Lucrezia Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

‘The more I try to please God, the more he tries me . . .’

  – Lucrezia’s anguished cry on hearing of the violent death of Cesare in Navarre in March 1507

  The new year of 1507 began as the old year had ended, with present-giving, balls and festivities. Lucrezia sent Isabella boxes of salted fish and oysters from the lagoons – valli – of Comacchio, while Isabella ordered for herself pounds of sweetmeats and the Ferrarese speciality, sugared cedri (large lemon-type citrus fruit), from Lucrezia’s celebrated confectioner Vincenzo Morello da Napoli, known as ‘Vincentio spetiale’. Lucrezia gave balls for the French commander de Lapalisse at which the torch dance (‘il ballo de la torce’) was performed.

  Lucrezia was pregnant again, as di Prosperi learned on 3 January, from il Barone, who in turn had had confirmation from one of Lucrezia’s priests. Despite her history of miscarriages and difficult pregnancies, she threw herself into the carnival celebrations. Francesco Gonzaga arrived on the 9th with two pleasure-loving young cardinals, his brother, Sigismondo Gonzaga, and Alfonso’s cousin, Luigi d’Aragona, and immediately visited Lucrezia, accompanied by Alfonso. The Sala Grande was decorated with tapestries and silks in preparation for the carnival balls. Lucrezia’s enthusiasm proved fatal to her pregnancy: in mid January she miscarried again. Alfonso was furious and despondent, the more so because he blamed Lucrezia for bringing it on herself: ‘it is attributed to various causes,’ di Prosperi reported, ‘to remaining on her feet for long hours, going about in carriages, and perhaps some jaunts abroad in masks – also by climbing some steep stairs which she has had made in the camerini above the stuffeta longa, which she has turned into two camerini with two more above them.’ The foetus was so undeveloped that it could not be discerned whether it was male or female – possibly six weeks old, di Prosperi guessed. Lucrezia too was very upset by ‘this disaster of hers’, as di Prosperi put it: at her failure at her third attempt to provide an Este heir, and perhaps by the knowledge that her own overexuberance in the presence of Gonzaga had been responsible for it. Adding to her pain was the fact that Isabella was pregnant and nearing her proper term; she successfully gave birth to a third son shortly afterwards, which she, perhaps defiantly, named Ferrante. The concealed rivalry between the two women continued.

  With her usual resilience, however, Lucrezia quickly recovered her spirits, although she kept to her rooms. By early February she was well enough to go out and take part in the masking in the streets, and in the evening there was dancing, singing and concerts in her apartments, attended by Luigi d’Aragona and other worldly cardinals including Cardinal Giovanni de’Medici, the future Pope Leo X. She went out richly dressed in a carriage to a supper at the house of Antonio Costabili and herself gave a dinner, with dancing in her principal chamber. The cardinals, having escaped from the less amusing court of Julius II, enjoyed themselves every night until dawn until the end of carnival. By the end of February, di Prosperi wrote that the masques and dancing had been put aside and ‘now we all attend the sermons of Fra Raphaele of Varese’, whom Lucrezia had invited specially to Ferrara. Despite her lighthearted enjoyment of conversation, dancing and singing, Lucrezia had a strong streak of genuine piety in her nature and took her religion seriously. She enthusiastically followed Fra Raphaele’s sumptuary prohibitions but when orders were issued to ‘moderate the pomp of ladies’ – forbidding the wearing of rich materials and cosmetics (women used a white paste as a foundation on which they dabbed a rouge made of maiolica) – most people thought that she was going too far and that they should be allowed to practise as they wished. Deep décolletées were also proscribed. The ladies of Ferrara rebelled and Lucrezia and her preacher were forced to back down.

  While Lucrezia and her friar were attempting to tame the ladies of Ferrara, Cesare Borgia was embarking on his last campaign, fighting for his brother-in-law, the King of Navarre, against a rebel count. At dawn on 12 March 1507 he was killed in an ambush outside the small town of Viana in Navarre; stripped of its armour, his naked body was left bleeding on the ground. Cesare was thirty years old; he had survived the lifespan, twenty-eight, he had set himself by just two years, dying three days short of the Ides of March which had been fatal to his hero, Julius Caesar.

