Marriage Portrait

Biography

Maggie O'Farrell, RSL (Royal Society of Literature), is a novelist from Northern Ireland, born on May 27, 1972.
Her acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award.
She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award: for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017.
She appeared in the Waterstones 25 Authors for the Future. Her memoir I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death reached the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list.
Hamnet won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020, and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards.
The Marriage Portrait (2022) was an instant Sunday Times, New York Times and Irish Times bestseller, and Guardian Book of the Year.

Biography

O'Farrell was born in Coleraine in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Wales and Scotland. At age eight, she was hospitalized with encephalitis and missed over a year of school. These events are echoed in The Distance Between Us and described in her 2017 memoir I Am, I Am, I Am. She suffered from a pronounced stammer during her childhood and adolescence.
She was educated at North Berwick High School and Brynteg Comprehensive School, and then at New Hall, University of Cambridge (now Murray Edwards College), where she read English Literature.
O'Farrell has stated that well into the 1990s, being Irish in Britain could be fraught: "We used to get endless Irish jokes, even from teachers. If I had to spell my name at school, teachers would say things like, 'Oh, are your family in the IRA?’ Teachers would say this to a 12-year-old kid in front of the whole class. . . . They thought it was hilarious to say, 'Ha , your dad's a terrorist'. It wasn't funny at all. . . . I wish I could say that it's [less common today] because people are less racist, but I think it's just that there are new immigrants who are getting it now." Nevertheless, not until 2013's Instructions for a Heatwave did Irish subjects become part of her work.

Biography

O'Farrell worked as a journalist, both in Hong Kong and as deputy literary editor of The Independent on Sunday in London. She also taught creative writing at the University of Warwick in Coventry and Goldsmiths College in London. She has lived in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Hong Kong, and Italy. She now lives in Edinburgh.
O'Farrell is married to a fellow writer, William Sutcliffe, whom she met while they were students at Cambridge; they didn't become a couple, however, until ten years or so after they graduated. They live in Edinburgh with their three children. She has said of Sutcliffe: "Will's always been my first reader, even before we were a couple, so he's a huge influence. He's brutal but you need that."

Author's note

Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, is widely considered to have been the inspiration for Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess”; Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici d’Este, Duchess of Ferrara, is the inspiration for this novel. I have tried to use what little is known about her short life but I have made a few alterations, in the name of fiction.
Lucrezia was born in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. In 1550, when she was five years old, the family moved across the river to the Palazzo Pitti. I kept them in the first location, for the sake of narrative cohesion.
The real Lucrezia was married to Alfonso II, at age 13, in May 1558 (the dowry paid by her father was an astonishing two hundred thousand gold scudi, which is around £50 million in today’s currency). She remained in Florence with her family for the following two years, while Alfonso went to France to lead military campaigns for Henri II.
My note: one of the chapters in this novel is titled "Seven Galleys Laden with Gold"; Eleanora's dowry, also considerable, came to Cosimo in seven galleys following the boat that brought her.

Author's note

On his father’s death in 1559, Alfonso became duke, and returned to Ferrara, arriving in Florence in the summer of 1560 to fetch Lucrezia and accompany her to his court. I have conflated both the marriage and the departure, so that Lucrezia in this novel is married and leaves for Ferrara in one single event at the age of fifteen.
Cosimo I de’ Medici became ruler of the Duchy of Tuscany in 1537, at age 17; he was elevated to Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1569. I refer to him by his latter title for the duration of this novel for the purpose of differentiating him from Alfonso.
There was indeed a collection of exotic animals in the basement of the Palazzo Vecchio; the street behind it is still named via dei Leoni. It’s been suggested by several biographers that the animals’ odour was one of the reasons Eleonora insisted on moving to the Palazzo Pitti.
The story of the tigress and the lions was inspired by an incident at the royal menagerie in the Tower of London, when a keeper mistakenly opened the interconnecting door between cages.

Author's note

The two sisters of Alfonso II who remained at the Ferrara court after their mother’s departure were not named Elisabetta and Nunciata, as here, but Lucrezia and Eleonora. I took the liberty of renaming them here to avoid confusion with other characters in the book.
The grim conclusion to the love affair between Ercole Contrari, head of the guards, and Elisabetta/Lucrezia d’Este took place in 1575, not 1561. She founded an institution for women victims of domestic abuse.
The only portrait of Lucrezia on display in Europe, at the time of writing, can be seen at the Palatine Gallery, two streets away from Casa Guidi, Robert Browning’s Florence residence. It is a small oil painting, about the size of a hardback book, commissioned by her parents shortly before Lucrezia left for Ferrara, and attributed to the studio of Bronzino.
In it, she is depicted against a dark background, wearing both Medici and Este jewellery; her face bears a slightly uncertain, apprehensive expression. The Uffizi Gallery has other iterations of the same portrait in its archives; a larger (and, to my eye at least, less flattering) version of it, by Alessandro Allori, is in the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Author's note

