The Marriage Portrait in On The Same Page

May 25, 2023 Lorna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, italy

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.
---ROBERT BROWNING, "MY LAST DUCHESS"

And that startling Epigraph is followed by an equally startling Historical Note:

"In 1560, fifteen-year old Lucrezia di Cosimo de'Medici left Florence to begin her married life with Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara.
Less than a year later, she would be dead.
The official cause of death was given as 'putrid fever,' but it was rumored that she had been murdered by her husband."

The book o
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.
---ROBERT BROWNING, "MY LAST DUCHESS"

And that startling Epigraph is followed by an equally startling Historical Note:

"In 1560, fifteen-year old Lucrezia di Cosimo de'Medici left Florence to begin her married life with Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara.
Less than a year later, she would be dead.
The official cause of death was given as 'putrid fever,' but it was rumored that she had been murdered by her husband."

The book opens in 1561 at the hunting lodge Fortezza, near Bondeno. Lucrezia is one year into her marriage and convinced that Alfonso intends to kill her because she has not yet beome pregnant with the heir he needs to secure his hold on the kingdom. The narrative then goes back the previous year. It is during this time that Alfonso commissions a marriage portrait to be done of Lucrezia by a renowned portraitist. When one of his apprentices, a mute Jacabo, falls ill it is Lucrezia who saves his life forming an unspoken bond between the two. Lucrezia senses a soulmate in Jacabo.

"What liberty she gains by casting off her identity, by donning Emilia's clothes, what fortuities are hers! She can go anywhere, be party to anything. . . . A maid in a brown dress might as well be a table or a sconce on the wall. She has access suddenly to the private, hidden life of the castello, the wrong side of embroidery with all the knots and weave and secrets on display."

In this heightened and at times overwrought prose, one begins to lose sight of the true drama unfolding before one's eyes of this young girl forced into the marriage that was to have been her sister, Maria's, before she died of a fever. Young Lucrezia sees that in many ways, her sister Maria would have made a better wife for Alfonso and would not have angered him as Lucrezia did.

"Lucrezia suddenly sees that some vital part of her will not bend, will never yield. She cannot help it--it is just the way she is built. And Alfonso, possessed of such a swift and perceptive way of reading people, must have sensed this. Why else would he have become so furious with her, if not to try to break down the walls of that citadel, capture it and declare himself the victor.

If she is to survive this marriage, or perhaps even to thrive within it, she must preserve this part of herself and keep it away from him, separate, sacred. She will surround it with a thorn-thicket or a high fence, like a castle in a folktale; she will station bare-toothed, long-clawed beasts at its doors. He will never know it, never see it, never reach it. He shall not penetrate it."

Maggie O'Farrell is a perceptive writer whose prose has a poetic cadence. While I loved Hamnet, I felt that The Marriage Portrait was a bit overworked and melodramatic. That being said, a fourth shining star just for the explosive ending. ...more

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Feb 24, 2024 Amy rated it really liked it

Shelves: have-it-on-the-nook

Set in Renaissance Italy in the 1550s, this is a historical fiction based on the life and death of Lucrezia d’Medici. In real life, Lucrezia was married off at the age of 15 to the Duke of Ferrara in order to merge two family dynasties. Less than a year later, she was dead under mysterious circumstances. Did she die of natural causes? Did her husband kill her because she didn’t produce an heir quickly enough? The answer is lost to history. And it is within this mystery that O’Farrell crafts her ...more

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May 18, 2023 Jess Penhallow rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: library-book, italy, 16th-century, own-hard-copy

Wow! Hamnet was a tough act to follow but Maggie O'Farrel has done it again! I love the idea of taking a pre-gothic tale and giving it a gothic style. I was hooked throughout by the tense atmosphere and the beautiful prose. It put me in a constant pull between wanting to speed through to the end and wanting to take it slowly to reflect on the themes and savour the writing. I am rarely a re-reader but I feel this book may warrant it. Time to read more of her back catalogue as this has cemented Ma ...more

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