her child.

Marino Sanuto, writing in August, seven months after Beatrice's death,
remarks that since his wife's death the duke has become an altered man.
"He is very religious, recites offices daily, observes fasts, and lives
chastely and devoutly. His rooms are still hung with black, and he takes
all his meals standing, and wears a long black cloak. He goes every day
to visit the church where his wife is buried, and never leaves this
undone, and much of his time is spent with the friars of the convent."
And a Dominican historian, Padre Rovegnatino, then living, records how
during the whole of the next year Lodovico visited the convent regularly
twice a week--on Tuesday, which, being the day of the week on which
Beatrice died, he always kept as a fast, and on Saturday, and on these
occasions dined with the prior Giovanni da Tortona and his successor
Vincenzo Baldelli.

The decoration and improvement of this church and convent now became the
chief object of Lodovico's thoughts. The beautiful shrine which he had
already adorned with Bramante's cupola and portico, was now doubly dear
to him for the sake of Beatrice and his dead children. The annals of the
convent record the multitude of his benefactions to both church and
convent, and the cordial relations which he maintained with the
Dominican friars to the end of his reign. First of all, he applied
himself to raise a monument to the memory of Beatrice immediately in
front of the high altar, where her remains were buried. The sculptor
whom he chose for this work was Cristoforo Solari, called _Il Gobbo_, or
the hunchback, a surname which he had inherited from his father, who
seems to have been deformed. The Solari were a race of sculptors, many
of whom had been employed at the Certosa, while Cristoforo, who had
settled in Venice about 1490, was recalled to Milan about this time and
appointed ducal sculptor, on the recommendation of the Marchesino
Stanga. It was the duke's pleasure that a recumbent effigy of Beatrice,
wearing the rich brocades and jewels in which she had been borne to her
rest, should be placed on her tomb, so that future ages should have a
perpetual memorial of the young duchess as she had last appeared in the
eyes of the servants and people who had loved her so well. And as it was
Lodovico's own wish to be buried in the same tomb, the sculptor was to
carve an effigy of himself in ducal crown and mantle, lying at his
wife's side in the last slumber. So,