The Marriage Portrait(121)

Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, went on to have two further wives.

Neither union produced any children.





Acknowledgements


Thank you, Mary-Anne Harrington, Victoria Hobbs, Jordan Pavlin, Georgina Moore, Amanda Betts, Christy Fletcher, Regan Arthur, Josie Kals, Amy Perkins, Yeti Lambregts, Fergus Edmondson, Cally Conway, Hazel Orme, Louise Rothwell, Tina Paul, Jessie Goetzinger-Hall, Rebecca Bader, Elaine Egan, Chris Keith-Wright, Jennifer Doyle, Mari Evans, Alexandra McNicoll, Prema Raj, Tabatha Leggett, and Jessica Lee.

Thank you, Beatrice Monti della Corte and the Santa Maddalena Foundation. Thank you, Emma Paoli, Anna Castelli and Caterina Toschi, for helping me track down Lucrezia’s portrait in Florence. Thank you to the staff at the Palazzo Vecchio, the Castello Estense, and the Museo Civico di Belriguardo, and to the custodians of the Corpus Domini Monastery, Ferrara, who kindly allowed me in to visit Lucrezia’s tomb, despite Covid restrictions.

Thank you to Dr. Jill Burke, of Edinburgh University, for her time, generosity and expertise, and also to Carlotta Moro, of St. Andrews University, for her enthusiasm and advice. Thank you, Penny Reid, for discussions about art and portraiture. Needless to say, any mistakes about Renaissance life and art are undoubtedly mine.

I am grateful to the authors of the following books: How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians, by Rudolph M. Bell (University of Chicago Press, 1999); How to Be a Renaissance Woman, by Jill Burke (Profile Books, 2023); Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts, by Alison Cole (Everyman Art Library, 1995); The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, by Christopher Hibbert (Penguin, 1974); Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal, by Gabrielle Langdon (University of Toronto Press, 2006); Gli Ornamenti delle Donne by Dr. Giovanni Marinello (published in Venice in 1562, translated by Jill Burke); Isabella de’ Medici, by Caroline P. Murphy (Faber & Faber, 2008); Art in Renaissance Italy, by John T. Paoletti and Gary M. Radke (Laurence King, 2011); The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance, by Paul Strathern (Vintage, 2007); Women in Italian Renaissance Art, by Paola Tinagli (Manchester University Press, 1997). Any errors or inventions will be mine.

Very special thanks are due to JA, IZ and SS.

And, last but certainly not least, thank you, Will Sutcliffe, for everything.





A Note About the Author


MAGGIE O’FARRELL was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. Her novels include Hamnet (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award), After You’d Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine (winner of the Costa Novel Award), and Instructions for a Heatwave. She has also written a memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death. She lives in Edinburgh.