The marriage portrait of Lucrezia, which forms the basis of Browning’s poem, is, to the best of my knowledge, entirely fictional. If one ever does come to light, I would be very keen to know about it.
A final note about uxoricide (killing the wife) among Lucrezia’s family: her sole surviving sister, Isabella de’ Medici Orsini, met a very sudden and highly suspicious death at age 34, in 1575, while on a hunting holiday with her husband at a country villa in Cerruto. According to the official account, written by her brother Francesco, who was by then Grand Duke of Tuscany, it occurred “while she was washing her hair in the morning . . . She was found by [her husband] on her knees, having immediately fallen dead.” There are, unsurprisingly, differing opinions on the cause of her death.
The scene at the close of this novel, with Alfonso and Leonello enacting their violent ritual in the fortezza chamber, and the resulting unrecognisable corpse, is taken from another account of Isabella’s demise—that of Ercole Cortile, who was operating as a spy in the Florentine court for none other than Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara.

Author's note

After conducting his own enquiries from eyewitnesses to the deed, he wrote to the Duke:
- “Lady Isabella was strangled at midday. The poor woman was in bed when she was called by Signor Paolo . . . Hidden under the bed was the Roman Cavalier Massimo, who helped him to kill the lady.”
Only a few days before Isabella’s death, her cousin Dianora—now married to the youngest Medici brother, Pietro—also died a mysterious death at a country villa in Cafaggiolo. Pietro wrote to his brother Francesco with sinister composure:
- “Last night, at seven o’clock, an accident and death came to my wife, so Your Highness can take peace, and write to me about what I should do, if I should come back or not.”
The reason given was that she suffocated accidentally while in bed. Ercole Cortile, once again writing to Alfonso II, was more forthcoming:
- “She was strangled by a dog leash by Don Pietro . . . and finally died after a great deal of struggle. Don Pietro bears the sign, having two fingers on his hand injured from the bite of the lady.”

Author's note

The deaths of Isabella and Dianora appear to have had the tacit approval of their families. Neither Paolo Orsini, Isabella’s husband, nor Pietro de’ Medici, Dianora’s husband, was ever held to account for the sudden and unexplained deaths of their wives.
Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, went on to have two further wives. Neither union produced any children.

My note

In Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell brought to life Shakespeare's wife Anne (Agnes) and his son Hamnet about whom almost nothing is known. There are few actual historical records still surviving.
By writing the play Hamlet, Shakespeare gave life once again to his dead son.
By writing historical fiction, Maggie O'Farrell has given these women a life that time and history have forgotten. In essence, she gives them life, again.
That's what she does for Lucrezia di Medici in this novel.

To quote Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream:

“And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.”

Videos

Beginning YouTube video (almost 8 minutes go in later)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY4w6QRsPGw

Politics and Prose (44 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULEb1wCJzu8

Cast of characters

Cosimo became Duke of Florence in 1537 at age 17, after the former Duke of Florence, Alessandro de' Medici, was assassinated.
Cosimo was from a different branch of the Medici family, descended from Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, founder of the Medici Bank. It was necessary to search for a successor outside of the "senior" branch of the Medici family because the only male child of Alessandro, the last lineal descendant of the senior branch, was born out-of-wedlock and was only four years' old at the time of his father's death.

Cast of characters

Eleanora of Toledo
- A Spanish noblewoman and Duchess of Florence as the wife of Cosimo I de' Medici. A keen businesswoman, she financed many of her husband's political campaigns and important buildings like the Pitti Palace.
- She ruled as regent of Florence during his frequent absences, for example, his military campaigns in Genoa in 1541 and 1543, his illness from 1544 to 1545, and again at times during the war for the conquest of Siena (1551–1554).
- Credited with founding many Jesuit churches, she is also considered the first modern first lady or consort.
- Children: Lucrezia di Cosimo de Medici, Maria, Isabella, Francesco, Ferdinando, Pietro, Dorothea, Giovanni, Frederico, Antonio, Anna, and Bia, his daughter from a previous affair, legitimized.

Cast of characters

Lucrezia, 5th child, with older sisters Maria and Isabella (1545-1561)
Maria is the sister originally betrothed to Alfonso, but when she dies, Lucrezia is promised to him although she is only 13 at the time.
Sofia, nurse to the Medici children, brought with Eleanora
Emilia, Lucrezia's personal maid, brought with her from Florence. Her mother was also Lucrezia's "milk mother" and a cook in the Medici palace. Emilia is scarred from a burn in the kitchen when the girls were children.
Clelia, maid assigned by Alfonso

Cast of characters

Painters
- Il Bastianino: Sebastiano Filippi (or Bastianino) was an Italian late Renaissance-Mannerist painter of the School of Ferrara.

