ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



round her throat. But neither of these bear any 

 likeness to the portrait of the Ambrosiana. In both 

 we notice the same receding chin and slightly aquiline 

 nose, the same placid and self-satisfied expression. 

 The Empress Bianca was, as she is here represented, 

 a thoroughly dull commonplace woman, who annoyed 

 her imperial lord as much by her childish and un- 

 dignified behaviour as by her lavish expenditure on 

 clothes and trinkets. Bianca, as Maximilian justly 

 remarked, was quite as fair a woman as his first wife, 

 Mary of Burgundy, but was very inferior to her in 

 good sense and character. Yet she had a kind 

 heart, and in after years extended generous help and 

 protection not only to the members of her own 

 family, but to all the Milanese exiles who sought 

 shelter at the imperial court after the Moro's fall. 

 In her dull surroundings at Innsbrtick, the young 

 Empress pined for the blue skies and brilliant life 

 of her old home, and was always writing to her 

 uncle Lodovico and to Duchess Beatrice, begging 

 them to send her gloves and perfumes, feathers and 

 silks for her own use, and to give her news of the 

 kindred and friends for whom she sighed. As Dr. 

 Bode has justly remarked, the Lady of the Ambrosiana 

 must have been an infinitely more intelligent and attrac- 

 tive person than the poor foolish Empress, who, like her 



mother Bona, was evidently " une dame de petit sens." 



170 



