Lucrezia Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

  Yesterday I visited the Duchess’s rooms . . . the decoration of the apartment is as follows. In the Salotto there is only a great carpet over the table, with a bench and a backrest; in the large Antechamber the upholstery of the bed is of mulberry satin which belonged to your mother [the Duchess Eleonora], embroidered with bunches of everlasting flowers, with very fine hanging [tapestries] of silk and wool around this room from the ceiling to the floor, among them the scene of the Judgement of Solomon. In the Camera de la Stufa Grande, the back hangings are fashioned in pavilion style [tent shaped], attached to the gilded cornice which surrounds this room.

  In the first Camerino the hangings ordered by the Duchess Eleonora include a pavilion with curtains of crimson satin with the arms of the Este. In the Duchess Lucrezia’s room, where she is now, there is a pavilion of cloth of silver with a deep fringe of gold thread, decorated with sheets of striped cambric . . . and round this Camerino are curtains of crimson mulberry velvet and cloth of gold, with the arms of the house of Este. In the Camera dorata next to these rooms the baby lies in a camp bed [de bachete], with a satin cover striped alla morescha in white, crimson and other colours; the room is hung round with satin cloth. Then there is the cradle placed in front of the bed in this room which is of such a splendour that I do not know how to describe it: it is made in a square six feet long and five feet wide with a mounting step covered with white cloth, and at each corner there is a square block in the antique fashion, above which rise four columns which sustain a most beautiful architrave with its cornice, and above the architrave is a carved garland which goes from corner to corner – all in gold without any colour, and it is hung with curtains of white satin, as is the canopy. In the centre of this square is a cradle . . . on a pedestal, all of it gilded. The cradle cover is of cloth of gold and its sheets of cambric and turnings of most beautiful embroidered linen.

  In the outer rooms, Beatrice de’Contrari and the Comatre Frassina were in attendance, while il Barone sat on the floor with other court jesters.

  Ercole Strozzi’s ostensible role in corresponding with Francesco Gonzaga was to compose differences between Alfonso and Ippolito on the one side and Francesco on the other, petty but continuing disputes to which di Prosperi also referred. An optimistic letter of 2 January 1508 from Strozzi to Gonzaga was counteracted by an angry letter of 14 January from Francesco complaining that fugitive servants of his had been welcomed at Ferrara and another on 13 March, asserting that his brothers-in-law, under the cover of amicable protestations, continued in their intent to find new cause for controversy.8 The efforts of Benedetto Brugi and Bernardino di Prosperi were equally optimistic and equally unavailing. According to Luzio, Alfonso’s feelings against Francesco were such that when he had left for Venice just before Lucrezia’s delivery of their son, he had ordered that Lucrezia was not to send news of the event to the Marquis of Mantua.

  It was just before Alfonso’s prohibition concerning the communication of the birth that the first surviving letter of the ‘Zilio’ correspondence of this year began. Naturally, pseudonyms were used: Alfonso was ‘Camillo’ and Ippolito ‘Tigrino’ (‘little tiger’), an apt reference to his fierce nature. According to this letter, dated 23 March 1508, Francesco (‘Guido’) had obviously sent back the incriminating letters: Strozzi had handed Lucrezia her letter and burned the rest. Some of the letter is devoted to the cause of reconciliation between Gonzaga and the Este brothers; there had been a suggestion that Gonzaga should have come to Ferrara to effect it. From the text it is apparent that it was Lucrezia who made the running; Gonzaga hung back on the excuse that he was ill. Although he suffered from syphilis, this was a pretext which he frequently deployed to keep himself out of trouble and Lucrezia, it seems, saw through it: ‘She regrets that you have been unwell, all the more that that sickness has prevented you from writing and even more from coming here. If you come here it will be as dear to you as 25,000 ducats and more: I cannot express to you the anger that has taken her because she was [so] willing to see you and because you have never answered her, which has made her anxious to know the cause.’ Strozzi advised him to ‘dissimulate’ with Alfonso and Ippolito even if they had taken his servant (a page who had apparently fled Mantua and been received and protected in Ferrara by Ippolito).9 If Francesco did not do this, ‘they will seek every day to offend you in one way or another’. ‘Madonna Barbara’ had commissioned him to write on her behalf that he (Francesco) should follow Strozzi’s advice: ‘It cannot injure you and could profit you, and if it does not profit you in one way in another it will profit you with Madonna Barbara who I certify to you loves you: she is displeased by your lack of warmth but she is pleased that you are discreet, as well as many qualities she praises in you.’ Nonetheless he repeated Lucrezia’s surprise that Francesco had not written to her: ‘if you agree, as my brother-in-law is coming here, it would be good to write to her and if you wish it she can send the letters back to you’.

