ore long his favourite painter
Leonardo was to set to work on his great Cenacolo in the refectory.

While Lodovico and Beatrice were pursuing these different objects of
their ambition, the unfortunate Duchess Isabella was eating out her
heart in the Castello of Pavia. After the imperial wedding, at which she
had made so brave a show, she and Gian Galeazzo retired to Pavia, and
were rarely seen in public again. The duke's health and mental condition
became every day more enfeebled, and his wife devoted herself wholly to
him and her children. That winter she gave birth to a second daughter,
who was named Ippolita after her grandmother, but died at the age of
seven. And now, as if to increase the sadness of her forlorn condition,
came the prospect of war with Naples, and the invasion of her father's
dominions by a foreign monarch, who entered Italy as the ally of
Lodovico, the usurper of her husband's throne. But melancholy as her
surroundings were, and keenly as she felt the sight of her rival
Beatrice's prosperity, the privations which she and her husband were
forced to endure have been greatly exaggerated. According to Corio, they
were often destitute of food and necessaries, and reduced to the verge
of starvation. This chronicler, however, was not only frequently
inaccurate in his statements, but had a spite against Duchess Beatrice,
whose character and actions he totally misrepresented, while, after
Lodovico's fall, his ingratitude towards his former master drew down
upon him the bitter reproaches and invective of Lancinius Curtius. In
this instance his statements are refuted by the bills for the expenses
of the ducal household, which are still preserved in the Milanese
archives. From these records we learn that Isabella's ladies were as
numerous and as richly dressed as those of any reigning sovereign, and
that her _camoras_ and jewels were as sumptuous as Beatrice's own. Gian
Galeazzo's stables were always well filled with horses and hounds, for
Lodovico was too wise to grudge his nephew anything that tended to
occupy his thoughts and distract them from public affairs. And during
his last illness the unfortunate duke announced his intention of giving
dowries to a hundred poor maidens on his recovery, which affords another
proof that his poverty was not so great as Corio has declared. But none
the less it was a bitter mortification for a king's daughter of the
proud house of Aragon to see herself and her husband left