There are four different hypotheses relating to the origin of the nickname of Ludovico Sforza (alias Ludovico il Moro), governor of Milan from 1494 to 1499 as well as patron of Leonardo da Vinci and several other artists of his time. The first relates to his appreciation of the gelso, locally called ‘moròn’, hence, by assonance, ‘Moro’. Ludovico loved the symbolic meaning of the mulberry tree, since it is the last tree to put forth leaves and the first to bear fruit. Others, however, believe that the nickname was simply due to his bronze complexion, black eyes and raven hair; still others maintain that in reality his name was Ludovico Mauro, and that Moro is a simple contraction of his own second name. Finally, in his Florentine history, Benedetto Varchi goes so far as to hypothesize that the nickname Moro derives from Ludovico’s custom of having Moor’s heads, a custom already widespread in various Italian courts during the Renaissance.
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