  Ercole Strozzi repeated Lucrezia’s desire to see Francesco: ‘she says you should do everything so that she can see you’. The next letter had been written on the eve of Lucrezia’s giving birth to her son, a fact which greatly shocked Luzio, a committed partisan of Isabella. Gonzaga had sent a message to ‘Madonna Barbara’ that he had fever: she prayed him to let Strozzi know how he was and not to be so unfriendly. ‘Every day we talk of you,’ Strozzi wrote, ‘and urge you to do everything you can to reconcile yourself with Camillo because from every point of view it is better to make peace.’ Alfonso had gone to Venice the day before, he reported, although he did not mention ‘Camillo’s’ instructions to his wife not to send Gonzaga news of her delivery. Lucrezia conveyed this in a message asking Francesco to forgive her if she did not advise him of her delivery and to believe in her ‘goodwill’. 10 Accordingly, Bernardino di Prosperi was sent officially by Lucrezia to Mantua to announce the birth of Ercole to Isabella, but to Isabella only. Alfonso wrote to Gonzaga from Venice to make the formal announcement the next day. Even di Prosperi thought it more than odd that he had not been commissioned to take a letter to Francesco: ‘From what I hear everyone is sorry that I was not given a similar letter to the Most Illustrious Marchese . . .’

  Lucrezia, reckless and passionate, dictated a letter on 9 April to Strozzi for transmission to ‘Guido’, complaining that both Alfonso and Ippolito had indicated that they did not wish her to announce the birth to him. She denounced them almost hysterically and wanted Francesco to let it be known that he was surprised at the omission so that she could officially send someone to him. She wanted to send Strozzi, who, according to his letter to Gonzaga, had told her firmly:

  It would not be good that I should go at present because it would appear that I was going expressly for this purpose. You cannot believe how she is displeased by such an error and perfidy on the part of Camillo and wants you to understand that she is yours and not given to flightiness and that you command her and she would see you very willingly were it possible. She says that Camillo is going away tomorrow, posting to France, and recommends herself to you infinitely. This is worthy of an answer concerning a visit [here] as I wrote to you in my last letter and in this.

  Alfonso had little time to enjoy his firstborn before he was off again on another of his state missions, this time to the King of France to reassure him of his loyalty, given that the award to him of the Golden Rose by the Pope in April and his reconciliation with Venice might have aroused Louis’ suspicions. Gonzaga failed to rise to the opportunity proffered by Alfonso’s absence. He did not visit Lucrezia; instead he hastened to use the occasion of little Ercole’s birth to make things up with Alfonso. The Gonzaga secretary Benedetto Capilupo was sent expressly to Alfonso to congratulate him, with protestations of cordial and fraternal friendship which the goodhearted Alfonso told Capilupo he readily accepted. Proudly he took Capilupo to see his son and had him changed so that he could see that the naked baby ‘was fine and well equipped in everything’.11 Strozzi transmitted renewed vows of passio
n from Lucrezia and demands that Francesco Gonzaga should go to her. Instead, Gonzaga sent by one of his household a letter in his secretary’s hand saying that his illness continued. He still did not wish to commit himself to writing in his own hand which in those days was considered a proof of intimacy, instead dictating to a secretary which would make it appear more formal to any spying eye in Ferrara. Even this innocuous document has disappeared, although there are numerous letters by Lucrezia to Francesco in the Gonzaga archives at Mantua. (Francesco’s letters to her in the Este archives are limited to the years 1518-19.) ‘I cannot tell you how great is Madonna Barbara’s affection for you which could not be greater . . .,’ Strozzi told him: ‘she loves you to a considerable extent and considerably more than perhaps you think, because if you believed that she loved you as much as I have always told you, you would be warmer than you are in writing to her and coming to her wherever she might be . . .’ Strozzi urged Francesco to make every effort to put a visit to Lucrezia in train: ‘so that you will see how much she will caress you and then you will understand . . .’

