GIOVANNI MARIA was proclaimed duke of Milan in 1402, dis played an insane cruelty, and was killed in 1412 by Ghibelline partisans. FILIPPO MARIA, who became nominal ruler of Pavia in 1402, succeeded his brother as duke of Milan. Cruel and extremely sensitive about his personal ugliness, he nevertheless was a great politician, and, by employing powerful condottieri, managed to recover the Lombard portion of his father's duchy. From his marriage with the unhappy widow of the above mentioned Facino Cane he received a dowry of nearly half a million florins. He died in 1447, the last of the Visconti in direct male line, and was succeeded in the duchy, after the shortlived Ambrosian republic, by Francesco Sforza, who had married his daughter Bianca in 1441. (See SFORZA.)
There is a contemporary history of the principal members of the family by Paolo Giovio, bishop of Nocera, which may be had in several editions. See J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Ren aissance in Italy, trans. by S. G. C. Middlemore (London, 1898) ; J. A. Symonds, Age of the Despots (New York, 1888) ; C. Magenta, I Visconti e gli Sforza nel Castello di Pavia (1883) ; A. Medin, I Visconti nella poesia contemporanea (Milan, 1891) ; F. Mugnier, "Lettres des Visconti de Milan" in Memoires et documents de la societe savoisienne d'histoire et d'archeologie, vol. x. of the second series (1896).