- Il Bastianino originally worked in Rome, training with Michelangelo, until returning to Ferrara in 1553 where he enjoyed the general patronage of the arts by Duke Alfonso I d'Este and subsequently his son Alfonso II.
- He painted a Madonna with Peter and Paul for the church of Vigarano and painted a Circumcision and an Annunciation for the church of San Agostino, Ferrara.
- He also painted altarpieces for the Certosa of Ferrara as well as the apse roof of Ferrara Cathedral. Bronzino, of course, is credited with the actual portrait of Lucrezia.
- When viewing Lucrezia's portrait, Alfonso notes the style of Michelangelo.

Cast of characters

His apprentices are:
Maurizio

- Jacopo: Lucrezia revives him with honey and water when he collapses in the central courtyard of the delizia. He doesn't speak, is thought to be mute and deaf, but chooses not to speak, until Lucrezia speaks to him in the Naples dialect when he retrieves a stylus he has dropped. As he leaves, she notices that:
- Tucked under his arm is a board filled with images of her wrists, her neck, the plane of her cheek, the socket of her eye. He has them, has taken possession of them: he will keep them safe, will ensure no harm comes to them. This thought makes a small, spreading warmth percolate through her.
On the day her portrait is revealed:
- [Jacopo's gaze] is unlike any of the others. It is a beam of comprehension, from his eyes to hers. It draws up awareness and knowledge as a thirsty plant will water. Does he see that she will die? Can he understand that her time on this earth is now so limited, so short? Can he glean all that from her face, from the way her husband looks at her, from Baldassare’s posture, there, as he balances, poised like a hawk awaiting the right wind, on the edge of the table, watching, watching, always watching.

Cast of characters

Alfonso II, d'Este, Duke of Ferrara
Leonello Baldassare, consigliere (an adviser to the Duke who resolves disputes), also cousin to Alfonso
Vitelli is Cosimo's consigliere
Elisabetta, sister to Alfonso
- Her lover is Ercole Contrari, head of the Guardsmen. When Alfonso discovers the affair, he orders Contrari strangled, in her presence
Nunciata, sister to Alfonso

Book passages

Circa p. 153
Here, on the pillow next to hers, is yet another version of the man she has been given to.
There are, it seems to her, many Alfonzo's, all fitted inside one body.
- There is the heir she met on the battlements, as a child,
- then the person behind the marten painting and the loops and dashes of the letters sent from France during the two-year wait for marriage,
- then the duke who claimed her at the altar, the person in the carriage, and the man in shirt sleeves who gave her a tour of the garden.
- And now, here is another: a sleeping satyr, with a naked chest, his unnerving lower half concealed by the folds and drapes of sheets.

Question for discussion

What do you think about this description of Alfonso? Does he have "versions" of himself? We know that he can be brutal, but does he have any redeeming characteristics?
And if he does have "versions" of himself, do other characters as well have "versions" of themselves?

Tiger (pp. 35-36)

Lucrezia was gazing into the depthless black, searching for movement, for colour, anything, but her eyes were too weak or she must have been looking the wrong way because there was a flicker of movement next to the stone palazzo wall and, by the time she turned her head to see, the tigress was almost upon her.
Liquid was her motion, like honey dropping from a spoon. She emerged from the shadow of her cage as if she had the whole stretch of the jungle at her command, the filthy mud floor of Florence rolling under her paws. No pussycat, she.
She simmered, she crackled, she seethed with fire, her face astonishing in its livid symmetry. Lucrezia had never seen anything so beautiful in her life. The furnace-bright back and sides, the pale underbelly. The marks on her fur, Lucrezia saw, were not stripes, no—the word was insufficient for them. They were a bold, dark lace, to adorn, to conceal; they defined her, they saved her.
Closer and closer she came, allowing the triangle of light to fall upon her. Her eyes were locked on Lucrezia. For a moment, it seemed as if she would pass her by, as the lioness had done. But the tigress paused, stopping in front of the girl. Her mind was not elsewhere, like the lioness’s. She had noticed her; she was there, with Lucrezia; there was much the two of them needed to say to each other. Lucrezia knew this, the tigress knew this.

Tiger (pp. 35-36)

Lucrezia eased herself forward, coming to her knees. The tigress’s flank was there, beside her: repeating incisions and ellipses of black in the amber. She could see the breath entering and leaving her body; she could see where the torso sloped away into her tender underside, the soft spread of her paws, the quivering in her limbs. She saw how the animal lifted her lustrous muzzle, nosing the air, sifting it for all it could tell her.
Lucrezia could feel the sadness, the loneliness, emanating from her, the shock at being torn from her home, the horror of the weeks and weeks at sea. She could feel the sting of the lashes the beast had received, the bitter longing for the vaporous and humid canopy of jungle and the enticing green tunnels through its undergrowth that she alone commanded, the searing pain in her heart at the bars that now enclosed her. Was there no hope? the tigress seemed to be asking her. Will I always remain here? Will I never return home?
Slowly, slowly, Lucrezia put out her hand. She snaked her fingers through a gap in the iron bars and stretched, spreading her fingers, reaching out of her shoulder socket, straining forward, her face pressed close to the cage.