  Lucrezia remained unaware of what had happened for some six weeks after his death. Cesare’s faithful squire Juan Grasica arrived in Ferrara with the news on 22 April. He went first to Ippolito who, knowing that, as one of Isabella’s correspondents put it, Lucrezia ‘loved her brother as much as if she were his mother’, could not bring himself to tell her and deputed Fra Raphaele to do so. For Lucrezia, Cesare’s death was the supreme sorrow of a life already full of tragedies. She apparently responded with an anguished cry: ‘The more I try to please God, the more he tries me . . .’, and shut herself away, ‘torturing herself day and night’ with grief, calling out his name, unable to conceal her pain. Di Prosperi opined that few people would dare condole with her ‘because of her reserved nature’. In public, just as she had when Alexander died, she kept her self-control, as Sanudo reported on 22 April: ‘. . . the death of Duke Valentino was notified to his sister, madama Lucretia by Fra Raphael who preached there this lent; she showed great grief, nevertheless with a great constancy and without tears’.1 Fortitude was a much admired quality in the Renaissance, as it had been during classical times. Alfonso was proud of her and grateful for Ippolito’s tactful handling of the matter: ‘We are beyond measure satisfied with what your most reverend Lordship has intimated to us, touching the notification of the fate of the Duke her brother to our most illustrious consort,’ he wrote to Ippolito on 27 April from the camp at Genoa, ‘it seeming to us that Your Lordship in this matter has proceeded according to your natural prudence and experience. Likewise we are much pleased that Her Ladyship, our consort, has borne this calamity so patiently as Your Lordship tells us . . .’2

  It was not until the end of the month that she could bring herself to leave her bed and to receive the condolences of her own household; few others were admitted. Agapito da Amelia, the distinguished humanist who had long served as Cesare’s confidential principal secretary, arrived from Bologna where he was now secretary to the papal legate, and remained many hours with her talking over the past. Beyond Angela Borgia, with whom she had dined during carnival in Ferrara and who returned from Sassuolo to comfort her, there was no one with whom she could truly share her grief; and, indeed, outside the remaining Borgia circle, no one mourned the death of the terrible Valentino. Alfonso, who was away helping Louis XII crush the rebellion at Genoa, tried to comfort her by writing that Cesare was ‘victorious against the enemies of his brother-in-law’ when he was killed.

  Lucrezia’s circle of poets now sprang into action: Ercole Strozzi wrote an epicedium on Cesare’s death which he dedicated to ‘the divine Lucretia Borgia’, describing Cesare as ‘The chief pride of thy race . . . thy brother, mighty in peace, mighty in war, whose arduous glory is equal both in deed and in name to the great Caesars . . .’ ‘And now all dare give rein to so great a sorrow,’ he added with pardonable exaggeration. Geronimo Casio of Bologna, who had known Cesare, wrote equally histrionically, ‘Cesare Borgia, whom all for force of arms and valour regarded as a sun, dying, went where sets the sun Phoebus, towards the evening, to the West.’ Machiavelli saw Cesare’s life in Renaissance terms, as an example of the extreme malignity of fortune, as he wrote in Chapter VII of The Prince, of which Cesare was the hero: ‘So summing up all that the Duke did, I cannot possibly censure him. Rather, I think I have been right in putting him forward as an example for all those who have acquired power through good fortune and the arms of others. He was a man of high courage and ambition, and he could not have conducted himself other than the way he did; his plans were frustrated only because Alexander’s life was cut short and because of his own sickness . . . If when Alexander died, he had been well himself, everything would have been easy for him.’

  But Cesare’s enemies mocked him and his famous motto ‘Either Caesar or nothin
g’. In Mantua Isabella d’Este gleefully recalled Sister Osanna’s prophecy that Cesare’s dominion would be ‘as a straw fire’. Some remembered him with sympathy: ‘In war he was a brave man and a good companion’, a French captain said of him. He has gone down in history as a monster which, to a certain extent, he was. He was a creature of darkness and light, ruthless, amoral, charming and brilliant. His soldiers loved him and those close to him remained loyal to the end. He was popular in his lands of the Romagna where he had begun to lay down a new administration of justice. History has not been kind to him: he made too many enemies and in the end he failed; but the single-minded drive and ability with which he pursued what he saw as his high destiny had the qualities of genius.

