Behind the beauty of the Italian Renaissance lies a dark side, a world of bloody political disputes and brutal warfare. This hidden reverse is what Maggie O’Farrell wanted to reveal in The Married Portrait, her new novel after the success of her celebrated Hamnet (Asteroid Books, 2021), which explored Shakespeare’s family life.
In this case, the Renaissance beauty is represented by the wedding portrait of Lucrezia de Medici, third daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I de Medici and the Spanish aristocrat Leonor Ãlvarez de Toledo. The painting depicts a beautiful young noblewoman dressed in splendid jewelry and rich clothing. However, what lies behind the brilliance of that magnificence is a fifteen-year-old forced to marry a twenty-eight-year-old man she had never seen when she was thirteen. That man is Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.
The novel begins in 1561. Lucrezia is sixteen years old, has been in Ferrara for a year, and is about to die. It is the first historical reference that appears in the novel: the death of the young duchess due to “putrid fevers”, as the official version points out.
O’Farrell echoes a rumor that has survived to this day. Did Lucrecia die of an illness, possibly tuberculosis? Or was she murdered, poisoned by her husband, tired of waiting for an heir from her and her being out of step with her? In fact, Alfonso married three times and had no children, losing the duchy of Ferrara, part of the Papal States. His second wife, Barbara of Habsburg, also died prematurely of tuberculosis.
The writer fantasizes about the idea of ​​uxoricide, the death of a woman at the hands of her husband, a frequent crime at the time and consented to honoris causa (Lucrecia’s own sister, Isabel, seems to have been strangled to death), and contrasts it with the story of the childhood of the young Medici. Two timelines that come together throughout the book, articulating a narrative characterized by vivid descriptions of historical settings and O’Farrell’s captivating prose, perfect for recreating the intimacy of the Medici family.
