fought out on 10 September among the Sanseverineschi, the troops of the governor-general and the companies of the local Brescian captains. It was rumoured that the Marquis of Mantua, himself recently Venetian captain-general, was present in disguise.
All this portrays eloquently the fusion of civilian and military which was characteristic of life in the ex-signorial cities of Lombardy in the late Middle Ages, and which to a large extent Venice had absorbed by the end of the fifteenth century.
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