  Lucrezia had wanted to keep back the messenger so that she could write a letter to Francesco in her own hand, but childbirth had left her too weak to do so. She stressed that a reconciliation with Alfonso would be a good excuse for him to come to Ferrara and that before his departure Alfonso had said that such a move by Gonzaga would be welcome to him. She could hardly have made her feelings plainer: ‘[She] says you must do this [reconciliation] because you will soon be able to come to where she is.’ Emotional and confused, Lucrezia at one moment wanted to speed Strozzi on his way, the next asked him to stay and keep her company. ‘Write to her in any case so that it does not appear to her that you are cold,’ Strozzi implored him.12 This was Strozzi’s last known letter: whether or not Gonzaga did respond is unknown. But, using sickness as a pretext, he did not in the meantime venture from Mantua, probably still wary of the Este. Alfonso might have been absent but the more ruthless and hostile Ippolito was still there and often visited Lucrezia. Alfonso made an astonishingly rapid return from the French court on 13 May, going straight to visit Lucrezia and his son.

  Violence was never far from Lucrezia’s life. Even as she rejoiced in her newborn son and the fulfilment of her duty as Duchess of Ferrara, which made her position impregnable, the murder of two people close to her reminded her of her Borgia days in Rome. On 5 June she wrote to Francesco Gonzaga: ‘On Sunday night around midnight Don Martino, a Spaniard, formerly a capellano of the late Duke my brother who has been in my service, was treacherously killed by brutal wounds in the face and head by a jealous Moor . . .’ Should the man, whom the bearer of the letter would describe, pass through Mantuan territory, she begged Francesco, according to the agreement he had with Alfonso, to arrest him and hand him over to her as ‘a homicide and traitor’. This young priest, di Prosperi reported, was the one who had helped the Duke Valentino escape. Having dined in the Palazzo del Corte with Lucrezia’s household, he was on his way to his room near the church of San Paolo when the attack occurred. The murderer was apparently never found.

  That night of 5-6 June, three weeks after Alfonso’s return, an even more sinister murder occurred. On the morning of the 6th, Ercole Strozzi’s body was found in the middle of the road at the corner of the church of San Francesco, with twenty-two stab wounds in his body and his hair pulled out. His crutch lay beside him and he was wearing spurs, having ridden out on his mule to take a little fresh air and been ambushed by persons unknown. Despite his horrific wounds there was no blood on the ground: clearly he had been killed somewhere else and his body dumped by San Francesco. It was an obvious act of terror, of the kind which Cesare Borgia would not have hesitated to order, but why had it been committed? And by whom?

  A week later di Prosperi was still uncertain as to the identity of Ercole Strozzi’s killers. Strozzi’s widow, Barbara Torelli, had also been the widow of Ercole di Sante Bentivoglio, with whom she had been on the bitterest of terms.Various names came up, including those of the Bentivoglio, who were hardly in a position to arrange such things at the time. Among them were Angela Borgia’s husband, Alessandro Pio da Sassuolo, for no conceivable reason other than the fact that his fierce mother was a Bentivoglio, and even Giovanni Sforza’s brother, Galeazzo, who had married one of Barbara’s daughters and was involved in a quarrel with his mother-in-law over his wife’s property in Bologna. ‘Of the malefactors and authors of the death of Messer Hercule Strozzi there are those who point one way, others another, but no one dares to speak for fear of coming up against a brick wall and voicing a dangerous opinion . . .,’ he wrote ten days later.

