Gian Galeazzo Visconti

Gian Galeazzo Visconti (born 1351, Milan—died Sept. 3, 1402, Melegnano, near Milan) was a Milanese leader who brought the Visconti dynasty to the height of its power and almost succeeded in becoming the ruler of all northern Italy.

The son of Galeazzo II Visconti, who shared the rule of Milan with his brother Bernabò, Gian Galeazzo was married in 1360 to Isabella of Valois, daughter of the king of France. After his father’s death in 1378, Gian Galeazzo succeeded him as ruler of the western half of Milan and its territory, with headquarters at Pavia, south of Milan. In 1382, when Bernabò contracted a military alliance with the French prince Louis of Anjou and planned to marry his daughter Lucia to Louis’s son, Gian Galeazzo took alarm, viewing the marriage as an enhancement of Bernabò’s position and a threat to his own. In 1385 he ambushed and captured Bernabò. Two months later, when Bernabò’s granddaughter Isabella of Bavaria married Charles VI and became queen of France, the feud between uncle and nephew became an element in French politics. Bernabò died in prison the same year, possibly from poisoning. In 1387 Gian Galeazzo’s daughter Valentina was married to the French king’s brother Louis, duc d’Orléans, a union that later resulted in the claims of Louis XII and Francis I to the duchy of Milan.

Gian Galeazzo united all the Visconti dominions in his own hands and further amplified them by his military power and his clever manipulation of rival cities. An able administrator, he aimed at transforming his territories into a united state, and encouraged the training of government officials at the University of Pavia. During the second year of his reign, the building of the cathedral of Milan was begun, and in 1396 he founded the celebrated Carthusian monastery, the Certosa di Pavia. He was strongly influenced by the poet Petrarch, who had lived at Galeazzo II’s court and had directed the collection of the Visconti library.

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Overthrowing the della Scala dynasty of Verona in 1387, Gian Galeazzo gained control of the greater part of the March of Treviso (north of Venice). In return for a large bribe, the German king Wenceslas made him a hereditary prince of the Holy Roman Empire, with titles of duke of Milan (1395) and count of Pavia (1396). Pisa and Siena accepted Gian Galeazzo’s lordship in 1399, Perugia and other Umbrian towns in 1400. In 1402 he annexed Bologna. Only Florence stood between him and the lordship of all northern Italy. Three months after the seizure of Bologna, his armies had been mustered for an attack on Florence when he died of the plague.