The Marriage Portrait

Lucrezia is exhausted after her wedding day. However, she is not permitted to rest because festivities are taking place. She regrets not being able to say goodbye to Sofia, who does not turn up with other members of the family.

Alfonso wants them to set off in the carriage for Ferrara straight away. He brings her some food, noticing that she did not eat much at the wedding feast. He tells her they are to cross the Apennine peaks and progress until the Po valley, where their journey will end. Sofia stops the carriage to say goodbye, imploring Lucrezia to live long and be happy.

She wakes up in the carriage alone, with Alfonso nowhere to be seen. She cannot understand the men in the Ferrara green-and-silver livery because they speak a dialect that differs from her own native Tuscan. Lucrezia understands that she is to mount a cream-colored mare and that the maid with the scarred face called Emilia, who was at her wedding, is to accompany her on Cosimo di Medici’s orders. Emilia confides that Alfonso went ahead to Ferrara due to a troubling letter concerning his mother. She was born a Protestant in France but apparently renounced her faith to marry the Catholic Duke of Ferrara; however, she attended Protestant services in secret. This, in turn, caused the old duke to lock her away and take her children away from her. Lucrezia is horrified that a man could imprison his own wife, but Emilia says that the duchess has been released from imprisonment. However, there is still a mystery about why the contents of the letter were powerful enough to make Alfonso ride off in anger.

Emilia tells Lucrezia that Alfonso will meet her at the delizia, a country house. Emilia will accompany Lucrezia there on a horseback journey over the mountains. She and Emilia spend the night together in the bed. Lucrezia wakes up alone in a light-filled room, and Alfonso enters in his shirtsleeves. Lucrezia is shy and awkward given his relative undress and thinks that he will consummate the marriage now. He, however, praises her beauty and tells her that the best court painters will compete to create her likeness. It will be much better than the hasty portrait her father’s people produced during the betrothal. She feels hurt that her father did not “care enough” about her to have the portrait repainted, and Alfonso appears to feel her pain at being overlooked. He sees that she is afraid of him and promises that he will not hurt her. He tells her that he will not come to her bed now and that they can take their time.

In the meantime, she is free to explore the villa, and she delights in the liberty to wander around and make her own schedule. Alfonso joins her after a while, and then they come across a man called Leonello Baldassare, who greets Lucrezia coolly.

Later that night, Alfonso comes to her bed. While Lucrezia thinks that Sofia and her mother prepared her for her wedding night, she finds her new husband’s nudity shocking. He tries to put her at ease by talking to her, again promising that he will not hurt her. However, she sees him transformed into an animalistic creature by desire and is hurt by both his heaviness and his penetration of her. She finds sex “appalling” and akin to a furious act of violence.

When she wakes up and examines Alfonso asleep, she considers that there are many versions of this man, and she does not yet fully know him. She is enjoying unparalleled freedom during a walk through the forest when she runs into Leonello, who is off on an early-morning hunt. He is as hostile to her as he was before, and she surmises that he resents her because she is another person who will have influence with Alfonso; he has lost his dominance. He informs her that Alfonso is troubled because the pope exiled his mother to France for consorting with Protestants, and she desires to take Alfonso’s sisters with her. Alfonso apparently fears that his sisters will marry French noblemen, produce heirs with them, and, thus, take over his kingdom. Alfonso needs to produce an heir with urgency, but although most men have some children out of wedlock, Alfonso has none. His fertility is unproven. There is, therefore, pressure on him and Lucrezia to produce an heir. Lucrezia wants to distance herself from Leonello, but he insists on accompanying her back to the villa, stating that he must make sure nothing untoward happens to her.

Back in 1561, Lucrezia is convinced that she has been poisoned. She asks Emilia to fetch her ink so that she can write to request her family’s assistance. While she would ideally like to write to Sofia, she chooses Isabella. Emilia divulges that she accompanied the artist of the marriage portrait, Sebastiano Filippi, or il Bastianino, to the Fortezza.

Lucrezia wonders why Alfonso has not been to see her. She conjectures that he thinks she ate more than she did and, therefore, ingested enough poisoned venison to kill her. She hopes Il Bastianino will delay her husband and asks Emilia to help her get dressed.

Daytime life at the delizia is wonderfully unstructured, giving Lucrezia enough time for art and daydreaming. She asks Emilia to dress her simply, instead of going through the elaborate preparations of getting ready, so that she can have more time and freedom of movement. Alfonso comes and goes, sometimes disappearing suddenly. Lucrezia asks him to confide his troubles in her. He is instantly suspicious that she has illicit knowledge of his court and his family and that Cosimo and Eleanora told her malicious gossip about him in Florence. She does not give Leonello away. He makes it clear that such court matters are not a wife’s business and that her main role is to give him an heir.

He is frantic in this pursuit, having vigorous sex with her every night. While she continues to dislike sex, it becomes less painful, and she learns to mimic his body language to bring him to orgasm faster. She thinks that she will soon be pregnant and fears being among the enormous number of women who die in childbirth.

Lucrezia learns that Emilia’s mother was her balia, or milk mother, and that the two of them were close as infants. Emilia recalls that she got her scar when a boiling pot fell during one of their childhood games of hide-and-seek.

There are rumors that Alfonso’s court is “in dangerous uproar” due to the rebellion of his mother and his sisters (236). Leonello insists that Alfonso make an example of the errant women and show them who is boss. Alfonso will not discuss the matter with Lucrezia. Instead, he shows her the rare white mule that he bought her. He thinks that the mule will give his wife appropriate, gentle exercise during the pregnancy that he anticipates for her. When Lucrezia sees Leonello ruthlessly whipping a young boy who dropped some bags and reproaches him, she is astonished that Alfonso does not support her. Afterward, Alfonso tells her that she is never to criticize Leonello again or question his authority. Lucrezia acquiesces, although she privately inquires about the injured boy and sends money to help heal him.

Lucrezia senses that she must conceal aspects of herself from Alfonso. She paints a respectable still life of fruit over the mythological merman she created. Then, she spots the body of a young man lying on the floor, presumably at death’s door. She revives him with honey water. Another young man called Maurizio tells her that the young man’s name is Jacopo and that he does not communicate verbally. They are both assistants to the artist Il Bastianino, whom Alfonso commissioned to paint Lucrezia’s picture. Jacopo is an especially talented painter of cloth, and Il Bastianino relies upon him. Lucrezia does not give away her identity, although she probes Maurizio about his comment that Alfonso is “like Janus, with two faces, two personalities” that he can switch between in an instant (258).

The next day, Alfonso officially presents Lucrezia to the painting assistants. They are to do preliminary sketches and subject them to Alfonso’s approval. During the sitting, Lucrezia feels an unspoken bond between her and Jacopo, based on her saving his life. She knows that she must keep this hidden, as it could endanger them both. Alfonso favors one of Jacopo’s sketches and demands that Lucrezia pose with a raised arm in a manner that is difficult for her. He becomes annoyed that she does not comport herself with the noble bearing of a duchess. Later, he is angry that she does not immediately obey his command to shut the window when a storm is coming in, and he throws her across the room. Lucrezia realizes that Alfonso will never treat her as a near-equal, as her father did her mother. He is obsessed with the fact that she might have potentially damaged an unborn child by her reckless actions. Outwardly, Lucrezia is apologetic and tearful; however, inwardly, a rage burns within her, and she knows that the unyielding part of her that will not bend to Alfonso’s might will help her survive the marriage.

The next day, they depart for Ferrara, where Lucrezia will begin her official duties as duchess.