Postcard from Prison

The Postcard from Hell?





I’ve been buying old postcards for years in various “antique” shops. There is one shop in particular, that picks up goods from estate sales, that frequently has old postcards that are unused. I then use them. Today I found one while quickly looking through a pile of several hundred of them. One that I grabbed in passing seemed to be of an old stone room with painting on the inside walls.
After doing the usual Google search for the text on the front of the card (it has “Oct 13 1907” written on the back with no other message. Never sent), it turned out to be the dungeon of Ludovico Sforza, il Moro, Duke of Milan, the prisoner of Louis XII, who spend 10 years in there “until death released him.” Quote from “A handbook for Travelers in France.” He was an artist whose work you might have seen while taking European history in high school. This is an image by Leonardo da Vinci http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Lady_with_an_Ermine.jpg . The Lady was one of Sudovic's lovers. Even the ermine looks like royalty.