  Lucrezia had loved her brother passionately: whether their relations had ever been incestuous or not, he was part of her and no man could ever replace him. In her anguish she turned for solace to the other two men in her life: her husband, Alfonso, and her lover, Francesco Gonzaga. Bembo, probably aware by the autumn of 1505, when he had last written to her, of her relationship with Gonzaga and of Alfonso’s hostility, had removed himself to the court of Urbino. Lucrezia’s dealings with men were as deft as the neat steps with which she executed the complicated choreography of the torch dance. She managed to keep the affection and respect of her husband while retaining the lifelong love of Gonzaga under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances, seemingly occupying a special place in the hearts of two men who were not generally known for their respect for women.

  Bravely, Lucrezia had managed to bring herself to write almost daily to Alfonso, saying how pleased she was by his favourable reception by Louis at the camp before Genoa and that he was in good health and spirits. She received Gian Luca Pozzi, who gave her a long account of the events at Genoa, but it was not until 30 April that she received Alfonso’s handwritten letter of the 27th about Cesare (which has not survived). In her grief she felt the need of his reassuring presence: ‘I pray God continually for the preservation and good health of Your Lordship and that matters at Genoa are quickly and happily expedited so that Your Lordship can return home with a swiftness which I desire with all my heart.’ In Alfonso’s absence, she also had the presence of mind to correspond with Ippolito about the movements of the Bentivoglio, whom the Pope suspected of trying to recapture Bologna, and about the information she had received from the papal legate there and about his request that she should send a commissioner into the Modenese with orders not to facilitate their passage nor to provide them with supplies.3 She wrote to no one else for several months in the period after Cesare’s death – not even to Gonzaga – or if she did the letters have not survived. After the surrender of Genoa to the French King, Alfonso returned on 9 May but, although he visited her first, he did not spend long with her and went on to confer at length with Ippolito.

  From the time of Cesare’s death rumours that Lucrezia was pregnant were repeated and denied throughout the summer with increasing insistence by di Prosperi. On 18 May she was reposing in bed for most of the time ‘to preserve her pregnancy’ but by 2 August, when Alfonso left for Venice and Comacchio, she was in charge again: ‘The Lady is Governor in the usual way which has clarified the fact that she is not pregnant,’ he reported. Later in August, Lucrezia went to Modena while Alfonso busied himself with his artillery foundry in Ferrara and dined frequently with Ippolito. By 16 September, in a letter reporting the marriage of Ercole Strozzi to Barbara Torelli and the return to Ferrara of Angela Borgia and her husband to spend some months there, the inquisitive di Prosperi had found the Comatre Frassina in the Corte and asked her if the Duchess were indeed pregnant: ‘It seems that there is some hope that she is.’ This time it appears that the rumours were true: on 7 November the Comatre Frassina confirmed the pregnancy and that in four months a child would be born.

  But in the summer of 1507, as she looked for consolation for the loss of her adored brother, Lucrezia’s relationship with Gonzaga had become ever more passionate – and secret. Ercole Strozzi had again taken up the dangerous role of facilitator of romance between Lucrezia and her admirers, which he had played so effectively during her relationship with Pietro Bembo, and was now involved in her correspondence with Gonzaga. Gonzaga was an old friend and patron, Alfonso a man who both disliked him and had deprived him of his lucrative office. And Strozzi had a tenderness for Lucrezia, probably exaggerated by his biographer, Wirtz, into love. Under the pseudonym ‘Zilio’ (lily), Strozzi carried on a correspondence between ‘Guido’, the name of one of his brothers but actually referring to Francesco Gonzaga, and ‘Madonna Barbara’, who was not Barbara Torelli, the object of his affections, but Lucrezia herself. In a letter to Gonzaga dated 23 September 1507 announcing his own marriage to Barbara Torelli, Strozzi coyly referred to Torelli as ‘my Madonna Barbara’, sending greetings from himself and Lucrezia ‘your Madonna Barbara’.4 The master archivist of Mantua, Alessandro Luzio, however, found an earlier letter among the few surviving in the Gonzaga archives at Mantua, beginning in the summer of 1507: ‘I have not sent back that messenger because I have been trying everything to get an answer to M. Guido’s letter, if Madonna Barbara had not been suffering such mental travail [presumably a reference to Lucrezia’s continuing mourning for Cesare], it would have already been done because Zilio never stops soliciting for it . . .’5

  The situation was complicated for Lucrezia by the undercurrents of hostility of which she was well aware between Francesco Gonzaga and Alfonso. That September of 1507 in the official correspondence with Gonzaga which she had resumed in the absence of Alfonso she had felt it necessary to stress that Alfonso’s letters and actions showed ‘his excellent disposition towards Your Lordship’.6

