It has all the trappings of an action packed thriller, with romance, revenge, murder
and war – and its protagonist is a bold and ambitious woman held in awe and feared
by legions: described a “tigress” by one contemporary, “willing to eat her young to
gain power.” The very real story of “Caterina” took place in 15th century
Italy when great families and popes held sway and vied over vast swathes of territory.
At one point this audacious young mother even held the fate of the papacy in her hands. Biographer
and historian Elizabeth Lev offers a meticulous and very readable account of Caterina’s
life in her book “The Tigress of Forli’: Renaissance Italy’s Most Courageous and
Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de’ Medici.” But as biographies go, “Caterina’s,”
she says, is mostly “an unsung story.” “She’s such an interesting character – she
is everything that we attribute to a Renaissance man in a woman.” Caterina was
the illegitimate child of Galeazzo Sforza, heir to the duchy of Milan who gave her
a superb education, a life of luxury and trained her in the arts of military strategy.
With an eye to securing the favor of the papacy and expanding the family’s influence,
her father offered the ten year old Caterina in marriage to 30 year old Girolamo Riario,
the nephew of Pope Sixtus IV. Through marriage and a series of intrigues and assassinations,
she rose to power in Imola and Forli’- modern day Emilia Romagna in northern Italy
For a period, Caterina lived in Rome where her husband’s uncle, Sixtus IV, was
Pope. It was a time of artistic and architectural ferment: with famous Italian painters
such as Botticelli, Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Pinturicchio making their mark on the
city and the Vatican. In one of the most rocambolesque episodes of her life, the
seven month pregnant Caterina grabs her horse and takes over St. Angelo Castel, training
its cannons on the College of Cardinals to prevent them from electing a new pope! Listen
to Tracey McClure’s interview with biographer Elizabeth Lev: