The Tigress of Forli by Elizabeth Lev

diarists waxed eloquent about her fair tresses, rare in raven-haired Rome, and gushed over her dresses, which, unlike the high-necked Roman style, displayed daring décolletage. Her intelligence, manners, and sense of fashion were so widely admired that a later chronicler, Fabio Oliva, wrote that "in popular opinion she was the most beautiful and gracious woman of her time." Like many young girls, Caterina delighted in exquisite dresses and sumptuous parties. Much of her day was absorbed by her toilette; out late, she rose late and began the slow process of dressing. Using powders and cosmetic paints, Caterina transformed her teenage features. During her first forays into public life, Caterina found that her stepmother, having once been her mentor in social graces, now acted as her greatest source of fashionable accessories. Bona frequently sent gifts of ribbons, jeweled belts, and beaded hairnets, allowing Caterina to flaunt the latest northern styles. More than these items, however, Caterina appreciated the affection that permeated Bona's letters. In a note dated November 9, 1477, Bona tells Caterina that "hearing you are well fills us with joy as it is with every mother toward a beloved daughter as you are to me," 4 while in another she describes the only consolation "of being deprived of your sweet conversation ... is the thought of your happy circumstances." 5
    In her return letters to her stepmother, Caterina revealed that her delight in riding and hunting had not diminished. When Bona sent Caterina and Girolamo a fine pair of hunting dogs in January 1478, Caterina was particularly effusive in her thanks. Departing from the stiff formal epistolary tone that characterized her obligatory courtly letters home, Caterina wrote that the dogs were "very dear to me and even more so to my husband ... he was delighted to see them and played with the dogs for hours." Still enamored of the chase, Caterina's happiest moments occurred during equestrian adventures outside the city limits. A few blocks away from her house, Sixtus had built a new bridge, the first since antiquity to span the Tiber. The Ponte Sisto, as it was called, cut traveling time to the Vatican for prelates and pilgrims alike, but for Caterina it was the route to the lush gardens and forests of the Janiculum Hill, where she could breathe freely, away from the stuffy halls and crowded streets of the city. On these days she could leave behind the pounds of silk and brocade and the weighty jewels that even for a fashion maven could sometimes be burdensome. In a light woolen gown, with her hair loosely tied, she would set off on horseback with her dogs to race up and down the hills of Rome. Exploring the thick forests of Lazio was a refreshing change from picking her way through the labyrinth of alleys in the city center, and the fierce boar was a more straightforward foe than the scheming flatterers at court.
    Caterina's correspondence home, however, was not all shopping lists and personal news. As soon as she settled into her new home, the young countess went to work. Stacks of letters requesting promotions for courtiers, merciful treatment for an arrested retainer, or parishes for clerics kept her busy for hours every day. The sister of a duke and now the niece of a pope, Caterina was a powerful intercessor, and both her old family and her new one called upon her to exercise this role. In her first two years in Rome, Caterina wrote dozens of personal and official dispatches, and although her tone remained invariably cheery, her life was not without cares and concerns.
    The pontiff was eagerly awaiting news of a Riario heir. Given that Caterina would eventually bear her husband six children, the twenty-six-month wait for their first child suggests that Girolamo was more occupied with his plots and schemes than with his lovely and charming bride. Only a few short months after Caterina's arrival in Rome, Girolamo began to consort with two men who shared an implacable