  Ercole’s brothers, Lorenzo and Guido Strozzi (the first of whom had married another of Barbara’s daughters, Costanza), announcing his death on Barbara’s behalf to Francesco Gonzaga, exhorted him to carry out a vendetta against the murderers of‘such a faithful servant’ as Ercole had been to him. Barbara, recovering from the recent birth of her daughter by the murdered Ercole, also looked to Gonzaga for protection. Gonzaga had promised to stand as godfather to Barbara’s child, but cautiously after Ercole’s death deputed Tebaldeo to perform the office in his stead. It is noticeable that the Strozzi did not turn to the lord of Ferrara who, in the circumstances, could have been expected to institute investigation and punishment of the death of a man who, as a former Giudice dei XII Savi, had been a prominent administrator, a close friend of Lucrezia and a renowned poet and man of letters. Nothing happened, just as nothing had emerged after the deaths of Gandia and Bisceglie. Ercole Strozzi’s biographer Maria Wirtz cites a letter written twenty-four days after the murder by one Girolamo Comasco to Ippolito d’Este naming Masino del Forno as the author of the crime.13 Seizing a victim by the hair was a signature of del Forno’s operations, as had been noted in his violent arrest of Ippolito’s chamberlain, Cestatello, the previous year. Masino del Forno was one of the most loyal and ruthless of the senior Este brothers’ henchmen: if he was involved so were they, a fact which would explain the failure even to search for the killer. Two years later, in June 1510, Julius II openly accused Alfonso of the crime during an acrimonious interview with Alfonso’s envoy, Carlo Ruini. Julius was a man of explosive temperament, deeply hostile to Alfonso at that time, but he was exceptionally well informed and only the Pope could have made such an accusation without fear of the consequences.

  Wirtz argues that Alfonso had Ercole Strozzi killed out of jealousy because he himself was in love with Barbara, and that the timing of the crime, only thirteen days after their alleged marriage, is significant. But di Prosperi had reported on 16 September the previous year that Ercole had married Barbara Torelli, and Strozzi himself had announced his marriage in distinctly unromantic terms to Gonzaga in a letter of 23 September. Wirtz and indeed most historians seem to be unaware of this, which destroys their theory of the significance of the marriage in provoking Alfonso’s homicidal jealousy. Jealousy there may have been on Alfonso’s part but not of Barbara Torelli – rather, of Lucrezia. Alfonso had never liked Ercole Strozzi and had removed him from office as soon as he could. But his most cogent reason for disliking Strozzi was the part he played as go-between in the romance between Lucrezia and Gonzaga. It may even have been a warning signal to Francesco. Although Alfonso, reserved and secretive as he was, never gave any sign that he knew of the clandestine correspondence between his wife and his brother-in-law, it is inconceivable that Ippolito’s intelligence system would not have picked up on it. Did his sister Isabella know or suspect something? It is entirely possible. Ferrara at night was as lawless as any other Italian city of the time, but it is not credible that such a violent murder could be committed by an ordinary criminal and the evidence of it, the body, dumped publicly in a main street in the city centre. Had it been any ordinary criminal, the Este would have been bound to pursue the case. They did not. Equally, they could have arranged for Strozzi simply to disappear. The violent nature of the incident and the alleged involvement of Masino del Forno point dir
ectly to Ippolito and Alfonso, who were not only constantly at odds with Francesco Gonzaga but also jealous for Este honour, touching as it did on the wife of Alfonso, mother of the Este heir, and the husband of Isabella.

  Luzio absolves Alfonso of the murder, pointing the finger at the Bentivoglio, quoting from a letter which Barbara Torelli wrote to Gonzaga from Venice early the next year: ‘Who took my husband from me, is causing his children to lose their inheritance and seeking to threaten my life and make me lose my dowry . . .’ Yet in the next breath, Luzio claims that Alfonso was not only less bloodthirsty than had been rumoured but never left a crime unpunished, whatever the circumstances. In this case, however, he probably did. Luzio’s conclusion was that the Bentivoglio killed Ercole to revenge themselves on Barbara for her intransigence over her dowry. Ercole Strozzi, supported by Lorenzo Strozzi, had taken Barbara’s part in a dispute with her over her daughters’ dowries but since Lorenzo later joined forces with Barbara’s other son-in-law, Galeazzo Sforza, against her he can hardly have suspected the latter of involvement in Ercole’s murder. And why should anyone have been willing to protect the Bentivoglio, stateless, under interdict and enemies of the Pope as they were? Although the brothers Guido and Lorenzo Strozzi had made common cause with Barbara to beg Francesco Gonzaga to pursue a vendetta against the killer or killers of Ercole, there is no evidence that they took it further. After five hundred years, the crime remains unsolved: as in the Borgia days, the killer was too important to be identified. And in Ferrara that pointed to the Este as either instigators of or complicit in the murder of Ercole Strozzi. It is always possible that Ippolito was the prime mover but, if he was, he could not have done so without Alfonso’s agreement and Alfonso was in Ferrara when the crime took place.