Mercenary banners moved across Lombardy,
hooves stirring the dust of long contracts,
steel hired by city against city.
Among them rode Bartolomeo Colleoni,
a captain whose name carried weight
in the counting houses of war.
Above his riders flew a strange device:
three shapes upon a field of color—
bold, unmistakable, almost laughing.
The emblem of the House of Colleoni
refused the politeness of heraldry;
it declared its joke in plain sight.
Soldiers noticed.
Enemies noticed.
No one easily forgot it.
From Bergamo
to the plains claimed by Venice’s republic,
the banner moved with the fortunes of war.
Centuries later the stone monuments remain,
and the shield still bears its three blunt symbols—
history’s strangest coat of arms.