Tiger (pp. 35-36)

The tigress’s fur was pliant, warm, soft as down. Lucrezia eased her fingertips along the animal’s back, feeling the quiver of her muscles, the flexing beads of her spine. There was no difference between the orange fur and the black, no join, as she’d thought there might be. The two colours overlapped and merged without trace.
The tigress swung her vivid, complex face around, as if to examine the person behind such a caress, as if to ascertain its meaning. To look into her eyes was to behold the visage of an incandescent, forbidden deity. Lucrezia and the tigress regarded each other, for a stretched moment, the child’s hand on the beast’s back, and time stopped for Lucrezia, the turning world stilled. Her life, her name, her family and all that surrounded her receded and became void. She was aware only of her own heart, and that of the tigress, pulsing inside the ribs, drawing in scarlet blood and shooting it out again, flooding their veins. She barely breathed; she didn’t blink.
Then, a sudden cry, and Maria was shrieking, Papa, Papa, look, and the world and the palazzo came surging back, . . .

Questions for discussion

So, what does the tiger represent?

Book passages

Circa. p. 130, first night in the delizia
- It is the dead of night. Outside, she can hear the strange rustles and hoots of forest creatures, the occasional shriek. Lucrezia pictures some small mammal being caught by a predator. Next to her, she hears the breathing of the maid, slowing, deepening. But she, Lucrezia, will not sleep. She cannot: it is impossible. And yet she does.
- Quite without warning, Lucrezia drops, like someone falling from a high wall, into a deep and profound unconsciousness. The forest, at night, seems to come right up to the walls of the villa and press itself close, encircling the inhabitants in its green, quickening world; it wreathes into their dreams the snap of branches, the creep of lichen, frail light-seeking shoots, with web-veined foliage. Its sharp, loamy air penetrates their slumbering lungs.
- Lucrezia sleeps as a deer emerges from the tangle of the forest, picks its way on soft hoofs across the driveway of the villa, lifting its head at the sound of a fruit dropping from a nearby tree.
- She sleeps as wild boar bludgeon their bristly, squat bodies, heavy as travelling boxes, through the thorned underbrush, snouts held to the ground.
- She sleeps as the dawn birds unfold their wings, as a porcupine snuffles along a pine-needled path known only to itself, as the servants wake, pile kindling into the stoves and strike flints and lift pots and scatter yeast into flour.

Book passages

Circa p. 130, first night in the delizia
- She sleeps as the farmers pull on their clothes, clap on their hats and take to their fields.
- She sleeps as the pot boys are sent out to draw water from the well, as the first fragile light is seen in the valley, as its first heat is felt.
- She sleeps off the long preparation for her wedding, the hair combing, the dress on the bed.
- She sleeps off the Mass, the feast, the dancing, the acrobats.
- She sleeps off the farewells with her parents, her indifferent sister, with Sofia.
- She sleeps off two wakeful nights. She sleeps off many months of disquiet about her marriage.
- She sleeps off the carriage ride with Alfonso through Florence at dawn, the discovery of his vanishing, the ascent of the Apennines, the journey at dusk down the other side to the valley.
- She sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and, as with all good sleeps, everything bad is sloughed off her.

Questions for discussion

What do you make of this style? Why does the writer keep repeating "she sleeps."
And why, in the first part of this description, does she write that deer emerge, that a porcupine snuffles, that birds unfold their wings, that farmers rouse themselves, and that light emerges—all while she sleeps?

Book passages (Man asleep, Ruler at rest)

Ca. p. 151—Lucrezia's first night with Alfonso:
- - And with that breath comes a sensation like the weft and warp of fabric separating in two, and some part of her, the best part perhaps, answers the wind’s call. It shakes itself free. It gets up from the bed, leaving the bodies there, to do what they will, and moves away. The relief at putting distance between herself and that bed. The self, the part of her that is leaving, seems amorphous, shapeless. It is at once padding on noiseless feet across the floorboards and also floating somewhere up near the ceiling. This bodiless Lucrezia brushes past the rafters, the painted cherubs; it reaches out a hand to trace the lines of the rainbow. It is enormous, stately; it is minuscule and obscure.
  - Where the two people are stretched out on the bed, the form of one obscuring the other, is far below. That is a place of shadow and darkness. There is nothing to see of it. What is happening there is of no consequence to her now.
  - She passes through the walls, disintegrating and dissolving into plasterwork, beams, struts, wattle, brick, and then she coalesces again, in the air on the other side.
  - She is here now, outside the walls of the villa, where the night has painted its own version of the valley, in bold indigo strokes; where the wind animates this mysterious shaded landscape, setting the trees in motion, flinging night birds up to the blue-black air, driving angry blots across the unreadable face of the firmament.

