were met with a friendly reception by Ferdinand of Naples upon their arrival. Leonardo's uncle-in-law granted him an annual pension of 500 , and also made him a landed noble, granting him the fiefs of Briatico and Calimera in Calabria. These lands were a small gesture, given that Leonardo had expected Ferdinand to lend him military aid to retake his lands in Greece. On 29 February 1480, Leonardo and his family arrived in Rome, seeking money from Pope Sixtus. Papal emissaries met with Leonardo outside the Porta San Giovanni and escorted the dispossessed despot to a house he had leased between the Botteghe Oscure and the Via Pellicciaria. Sixtus IV gave Leonardo 1000 gold pieces, and promised a pension of 2000 gold pieces a year. Sixtus recorded his generosity to Leonardo in reliefs in the frescoes of the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, which record how Sixtus "nourished [Leonardo] with his royal bounty". Leonardo's attempts at gaining money from the Papacy may be explained by the dispossessed despot almost immediately upon his faced large debts, owing to the fact that the lands granted to him by Ferdinand were not enough to sustain himself, his family, and his entourage. By October 1480, Leonardo owed Ferdinand 12,000 ducats, and owed his own wife 600 ducats. After having stayed in Rome for about a month, Leonardo left to reside in southern Italy again. Leonardo and his family hoped to regain their territories in Greece. Leonardo's brother Antonio briefly succeeded, with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, to recover the islands of Cephalonia and Zakynthos in 1481. Venice did not wish for the islands to fall under Neapolitan suzerainty again, so worked to dislodge Antonio. In 1482, the Venetian governor of Methoni successfully took control of Zakynthos and in 1483, Antonio was killed by his own garrison due to fears of an imminent Venetian attack. Although the Ottomans demanded the return of the islands and Leonardo petitioned Venice to be reinstated as ruler, Venice succeeded in retaining the islands until the fall of the republic in the late 18th century (though Cephalonia came under Ottoman control briefly in 1485–1500). Though Leonardo would spend the rest of his life pondering how he could regain his lands, no further attempts were ever made to take them back. Leonardo served Ferdinand as a diplomat to Spain. The Spaniards are recorded as having treated Leonardo with royal