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 Innsbrilck, 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 