Book passages (Man asleep, Ruler at rest)

Ca. p. 151—Lucrezia's first night with Alfonso:
- She is on the pantile roof, creeping along gullies and gutters, feeling the ministrations of the spirited wind, the spring of moss beneath her feet, but she is also down there on the ground, where the branches of the trees fan themselves out for the breeze, tugging one way, then the other. Where small, sharp stones push themselves up into her bare feet. Where the forest is a dark shape beyond the manicured hedges, beyond the pollarded fruit trees. It crouches, waiting.
- Lucrezia is vigilant. Lucrezia is herself. Lucrezia can choose her own tempo, can increase it, can slow it down. She can gallop, sprint, through the gardens; she can spring over the hedges and paths, her body a streak of colour in the dim light, her ribs a vessel for her leaping heart.
- And when she reaches the forest, the trees will close about her, all the animals and birds within will send up their questions to the sky in squawks and cries, and she will wait with them, watching, for the first rays of cold morning light, which will feel restorative and forgiving on the complex silk of her skin.
NOTE: right after this, as she goes about the grounds, she meets Leonello, on horseback, dead rabbits thrown across his saddle.

Question for discussion

So, the author follows this lyrical prose description with the meeting, confrontation you might say, between Lucrezia who has wandered outside in the early morning and meets Leonello, on horseback, dead rabbits slung across his saddle.
Does it remind you of a poem we read a couple of weeks ago? Except this time the lady gets to speak for herself.

Question for discussion

What other dramatic scenes are featured in this novel?
Would it be fair to say there's actually very little dialogue, or conversation, in this novel? The passages where dialogue occurs are often dramatic. The words are merely conveyances for an underlying message—authority, duty, obedience, warning.
Like the underpainting?????

Book passages

Circa p. 201—on Lucrezia painting
- She paints for a long time, standing back from the tavola, leaning in close.
- She progresses from bowl to honey to the pleats and wrinkles in the cloth.
- She navigates her course through the arrangement of objects, how they interact with each other, the spaces and conversations between them, shrinking herself to the size of a beetle so that she may wander through the crannies between peaches, along the interlocking hexagons of the honeycomb.
- She feels her way around the corresponding painting, using her brushes like feet or antennae, seeking a route through the unfamiliar terrain of the items, hacking her way through the undergrowth of the work.
- She paints while the sun is high in the sky, as it slips down over the pitch of the roofs, while servants rush up and down the loggia.
- She does not even notice the fading light, or the bustle and flap of the villa around her, or that she hasn’t eaten since midday.

She is absorbed in her work; she is her work; it gives her more satisfaction than anything else she has ever known; it intuits the need, the vacancy, within her, and fills it.

Questions for discussion

What's the significance of painting to Lucrezia? Is it a metaphor, such as painting a still life is like . . . ?
In this novel, as in Renaissance Italy, painting, and art in general, including sculpture, architecture, and even landscaping is important.
So, what is the role of artists? What does art represent to those who commission and own it? How does the value they place on art affect the artist?

Book passages

Circa p. 193—on Lucrezia painting
- She turns and regards the arrangement she has placed on a table by the window: a bowl of peaches, a pitcher of water, and a honeycomb on a green dish, sitting in a pool of its golden ooze. She tilts her head one way, then the other. The dark purple cloth is good—the way the colour sings with and against the orange of the peach skin and the gold of the honey and the way it drapes and folds. The sun is placing fingers of light over the curved rumps of the fruit.
- She should make haste, she realises, as the light may go, the colours change. Alfonso may return at any moment and she will need to set this aside to attend to him.
- She will need to grind saffron, cochineal, the heart of an iris flower, and—what else? Lucrezia steps back to the easel, where she has set up her usual planed square of tavola, her brushes, a mortar with its pestle resting on the lip, oyster shells filled with linseed oils, ready to absorb the powdered pigment.

Book passages

Circa p. 193—on Lucrezia painting
- She turns and regards the arrangement she has placed on a table by the window: a bowl of peaches, a pitcher of water, and a honeycomb on a green dish, sitting in a pool of its golden ooze. She tilts her head one way, then the other. The dark purple cloth is good—the way the colour sings with and against the orange of the peach skin and the gold of the honey and the way it drapes and folds. The sun is placing fingers of light over the curved rumps of the fruit.
- She should make haste, she realises, as the light may go, the colours change. Alfonso may return at any moment and she will need to set this aside to attend to him.
- She will need to grind saffron, cochineal, the heart of an iris flower, and—what else? Lucrezia steps back to the easel, where she has set up her usual planed square of tavola, her brushes, a mortar with its pestle resting on the lip, oyster shells filled with linseed oils, ready to absorb the powdered pigment.

Book passages

Circa p. 193—on Lucrezia painting
- She is about to paint over a scene she did last night, of an aquatic creature, half man, half fish, crawling up out of the shores of a river, silvered tail glistening in moonlight.
- She feels, not for the first time, a pulse of sadness that this image will disappear, will become just an underpainting, never to be seen by anyone other than her.
- But it must be so. No one should see this. An underpainting it must be. So she will conceal it with this most innocent and appropriate still life of fruit and honey. What could be a healthier pastime for a young duchess than that?
NOTE: right after, she hears the thud when Jacopo, arriving, collapses on the courtyard floor.

