Death of a Duchess Historical fiction or true crime? By Margie MacKinnon ‘LM’ – a young girl from a wealthy and powerful family; ‘AF’ – an older man with an ancient and noble lineage. Their marriage is hastily arranged after the untimely death of LM’s older sister, AF’s intended bride. After a lengthy engagement, their childless marriage of less than a year ends with LM’s death at the age of 16. The official cause is tuberculosis, but rumours soon circulate that LM has been murdered, most likely poisoned, by her husband. There is a history of violent death in the family … Cue the Netflix true crime series vowing to get to the bottom of the story. Sadly, the witnesses are all dead and the documentary evidence is slim: a contemporary portrait of LM, a poem written some 300 years later and, now, a novel by Maggie O’Farrell entitled The Marriage Portrait, inspired by both. AF is Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, in need of a wife to provide him with an heir to his 900-yearold title. LM is Lucrezia de’ Medici, born in 1545, the third and last (legitimate) daughter of Cosimo I, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his wife Eleonora of Toledo. True to her place in the family, Lucrezia, at first glance, comes across as a Cinderella figure. Caroline P. Murphy’s excellent biography of Lucrezia’s older sister Isabella reports that, “at the Medici court, [oldest daughter] Maria earned praise for her graciousness, her rare beauty, and regal ways” while Isabella, her father’s favourite, was noted for her “liveliness and irrepressibility”. Lucrezia, on the other hand, was “less gifted than her sisters [and] attracted little comment.” The absence of hard evidence – letters, diaries, household accounts and inventories, on which biographies are often based – creates a void, which O’Farrell fills with imaginative and evocative prose to recreate Lucrezia’s story. The author remains faithful to the known facts of the young duchess’s life, with a few alterations “in the name of fiction” for narrative cohesion and to avoid confusion amongst various characters with the same names. The fictional Lucrezia is highly educated, having been tutored at home, along with her brothers. Although most girls in sixteenth-century Italy would have received little formal education, it was not unusual for young women of noble or wealthy families to receive the training necessary for them to be considered good marriage prospects. In the Grand Duke’s family, both the boys and the girls were taught Latin and Spanish (their mother’s language); they studied the works of philosophers and historians; they learned to play several instruments and became skilled equestrians. With no way to make use of the intellectual gifts so assiduously instilled by the family tutor, the fictional Lucrezia turns to painting as a creative outlet. While there is no evidence of the real Lucrezia having been an artist, she would have 68 Restoration Conversations • <strong>Autumn</strong> / <strong>Winter</strong> <strong>2022</strong>
Above: Portrait of Lucrezia de’ Medici, Agnolo Bronzino, 1560, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. Right: Portrait of Alfonso II d’Este, unknown author, late XVII century, MET, New York. <strong>Autumn</strong> / <strong>Winter</strong> <strong>2022</strong> • Restoration Conversations 69
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