Filippo Maria Visconti was duke of Milan from 1412 to 1447. Known to be cruel and paranoid, but shrewd as a ruler, he went to war in the 1420s with Romagna, Florence and Venice in the Wars in Lombardy, but was eventually forced to accept peace under Pope Martin V. He would return to the offensive again where another peace agreement was required to end the fighting. He married twice, the second in 1428 to Marie, daughter of his ally Amadeus VIII. When he died, he was the last of the Visconti male line and was succeeded by Francesco Sforza, husband to his daughter.

The Duchy of Milan was a state in Northern Italy, created in 1395 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, then the lord of Milan, and a member of the important Visconti family, which had been ruling the city since 1277.