Question for discussion

So what is an underpainting and why is it significant?
Why is this underpainting "an aquatic creature, half man, half fish, crawling up out of the shores of a river, silvered tail glistening in moonlight"?

Book passages

Circa p. 243—on Lucrezia painting, she has written to her father and is planning her escape
- She puts the finished letter to one side and, glancing over her shoulder, she reaches into the desk box once more, this time taking out a small square of tavola, one she planed and sanded herself, only last week. It is untouched; she runs her fingers over its smooth surface, weighs it in her hand. She takes up a piece of red chalk and moves across it, from top to bottom, sketching an upright object, narrow, double-sided. A pillar.
- Next to it emerges first a triangular shape, which, with a few more strokes of the chalk, acquires a head and arms, resolves into a figure. Lucrezia grinds pigments, mixes them with drops of oil. She takes a slender-tipped brush and paints a fine, heart-shaped face, a narrow neck, a diminutive chin, lowered eyes, a dreamy expression.
- Behind this woman, she puts a man, barely seen, merging into blue shadow; this second figure is leaning towards the first and its face is tender and gentle.

Book passages

Circa p. 243—on Lucrezia painting, she has written to her father and is planning her escape
- When it is finished, the palm-sized painting fills Lucrezia with satisfaction and also fear. She looks at it for a long time; she watches as the paint dries and solidifies, the couple’s features resolving into permanence, the man for evermore leaning towards his lover, her face suffused with pleasure. She glances behind her, as if to check that the door to her chamber is shut, that Alfonso is not looking over her shoulder.
- Then she takes a stiff-bristled brush and loads it with a dark greenish-brown, the colour of forest shade, and with sweeping movements, she covers the image with darkness, obliterating the lovers, sealing them inside a tomb of paint. The woman’s dress disappears, the man’s hand, their faces, the column. In moments, it is all gone, hidden for ever, the only sign the scene was ever there the slight undulations in the paint’s surface, like rocks on the bed of a lake.
- She cleans the brushes with a rag; she tidies the desk; she props the now-blank tavola against a vase to dry; she extinguishes the candle and, after ensuring that all traces have been eliminated, returns to bed.

Questions for discussion

So, this time Lucrezia paints two figures, a man and a woman, as the underpainting, covers them with "greenish-brown, the colour of forest shade, and with sweeping movements, she covers the image with darkness, obliterating the lovers, sealing them inside a tomb of paint."
Why is this significant?

Question for discussion

Like many other modern novels, this one is structured around time changes, particularly at the beginning of the novel. The chapter titles also include a note about the place and date.
So, the first chapter begins in 1561 when Lucrezia realizes Alfonso will kill her.
The second chapter goes back to her conception, the third to her childhood and the tiger. All of these early chapters provide necessary background information.
But as the novel progresses, the time frame is 1560 and 61.
So, why this structure?

The portrait and the plan

Circa p. 288
- Before her, held up on each side by Jacopo and Maurizio, is an image so arresting she almost gasps. In the painting is a woman who looks like her, or a version of her, or an ideal—she cannot tell which. This is her, yet not her; it is so disturbingly like her, while being completely unlike her. It is Lucrezia, but it is also someone else.
- This girl is a duchess it is clear to see from the jewels that adorn her ears and neck, wrists and head, from the gold-and-pearl cintura around her waist, from the ornaments on her bodice, from the pleating and embroidery of her gown.
- Here before you, the portrait shouts, is no commoner, but someone high-born and exalted. She stands, looking out at the viewer, with the green fields and valleys of her province behind her.
- But there is something else lurking here, in this picture, almost as if another person hovers there. Lucrezia, standing in the fortezza’s hall, can sense it, like the scent of a fire. The girl stands next to a table, where a pile of books is stacked, a quill resting on the top. Her hand is next to them—she can tell it is hers because there is the ring Alfonso gave her, and her fingernails, and there is the thumb that slants to the left, the very digit that she is, at this moment, clutching in the opposite hand—but it is not like hands in other portraits, languid and still.

The portrait and the plan

Circa p. 288
- This hand is flexed, tendons visible, something gripped between thumb and finger: a paintbrush. A slender one, with a narrow tip, designed for detailed work, for fine rendering. It is held in a sure, definite grasp. A hand with a purpose, a hand filled with intent. And, she now sees, the look in the girl’s eye is lucid and charged. She stares out at the viewer with frankness close to defiance, her head high, her lips showing the hint of a smile. The dress, with its voluminous dark red folds, and its pattern that either imprisons or cringes behind the colour, seems tame and insignificant, utterly overshadowed by the boldness of the girl’s expression, the way she seems to pose questions to the viewer: what do you want from me, why have you interrupted me, whatever do you mean by gazing at me like that?

