Anyone who is passionate about historical novels will have read at least one book by Carla Maria Russo, if not all of them (like me). He told the story of Costanza d’Altavilla, mother of Frederick II of Swabia, ne The Norman bride; the turbulent life of Caterina Dolfin The doge’s lover and lately she has been interested in the events of the Sforza family, focusing her attention on Caterina, The bastard of the Sforza.
The resounding success of this last work was complicit in the drafting of the new novel, The venturieri. The overwhelming rise of the Sforza, which Carla Maria Russo has just published for Piemme and it is already attracting some interest. This time we enter the heart of the adventures – but also of the intrigues and cruelties – that have affected their history, giving us a fundamental chapter of the Italian Renaissance. Affaritaliani.it spoke to the author about it to find out more.
She returns to talk about the Sforza after having concentrated on the figure of Caterina. Why does this family fascinate you so much?
The interest in the Sforza arose when I was attracted by the human story of Caterina Sforza. To understand Caterina’s story and to accurately delineate the complex personality and psychology of this woman so unusual for her temper, courage and interests, I had to carefully reconstruct the family environment in which she grew up. This led me to study in depth the Milanese court and the second generation of the Sforza, namely Galeazzo Maria Sforza, his son Gian Galeazzo and his brother Ludovico.
At that point, the next step was to get curious about the origins of this family and their rise to power. A curiosity rewarded by the encounter with a very compelling, adventurous story with strong passions: the genre that has great hold on me.
To describe the Sforza in two words, I would say that they were soldiers of fortune with great skills, not only military – they were very skilled strategists – but also political so to speak, that is, acumen and foresight. They lived in an era that could offer great opportunities to adventurers like them, endowed with courage, intelligence, determination and a certain unscrupulousness. Muzio, and even more Francesco, were able to glimpse and grasp them. It is a pity that the children were not up to par with their fathers. Only Caterina showed that she possessed all the gifts of her grandfather Francesco.
In this novel the protagonists are Muzio Sforza and his son Francesco, then Bianca and Galeazzo. Could you briefly outline the personalities of these famous characters and the relationships between them?
The father / son relationship is one of the main themes of the book, together with others dear to me and present in all my books: the family with its unresolved issues, couple relationships, the position of the woman. The bond between Muzio and Francesco is very interesting, made up of mutual affection and esteem, but also of friction and teasing, especially on the part of Francesco, intolerant of his paternal authority and persuaded that he is more talented and gifted than Muzio. And with some reason, it must be said: while Muzio, despite his remarkable gifts, was an almost illiterate peasant, Francesco was able to study in the most cultured and elegant courts of the time, Ferrara and Naples. Obviously, therefore, that he possessed much more solid and sophisticated cultural tools than his father, thanks to which he was able to greatly refine his innate abilities. The young man was fully aware of this superiority, so much so that he often gave in to somewhat opinionated and disrespectful attitudes towards his father.
On the other hand, Galeazzo’s relationship with his parents was very different, who took a different attitude towards that difficult, undisciplined, unstable and humoral son (a Visconti, alas, in this sense): rather severe on the part of his mother, who he recognized his son’s vicious and even depraved tendencies and feared their degeneration once he became duke; tolerant and indulgent on the part of his father, who instead spoiled him and forgave or justified all his excesses, perhaps because he was aware that he was the first to have many “sins” to be forgiven.