The Marriage Portrait

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-11

Chapters 12-15

Chapters 16-18

Chapters 19-20

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Chapters 19-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 19 Summary: “A Presence Malign and Predatory”

At the castello in Ferrara in 1561, Lucrezia’s nausea and inertia following Elisabetta’s departure lead Nunciata to suspect that she is pregnant and summon Alfonso. Lucrezia, however, has a dream in which her future children are walking along with her but somehow eluding her.

Alfonso appears at her bedside, accompanied by a physician. The physician examines her and declares that while she is not pregnant, she has the appearance of a fertile body and constitution. The physician begins to advise Alfonso to have sex with her every five days, with periods of abstinence in between them to let his “seed be enriched and matured” (391). However, Alfonso insists that the doctor find something wrong with Lucrezia that means that she is preventing pregnancies through the sheer force of her will. The doctor is then forced to pronounce that Lucrezia has a hot, choleric temperament, which can be cooled down by herbal tinctures, a lack of excitement, and a lack of exposure to animal scenes and pictures. She is also to remain sedentary and cut off her ankle-length hair, which is abundant, “the color of fire,” and thus “very inflaming” (393).

As a result of this faux diagnosis, the servants banish Lucrezia’s animal studies, replace them with pictures of fruit, and administer the doctor’s herbal tinctures. Lucrezia insists on cutting her hair herself and is upset when Alfonso wants to keep the fallen locks for some mysterious reason. When he visits her, he says the rosary before sex and performs efficiently and carefully.

Lucrezia’s life becomes monotonous, and the physician often comes to check on her. Her period arrives when expected. She is unsure of how she feels about becoming a mother to the duke’s children, knowing that they would be spirited away in a life of duty. When her period arrives early the next month, the doctor is summoned to examine the cloths to declare that the blood is thin and too hot. He administers new herbal tinctures and instructs her to sketch healthy male babies.

Alfonso comes to her chamber, stating that the doctor’s regime does not appear to be working. He suggests that, on the advice of another doctor, they go to the countryside and try to revive. Lucrezia is thrilled, as she thinks that Alfonso means to take her to the delizia. However, his haste to get there surprises her, as do the lack of a carriage and a fork in the road leading to a different destination. Alfonso declares that they will be going to Stellata instead, a star-shaped country lodge. He reassures her that Emilia will be escorted to the right place. When they arrive, Lucrezia cannot help thinking that it looks like a fortress; it is the Fortezza, where Alfonso plans for her to meet her end.

Chapter 20 Summary: “The Underpainting and the Overpainting”

Back at the Fortezza in 1561, Emilia gets a freezing Lucrezia into bed and huddles next to her to warm her. Lucrezia insists to Emilia that she has been poisoned and implores her not to let anyone into the room.

Lucrezia wakes up much later, having the clarity that Alfonso intends to kill her. She puts on Emilia’s clothes as a disguise and creeps through the kitchens gathering food. She steps out intent on the escape Jacopo has set out for her. She has a close call when she brushes past Leonello in the dark, but she flattens herself against the wall until she is sure he is gone. She is amazed that the oiled rags Jacopo jammed the lock with work, and she escapes.

What Lucrezia does not know is that Alfonso is at the same moment climbing the staircase to her chamber with Leonello and suffocating a girl they believe to be the duchess with a pillow. The next day, a kitchen servant discovers the “duchess” dead and raises the alarm. Alfonso is the picture of mourning and blames the death on “a short illness, an ague, a seizure, a fever of the brain” (426). Meanwhile, the marriage portrait is hung in Alfonso’s private chamber, and he is in mourning for months. Still, by the end of the summer, he is entering marriage negotiations with an Austrian family to procure a future bride.

Jacopo is waiting for Lucrezia in the trees, and they will escape to a city that is described like Venice, with watery streets and navigation by boat. It is implied that she will produce miniature art works, which are almost all of animals. People whisper that beneath her overpaintings are “secret underpaintings” that can be revealed by rubbing the canvas with vinegar and alcohol. The underpaintings reveal scenes of classical battles and always include the face of a particular woman enjoying her freedom as a nymph or a peasant with a basket of peaches.

Chapters 19-20 Analysis

Although the procreative aspect of Lucrezia and Alfonso’s marriage was always an issue, this comes to the forefront in the final section of the novel as he forces her to undergo a physical examination and punishing treatment to mask his own infertility. While the charade proceeds, with its chopping of her hair, administration of herbal tinctures, and banishment of animal pictures, Lucrezia languishes and does not become pregnant because Alfonso is incapable of making this happen. Although his perspective is not presented, it seems clear that he blames her for his lack of an heir and sees no way forward other than to procure her death. Her sickly constitution, brought about by the physician’s regime, will be a useful foil when she dies suddenly in a remote place where he takes her to allegedly recover.

The theme of Duality and Exchange emerges in the unveiling of the portrait, which shows Lucrezia in her long-haired dynastic splendor and reflects the promise she had as a new bride. The portrait will replace her after her death. This and the locks of her hair that Alfonso treasures will be his mementos of the marriage after he does away with her. He preserves the reminders of her beauty and her promise, but the real spouse who disappointed him vanishes.

Lucrezia stages her own variation on this theme when she escapes with Jacopo wearing Emilia’s clothes, while Emilia, who resembles her, is in her bed. In the dark, one fair-haired girl is mistaken for another, and the suffocation that ensues means that the corpse is not clearly identifiable. The servant girl was in her mistress’s bed to warm her when she was feverish but loses her life. Emilia’s sacrifice casts a shadow on Lucrezia’s freedom as an artist in Venice, as the latter’s final triumph over institutional control came at a great cost to a woman with even less power than she. While Lucrezia finds freedom in the maid’s clothes, the maid faces tragedy due to being mistaken for nobility.

Lucrezia’s continued execution of her underpaintings alludes to her life of anonymity with Jacopo. Her secret depictions of young women living freely as dryads or as peach-eating peasants are triumphant images of women’s autonomy, but they are concealed under tasteful still lives, just as they were when she held her title of nobility. This demonstrates society’s continued lack of acceptance of overt displays of female freedom.