The portrait and the plan

Circa p. 288
- Lucrezia regards the portrait; she stares; she cannot look away. It is at once scaldingly public and deeply private. It displays her body, her face, her hands, the mass of her once-long hair, which ripples down either side of the dress, with a brand of insolent indifference to its geometric pattern, but it also excavates that which she keeps hidden inside her. She loves it, she loathes it; she is dumbstruck with admiration; she is shocked by its acuity. She wants the world to see it; she wishes to run and cover it again with the cloth at the artist’s feet.

The portrait and the plan

Circa p. 288
- She feels, she realises, as if she is suddenly absent from this room, or disappearing from it, evaporating into the air. The Duchess is present, in the painting. There she stands. Lucrezia is unnecessary; she can go now. Her place is filled; the portrait will take up her role in life. Perhaps it is this feeling of incorporeality, of displacement, but it is as if her perception is suddenly heightened, or perhaps as if she is already dead, has already passed over into another realm, as if her soul has brimmed up and over, flooding everything in the vicinity. She can hear the squeak of Alfonso’s boots as he paces the floor; she can sense the air taken in and expelled by Baldassare’s chest.

The portrait and the plan

Circa p. 288
And she can look at Jacopo and know that it was he who painted this portrait. It was him. She knows it. He mixed the pigments, prepared the canvas, stretching and smoothing its surface, he applied the coats of the imprimitura, deciding where the shade would fall, and also the light, then arranged the composition so that the perspectives and the colours all agreed with each other, like nouns and verbs and participles in a sentence of translation. He painted her hair like that, shining and unbound, he placed the painted quill upon the painted books, he put a paintbrush into her painted hand and that gleam and spirit into her eye. It was him. Il Bastianino might have added a stroke here and there, might have said, Like this, no, and this; Maurizio might have painted those orchards and hillocks, seen far behind her. But it was Jacopo who did this, who made this work.

The portrait and the plan

When the others leave the hall:
- Lucrezia, alone in the hall, feels suddenly weak; she staggers to a chair and sits down, just before her legs give way. She grips the chair arms, feeling the sawdust spring of its stuffing, aware of the poison from last night still slinking through her blood, like a pack of wolves with muzzles close to the ground. Above her head rows and rows of stone bricks are arranged in arches that curve over her solitary figure. Or, rather, she is not alone. Across the room, propped against the wall, is herself—another self, a former self. A self who, when she is dead and buried in her tomb, will endure, will outlive her, who will always be smiling from the wall, one hand poised to begin a painting.

The portrait and the plan

When the others leave the hall:
She realises that Jacopo is standing next to her. “You are in danger,” he says to her.
Jacopo looks at her. He requires no further information, just as she knew he wouldn’t, but glances quickly around the hall, then back at her. “There is very little time,” he murmurs, “they will be back in a moment. So listen well. There is an entrance for servants, at the back of the kitchens. Maurizio and I will stuff the lock with rags on our way out.”
- “So that you may open it,” he says quickly. “I will be there waiting for you, in the trees, as soon as it is dark. I will stay until dawn. After that, it will be too dangerous.”
- “You’ll wait for me?” she repeats, her tongue thick and unwieldy in her mouth. “Whatever do you mean?

The portrait and the plan

He looks at her, his face attentive, full of concern. Then he reaches out and touches her, at the place where the neckline of her bodice ends and her shoulder begins. . . . But the feel of his fingertips—stained today, she has noticed, with patches of green, irregular in size and shape, as if his hand is the open ocean, studded by an archipelago of unmapped islands—against her skin produces a sensation the likes of which she has never felt before. It is the opposite of the convulsions that shook her in the night: it is light, fluttering, and causes concentric circles of heat to expand down her arm and up her neck. It is gentleness, it is care. It is far from anything she has felt in the bed at the delizia or in the castello or here in the fortezza. It is a touch that topples a wall built somewhere within her, that crashes through a thorned thicket that has grown and spread about her heart, through necessity and neglect. It is contact that removes obstacles, sweeps them away, hurls them into the air.
- “You cannot stay here,” he whispers, in the language of the faraway south. “You know that. You must leave, as soon as you can. Make sure you come.”
Then they walk away, without looking back, and she is alone again.

Breakout room question

So, what do you think of this novel? All ideas welcome.

Eleanora of Toledo

Born in Spain in 1522, she was the second daughter of Pedro Álvarez de Toledo, Viceroy of Naples, lieutenant-governor of Emperor Charles V and the uncle of the Duke of Alba. In May 1534, two years after her father's appointment as Viceroy of Naples, Eleanora, her mother, and siblings joined him in Italy. The children were brought up in the strict and closed surroundings of the Spanish viceregal court. 13-year-old Eleanora does not seem to have attracted much attention, except for the furtive glances of the visiting page Cosimo de' Medici in 1535 when he accompanied his cousin Alessandro, Duke of Florence, on a visit to Naples.
Three years later, Cosimo, now Duke of Florence, was searching for a wife who could strengthen his political position since the Medici were still new to their ducal status. He initially asked to marry Margaret of Austria, illegitimate daughter of Charles V and Alessandro's widow, but she was extremely reluctant to agreed to her father's plans for her.
Not wanting to antagonize Cosimo, the Emperor offered him one of the daughters of the rich Viceroy of Naples. The bride would provide the Medici with a powerful link to Spain, at that time in control of Florence, offering the opportunity to show sufficient loyalty and trust to Spain so that its troops would retire from the province.