  Knowing that she was pregnant, Lucrezia had made preparations for the carnival of the new year of 1508 to be particularly joyful. The Sala Grande was hung with the most splendid of the Este tapestries. Everyone focused on the pleasures of going about masked: Lucrezia, her ladies and courtiers watched from the great window of the Sala Grande. A ‘very gallant’ ball was held in the Sala Grande. There was tilting at the quintain (‘Quintana’), more feasts and more balls. Angela Borgia, who was rumoured to be pregnant, ‘found it necessary to dance’ but Lucrezia, wiser this time and without the stimulating presence of Francesco Gonzaga, did not. The carnival festivities went on unhindered despite the thunderings of a hellfire preacher. The young men of the court began practising for a great joust on the feast of St Matthew, and on 13 February an eclogue commissioned by Ippolito was performed in the Sala Grande where Alfonso and Ippolito, ‘both masked’, and Lucrezia with a good company of gentlewomen, sat on a tribune hung with tapestries. The eclogue was composed by Ercole Pio, brother of Emilia, one of the heroines of Castiglione’s The Courtier, a dialogue of amorous shepherds praising the great ladies of Old Testament, Greek and Roman times and of three contemporary grandes dames, Lucrezia, Isabella d’Este and Elisabetta, Duchess of Urbino. This was followed by Ippolito’s Slav acrobats executing prodigious leaps, a girl tightrope walker and the cardinal’s lute players and singers singing the praises of the ‘diva Borgia’. Incense was thrown on a sacrificial fire and the whole thing ended in a dance. The eclogues, separately commissioned by Alfonso and Lucrezia (from Tebaldeo) and performed on 8 March, were generally considered inferior, but the first performance of Ariosto’s comedy, La Cassaria, ordered by Ippolito, was praised by di Prosperi as ‘as elegant and delightful as any other I have ever seen played’. Described by Gardner as ‘a rollicking piece of work’, it was greatly appreciated by the court, as were the music and the scenery painted by the Duke’s court painter, Pellegrino da San Daniele.7 The joint presentation of the eclogues and comedy by the three symbolized the new unity of the Este family after the upheavals of the Congiura, but in the bowels of the Torre dei Leoni, Ferrante and Giulio lived their lives in isolation and silence.

  For the moment, however, the Este were determined to enjoy carnival. There were jousts, and Ippolito and a companion were se
en going about disguised in Turkish costumes of gold brocade ornamented with applique flowers of black silk, estimated to cost 200 ducats each. It was hardly a disguise, di Prosperi commented, since the pair stood out among the others for the richness of their clothes. Ippolito reacted with his usual violence to the impertinence of his chamberlain, one Alfonso Cestatello, whom he had ordered not to take part in the last evening’s carnival celebration, for failing to provide some things necessary for the cardinal’s masking. Cestatello had replied impertinently and gone there all the same whereupon he was seized by the hair by Masino del Forno, confined to prison and afterwards exiled to Capua for six months.

  It was noticed that Lucrezia had not taken part in the dancing during the last days of carnival; she was reported to be seven months gone and to have engaged a beautiful young wet nurse. Both she and Angela Borgia were nearing their term, and both had ordered sumptuous cradles and preparations for their lyingin. On 25 March, di Prosperi estimated the birth to be imminent; people were storing away books and documents from the Palazzo della Ragione and public offices for fear of their being burned in an outbreak of rowdy celebrations at the birth of an heir. By the 29th, Angela Borgia had already given birth to a son while Lucrezia’s delivery was daily awaited. Alfonso, who had had some misunderstanding with Venice, went there on 3 April with a fleet of boats to make his peace and he was there when, on 4 April, Lucrezia gave birth to a son, named Ercole in honour of his grandfather. The baby was fair-skinned, handsome and lively, with, according to di Prosperi, who saw him when he was three weeks old, ‘a most beautiful mouth but a little snub nose and eyes [which were] not very dark nor very large’.

  On 27 April, di Prosperi went to visit Lucrezia in her camerini and found her reposing on her bed in conversation with Ippolito. ‘Her Ladyship is very well and from what I understand for these holy feast days she has gone to the loggia of the Chapel to hear divine service. I also saw her son who seemed to me even handsomer and more vivacious than before . . .’ He described Lucrezia’s apartments: