Lucrezia Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

  That same year, however, there was consolation in the birth, on 1 November, of another son, this time a healthy baby, who was named Francesco. Since there was no Francesco among either Alfonso’s immediate relations or Lucrezia’s, it is a tempting, although unlikely, thought that she might have named him after Gonzaga.

  Lucrezia had now borne Alfonso three healthy sons but her history of disastrous pregnancies, miscarriages still- and premature births and sickly, short-lived children could have been caused by Alfonso’s syphilis. Unlike Francesco Gonzaga with Isabella, Alfonso maintained regular sexual relations with Lucrezia, resulting in repeated pregnancies which weakened her and eventually led to her death.

  Lucrezia continued to keep in touch with her humanist circle, among them the poet Giangiorgio Trissino, with whom she had first become friendly in the summer of 1512 when he was in Ferrara.18 She had consulted him later about the education of Ercole, writing on 18 September 1515 from Belriguardo to tell him that she had retailed their conversation to Alfonso who had been greatly pleased, and that they were both anxious that Ercole should begin his formal education as soon as possible. Could he possibly, she asked, without too much trouble to himself, find a tutor in grammar for the boy? She had not been able to write about this earlier because she had had no chance to speak to Alfonso, but she was also sending Ercole da Camerino to Ferrara to explain their ideas about it to him.I9 In November the recommended tutor, a Domine Niccolò Lazzarino, had still not arrived but, she told Trissino, who was apparently at the Emperor’s court, enclosing the tutor’s letter, he was hourly expected.20 In March 1516, she wrote to Trissino saying that she and Alfonso were anxious to consult him personally as soon as he could get to Ferrara.21

  Trissino, it would appear, had not been able to visit Ferrara, for Lucrezia wrote to him from Belriguardo on 1 June about how much they were hoping for his arrival to oversee Ercole’s education: ‘We advise you for your contentment that his preceptor until now could not be more satisfied with him, nor with greater hope of his gaining honours easily as we think you will have understood from his [the tutor‘s] letters.’22 That month payments figured in the Este accounts for an Ovid and a Virgil purchased by the tutor ‘Messer Nicol precepetore del Signore Don Hercule’ for his pupil.23 Two years later she was still in contact with Trissino and hoping to see him.

  Meanwhile, Lucrezia had also been in touch with Aldus Manutius who had fled Venice for Ferrara after the defeat at Agnadello in 1509 and for the following four years had wandered the cities of northern Italy. Lucrezia was named executor in the will which he drew up in Ferrara in 1509, although not in a later version. At around that time, she also apparently offered support to establish the academy of intellectuals which had long been the printer’s dream but which he never realized.24 She encouraged Manutius to publish the edition of the poems of Tito and Ercole Strozzi, many dedicated to her, which eventually appeared in Venice in 1513. The book has a dedicatory preface by the printer to ‘the Divine Lucretia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara’ in which he refers to their common desire to establish an academy at Ferrara. Three years later, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, on which he had been working since 1506, was first published in Ferrara, with frequent, laudatory references to Lucrezia: ‘She shall ever grow in beauty, merit, fortune and good repute, just like a tender plant in soft earth . . .’25 She appeared in the poem as a marble statue supported by their mutual friends, Antonio Tebaldeo and Ercole Strozzi.26

  Lucrezia was nearing thirty-seven, considered old by Renaissance standards, when Francesco was born. In late December that year, rumours reached her of the death of Jofre and these were confirmed by the beginning of January. Lucrezia was now the last surviving of Vannozza’s children: she had not seen Jofre since leaving Rome for Ferrara fifteen years earlier, and they do not appear to have corresponded; if they did, no letters have been preserved. After Cesare’s fall, Jofre had retreated with the rest of the Borgia faction to Naples where Sancia became the mistress of Gonsalvo da Cordoba, Cesare’s captor. By now thoroughly bored with Jofre, she had refused to have anything further to do with him. After her death, Jofre had subsequently married again, one Maria de Mila, who by her name was presumably a member of the family related to the Borgias. She bore him four children, and on his death his only son succeeded to the Principate of Squillace. Lucrezia received the news of her brother’s death from his widow and son, Francesco, ‘my nephew’. She wrote separately on 2 January to both the Gonzaga giving them the news. As might have been expected, her letter to Isabella was brief and couched in less emotional terms than the letter to Francesco. To the latter she wrote of the ‘unexpected event which has greatly afflicted me and has caused me the sorrow which might be expected. I am sure Your Lordship,’ she continued, ‘for the relationship between us and the reverence I bear you, will have compassion for me and for love of me will feel regret . . .’27 It is difficult to imagine that, apart from breaking one of the last links with her family past, Lucrezia really felt deeply bereaved by Jofre’s death.

  There had been other, more significant, deaths on the international front. On 1 January 1515 Louis XII died. Despite having contracted syphilis, the King had married, on 9 October 1513, Henry VIII’s sister Mary; he was fifty-three and in failing health, she a beautiful girl of eighteen. His death was widely attributed to excessive indulgence in sex. Guicciardini accused him of ‘greedily making use of the excellent beauty and youth of his new wife, a girl of eighteen, and, not considering his own years and weak constitution, was taken with a fever complicated by disorders due to a flux’. Francesco Vettori, Florentine ambassador to Rome, wrote gleefully that King Louis had brought out of England a “‘fill” so young, so beautiful and so swift that she had ridden him right out of the world’.

  Louis’s heir, François d’Angoulême, a member of the cadet branch of the family, succeeded as Francis I. At the age of twenty and in contrast with the tired old man Louis had become, Francis had the aura of a Sun King about him, as Guicciardini wrote:

  The new King’s virtue, magnanimity, skill and generous spirit had aroused so much hope that it was universally admitted that for many years now no one had come to the throne with greater expectations. For he united the highest grace with the flower of youth . . . outstanding physical beauty, the greatest liberality, deep humanity withal, and a thorough knowledge of things. Together with his title of King of France, he assumed the title of Duke of Milan, belonging to him not only because of the ancient claims of the Duke of Orleans but also as included within the investiture made by the Emperor according to the League of Cambrai; thus he had the same desire to recuperate it as his predecessor. He was goaded to this undertaking not only by his own inclination but also by the youth of the French nobility, the glory of Gaston de Foix, and the memory of so many victories which had been won by recent kings in Italy . . .’

  Towards the end of June 1515, Francis set out for Italy determined to recover all the possessions which the French had lost there in the last years of Louis XII’s reign. In July the Duke of Milan, Alfonso’s nephew, the Pope, the King of Aragon and the Emperor signed a League for the defence of Italy. Venice was openly on the side of the French against the Emperor and so, more circumspectly, was Alfonso, although he prudently refused all attempts by both sides to make him declare himself. On 1 September, Sanudo reported that Alfonso’s envoy had assured the Venetians that he was content to share fortunes with them and with the French:

  He did not reveal any more and, to tell the truth, his excuse does not seem unreasonable. Not wishing to unite his forces with ours I should have thought that at least he should be willing to come here to meet us; but even this he has not wished to do and has made many excuses. I believe that in any case the aforesaid Lord Duke may not be a most cordial friend of Your Highness [the Doge of Venice]. All the same I believe that he will go to a good end with us and that he desires a prosperous success for the undertaking for his own particular interest because there is no doubt that if we lost he wou
ld also lose his state. We have had from His Excellency victuals and provisions and we have not failed to exchange with him good and cordial words.28

  That month at Marignano the French defeated the fearsome Swiss army which had been defending Milan; Massimiliano Sforza was taken as hostage to France. Alfonso, it seemed, had backed the right side.

  Lucrezia was once again left in charge at Ferrara during that autumn when Alfonso spent a good deal of time watching out for his interests in the French camp. Her principal role was to liaise with Venice, as Sanudo’s reports of almost weekly letters from her to the Signory demonstrate. Alfonso was away until mid December, accompanied by his nephew Federico Gonzaga, now aged fifteen, providing her with news of the French and the Pope and of Spanish troop movements. Within a short time another old player was removed from the field: Ferdinand of Spain died on 23 January 1516 leaving his kingdom to his grandson, the Archduke Charles of Hapsburg. Charles had inherited the dukedom of Burgundy from his father, while, as nephew to the Emperor Maximilian, there was a strong possibility he could also become his successor. As Ferdinand’s heir he inherited the Aragonese claim to Naples, always a source of trouble for Italy. Alfonso continued to sit on his fence at Ferrara, keeping in touch with the French and the Venetians but refusing openly to take sides. When both the Emperor and the King of France demanded he send them men-at-arms, Alfonso promptly sent his troops out of the city so that he should not have to do so. In June the two Duchesses of Urbino, the widowed dowager Elisabetta and her niece Leonora, arrived as penniless refugees in Ferrara, having been driven out by the Pope in favour of his nephew, Lorenzo de’Medici. Meanwhile, Leo held on to Modena and Reggio (despite Alfonso having paid him back the 40,000 ducats he had paid the Emperor for them) and had by no means given up hope of laying hands on Ferrara. As the year 1518 opened, although ostensibly a year of peace in Italy it held out continuing problems for Alfonso, who continued to tread a careful line between France and the Pope.

  16. The Last Year of Tranquillity

  ‘Thus conditions were at peace in Italy and beyond the mountains’

  – Francesco Guicciardini, writing of the year 1518

  As Duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia was required to be both splendid and domestic, playing a multitude of roles – Governor of the state, leader of a brilliant court, hostess, mother and wife. The suspension of military operations against Ferrara allowed her and Alfonso to enjoy life in the city and to continue to beautify their surroundings, a process necessarily interrupted by war.

  Carnival of 1518 was exceptionally gay: at the instance of the Cardinal d’Aragona, Alfonso issued an edict permitting masking in the streets, although for fear of violence the maskers were only allowed to carry staves of a specified dimension and length. The usual spate of pre-Lenten marriages took place, among them that of one of Lucrezia’s damsels, the daughter of Giovanni Valla to Ippolito da li Banchi. An unusual feature of the carnival festivities was tilting at the quintain by both young men and girls with lances of considerable size—‘including one Madonna of ours [i.e. Ferrarese] I leave to your imagination which one it was’, di Prosperi primly commented. Even the young princes, Ercole and Ippolito, took part, ‘with such dexterity that it was a pleasure to see them’, he said. There was dancing in the Corte for three evenings running before the end of carnival.

  But now, from 18 February, di Prosperi wrote, ‘at court every one is keeping a Lenten way of life, even the little lords’. Alfonso had exempted them so that they could eat meat but they had pleaded with him to allow them to keep to the Lenten diet. Lucrezia was ill with a fever but she had kept Lent, as had Alfonso and the children.

  The consumption of food throughout medieval and Renaissance Europe was governed by the dictates of the Church and regulated by a precise annual rhythm which predicated dietary regimes. According to the Church abstinence from eating meat and all animal products, including, to the distress of many, cheese, was the rule on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday as well as on the eve of important festivals and, of course, the forty days of Lent. Since for them fresh fish was always in relatively short supply and the prices high on days of ‘magro’, the poor confined themselves to beans, chickpeas, fruit and vegetables while for the rich, as Antonio Costabili’s banquet for Fabrizio Colonna showed, abstinence from meat was scarcely a hardship.

  Due to the difficulty of keeping food fresh, the predominant taste in dishes of the day was of preservatives – salt or sugar. In Lucrezia’s kitchen, the pig was the most useful animal, prepared in various ways and used in the making of salami, and sausages (zambudelli) and prosciutto. Salted ox tongues were also appreciated for their practicality. Sugar and spices from the East were important ingredients – among them pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and tamarind, as were vegetables – radishes, carrots, garlic, onions, spring onions and leeks. Scented herbs were much in use – notably basil, sage, bay, marjoram, mint and rosemary. Sugar was the predominant luxury article in cooking, in meat and fish dishes as well as confectionery; it came via Venice from the Orient or via Genoa from Portuguese Atlantic sources, notably Madeira. Fruits in syrup of sugar and spices were particularly appreciated by Isabella d’Este who frequently requested them from Lucrezia’s ‘Vincentio spetiale’. They also raised capons, calves, peacocks and guinea fowl (galline da India), kid, ducks and swans, supplemented by game in season, and, given the lagoons, waterways and lakes of the Po area, they ate a great variety of fish, notably eels from Comacchio and carpioni provided by Isabella from Lake Garda. Then there were cheeses and pasta dishes.

  Banquets were a ritual affair, often a movable feast held in different rooms at different seasons, with trestle tables covered with white cloths, napkins and choice decorations, the dressers or buffets (credenze) loaded with the family silver and gold plate, and crystal flasks. In the recent years of war, the Este plate – including Lucrezia’s – had much of it disappeared in pawn or been melted down to provide finance for the defence of Ferrara, and the court had been reduced to eating off pottery made by Alfonso himself. Tapestries would be specially hung. Guests were offered perfumed water with which to wash their hands at the beginning of the meal and between courses – scented with rose petals, lemon, myrtle, musk; even the toothpicks were scented and the cloths changed after each course were often decorated with sweet – smelling herbs. Hot courses of at least eight dishes each from the kitchen alternated with cold courses served from the credenza and, at Lucrezia’s court, the whole elaborate performance – the decoration of the table, credenza and room, the service and the organization of the musical accompaniment and intermezzi – was planned and choreographed by the most famous scalco, or steward, of the century, Cristoforo da Messisbugo, who entered the Este service in 1515. He came from an old Ferrarese family and his social status was high enough for him to have entertained Alfonso twice in his own house; his book, the Banchetti, published posthumously, was a bestseller. In entertainments, as in theatre and buildings, the Este court of the late fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century set the standard for the other Italian courts.

  Lucrezia’s accounts books show the extent of her involvement in the running of her household. On 24 January 1516, for example, I her chancellor lists twenty-five heifers each known by name, among them ‘Violet’ and ‘Rose’. A five-page bill details her commissions for shoes for herself and her household including Girolamo Borgia, Cesare’s son. Another accounts book for 1507 details payments by ‘Vincenzi banchero’ (Vincenzi the banker) on Lucrezia’s orders to a variety of recipients: to a Domenico Sforza for two flasks of Malvasia wine; to Ascanio da Vilaforo, bookseller, for binding seven books for Lucrezia; salaries for her staff including the faithful ‘Sanzo spagnolo’, Tullio, a member of Giovanni Borgia’s household, Bartolommeo Grotto, his tutor, and Cola, another of his servants; a payment to her gentleman, Sigismondo Nigrisolo, for the cost of a coffer he gave to Dalida de’Puti, Lucrezia’s singer; to a chairmaker, a table-decker (aparecchiador); Tromboncino and Porino, singers; il Cingano, ‘th
e Gypsy’, a favourite of Alfonso’s; to jewellers; a Spanish (probably Jewish) embroiderer; a saddler; a ‘Chatelina del forno’, possibly a member of the formidable family of Masino and El Modenese; and Tomaso da Carpi, a painter.2 The official annual accounts were conscientiously signed by Lucrezia herself. She was still signing them in the last year of her life.

  Alfonso had now resumed work on new rooms in the Corte and his own particular camerini in the via coperta. In 1508, before war had interrupted him, he had begun work on a ‘studio of fine marbles’ designed for his collection of statues, ancient and modern, and other antiquities and had already completed a small new chapel constructed of fine marble and nutwood from Venice next to the rooms. That same year he had taken delivery of a series of marble reliefs from the sculptor Antonio Lombardo which he had ordered two years previously for his ‘Studio di Marmo’. Twenty-eight of these are now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, one of which is dated and inscribed ‘In 1508 Alfonso, third Duke of Ferrara, established this for his leisure and tranquillity’, while another bears a quotation from Cicero expressive of Alfonso’s reserved character – ‘Never less alone than when alone’. Early in 1518 di Prosperi recorded Alfonso’s building operations as proceeding ‘at a furious pace’.3 He was widening part of the via coperta and building above it a sumptuous set of new rooms. By early April they were working on the fabric and the windows, so that now the family dined in the first camera dorata. On the 17th, despite suffering from gallstones for which he was purging himself and taking ‘syropi’, Alfonso was reported as taking great pains over the scaffolding of his rooms. The outside walls of the camerini had been finished and the marble floors laid within by the end of August.4 On 4 October di Prosperi reported that Alfonso was overseeing daily the completion of the camerini, where the glass and wooden frames of the windows had already been installed though their surrounds had not been finished and it was doubted that Alfonso would be able to sleep there that winter. When Isabella saw it, he said, she would find it twice as pleasing as she had found it before: ‘the more so that in that small piazza stalls have been set up as they used to be to sell goods as they did in the great piazza, to give a more pleasant aspect. Among other things you will see above all the exits to these camerini various heads and figures by antique and modern sculptors, and the studio most beautifully decorated and with its fine pavement . . .’