Whe was Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici? Little is known other than that she was born in 1545 and died in 1561, just sixteen years old. She was the fifth child of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, and Eleonora of Toledo, whose cool beauty was immortalized by the court painter Agnolo Bronzino. There is also a portrait of Lucrezia painted by Bronzino’s pupil Alessandro Allori in 1560, two years after her marriage by procuration, i.e. in absentia, to Alfonso II d’Este, who would become Duke of Ferrara in 1559. The connection was due to the power-political calculations of the Medici, who were still considered social climbers; Lucrezia was then thirteen years old. It was not until 1560 that she came to the Ferrarese court, the following year she died, whether of a fever or murdered by her husband is still not clear to this day.
Lucrezia’s fate has inspired the Irish-British writer Maggie O’Farrell to write a book that bears the timeless title Portrait of a Marriage. The historical novel is allowed to use the liberties of storytelling, of fantasizing, and O’Farrell does it well. She writes from the perspective of the girl, the very young woman who received the same level of education as her brothers in Florence, not least under the influence of her mother Eleonora, to whom her husband Cosimo conceded amazing power at his side. But O’Farrell’s Lucrezia is not to be domesticated and will not be in her short life. She has the ability to have her attention and gaze wherever it is not wanted, and she has an exceptional gift for drawing and painting.
The Lucrezia of this adventurous story has an early encounter, worthy of a fairy tale, with a tigress. Her father kept a menagerie of wild animals in the basement vaults of today’s Palazzo Vecchio, which is also historically correct. One day Lucrezia perceives the arrival of a newcomer to the palace, “she alone heard the howling of the tigress”. Lucrezia manages to sneak unnoticed to the animal’s cage, she feels the sufferings of captivity and manages to touch the tigress through the bars: “Lucrezia and the tigress gazed at each other for a long moment; the child’s hand rested on the beast’s back, and time stood still.” She recognizes her destiny in the tormented creature. Only later does she learn that the tigress has been mauled by a lion in a cage next to her, whose door had accidentally been left open.
This book has Renaissance-like coloring
The encounter with the tigress is the secret leitmotif of the novel. It begins later, in the spring of 1561. Lucrezia is now the Duchess of Ferrara and is staying with her husband in a Fortezza near Bondeno. She suspects that Alfonso wants to kill her, away from the castle in Ferrara and his court, where she lives with him. From here, the story is told in retrospects that intertwine in place and time, beginning with the circumstances of Lucrezia’s conception in Florence in 1544.