Eleanora of Toledo

Remembering Eleanora, Cosimo firmly refused the Viceroy's first offer of his eldest and duller daughter, Isabella. Her father agreed and provided a large amount of money for Eleanora as dowry.
They were married by proxy on March 29, 1539. No sooner was the agreement reached than the couple began to correspond. In May, Florencian agent Jacobo de' Medici was in Naples and informed the ducal secretary that
- "The Lady Duchess says she is happy and filled to the brim with satisfaction, and I want to assure of this."
Riccio then added that when Eleanora received letters from her fiancé
- "she took pride in having understood them on her own, without anyone's help."
She was quickly working on her reading knowledge of Italian. In June, 17 years-old Eleanora set sail from Naples, accompanied by her brother Garcia with seven galleys following. They arrived at Livorno on the morning of June 22 and immediately left for Pisa. Halfway through, they met Cosimo. After a short stay in Pisa, the couple left for Florence, stopping for a few days at the Poggio a Caiano.

Eleanora of Toledo

Before her marriage, the Medici line had been in danger of extinction. Eleanora's high profile in Florence as ducal consort was initially a public relations exercise promoted by her husband, who needed to reassure the public of the stability and respectability of not only his family, but the new reign. Her motto made reference to the plentiful harvests of her lands, her marital fidelity, and numerous children.
Eventually, Eleanora gained considerable influence in Florence through her involvement in politics, to the point that Cosimo often consulted with her. So great was his trust in her political skills that in his frequent absences, the Duke made his wife regent, a station which established her position as more than just a pretty bearer of children.
Eleanora was very interested in business, especially agriculture. She owned great tracts of grain crops and livestock, such as beekeeping and silkworm raising. The Duchess managed and sold her goods wisely, which helped to considerably expand and increase the profitability of the vast Medici estates. Through her charitable interests, the peasantry obtained many economic benefits as well.

Eleanora of Toledo

Although Florentines initially thought of her as a Spanish barbarian and enemy to her husband's homeland, Eleanora made solid donations to Florentine charities. She financially supported Cosimo's policies to restore the duchy's independence from foreign lands and helped people unable to gain audiences with the Duke realize that through the Duchess their causes could at least be pleaded.
Like her husband, Eleanora was a notable patron to most artists of the age, like Bronzino, Vasari, and Tribolo who constructed notable buildings still standing today.
Eleanora's private chapel in the Palazzo Vecchio was decorated by Bronzino. From 1559 to 1564, she commissioned Vasari to make a new fresco in her apartments about famous women whose actions have equaled or surpassed men. It is thought that the redecorations were a concerted effort to reshape her public persona away from fecundity and towards her other virtues, such as wisdom, valour, and prudence.

Eleanora of Toledo

Raised in the luxurious courts of Naples, Eleanora purchased the Pitti Palace across the Arno river in 1549, and in 1550 commissioned and supervised Tribolo to create the Pitti's famous Boboli Gardens; they were lavish, featuring an open and expansive view unconventional for its time, accessible only to the immediate Medici family.
Contemporary accounts of Eleanora give a different picture than her cold, stern portraits might lead people to assume. Much like her husband, the Duchess was realistic, practical, and determined. Though she was sick much of her adult life, Eleanora was considered charming, loved to gamble, and was a devoted traveler.
Remembered for her majestic facial features shown in portraits, she was very fashion-conscious and continually employed both gold and silver weavers for her clothes. On the other hand, this may not have been done out of simple vanity. Twenty-first century forensic examinations revealed she had a significant calcium deficiency, a consequence of many and frequent pregnancies.

Eleanora of Toledo

She contracted malaria while travelling to Pisa in 1562. Weakened by her pulmonary tuberculosis, Eleanora died on December 17, in the presence of her disconsolate husband and a Jesuit confessor. Her funeral was held in December 28 and she was buried in the Medici crypts in the Basilica of San Lorenzo.
For centuries after her death, the myth pervaded that Garzia had murdered his brother Giovanni following a dispute in 1562. Cosimo was said to have then murdered Garzia with his own sword and the distraught Eleanora died a week later. Modern-day exhumations and forensic science have proven that Eleanoras and her sons died together from malaria, as the Medici family had always claimed.
Since her death, historians have tended to overlook Eleanora's importance to Florentine history; today she is often thought of as just another consort. This is probably due to the numerous portraits painted of her extravagant dresses and the bad press she received from Florentine subjects because she was Spanish.
But the Pitti Palace became the principal residence of the grand rulers of Tuscany and is now the largest museum complex in Florence as later generations amassed paintings, jewelry, and other luxury possessions. Her iconic dress is today in the care of Pitti's Galleria del Costume.

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