The Marriage Portrait

“Eleanora is a woman all too aware of her rarity and worth: she possesses not only a body able to produce a string of heirs, but also a beautiful face, with a forehead like carved ivory, eyes wide-set and deep brown, a mouth that looks well in both a smile and a pout. On top of all this she has a quick and mercurial mind.”

This description of Eleanora encapsulates an ideal of Renaissance womanhood. She combines the virtues of fertility and beauty, which a patriarchal society seeks in all women, with an upper-class, educated woman’s intelligence. While her physical features are supremely feminine, her “mercurial mind”—referring to the Roman god of communication and wit, Mercury—indicates an aspiration to live in the public realm as well as the domestic one.

“She felt the secret of the tigress move within her, like a bright ribbon weaving in and out of her ribs.”

The surreal yet visceral description of Lucrezia’s wonder at seeing the tigress weaving in and out of her ribs like a ribbon conveys her capacity for astonishment. The simile of the ribbon echoes the shape of the tigress’s stripes and indicates Lucrezia’s feeling that she has absorbed the animal’s essence. The secrecy of this experience foreshadows the way Lucrezia lives, staying quiet about the things that excite her because they do not conform to social expectations of how a young woman should behave.

“The sense of his words disintegrates as Lucrezia stares at him, until what comes from his mouth reaches her as a string of babble and nonsense, the squawks of a beast. Why is he saying these things? How can he sit there, serenely eating his food, talking about groomsmen and horse tack when somewhere in his mind lurks a scheme to end her life?”

Alfonso’s speech feels irrelevant to Lucrezia, given her belief that he will try to kill her. The metaphor of senseless animal sounds heightens the unreal nature of the situation. The succession of questions indicates Lucrezia’s restlessness and anxiety as she craves to know where she stands.

“She will not allow him to kill her, to extinguish her. But how can she, a small-for-her-age sixteen-year-old bride with no friends or allies present get the better of him, a soldier, a duke, a man of twenty-seven?”

Lucrezia’s opposition to being murdered is countered by the evidence of her weakness compared to Alfonso. O’Farrell’s reference to her smallness and loneliness heightens the sense that she is alone in her battle against a military-trained man whose status is reinforced by the current patriarchal system. The use of the present tense conveys a sense of urgency.

“As he walked away, the fiancé, whose ancestors had defended the Emperor, brushed his thumb along Lucrezia’s cheek, and then, very quickly, so quickly afterwards she was never sure if it had actually happened, he twitched his nose at her and pulled—she was sure of it—a face like a mouse. One sniffing at something it liked, cheese perhaps or a tasty breadcrumb.”

Although Lucrezia is only 10 when Alfonso meets her, and he is betrothed to her sister, his affinity for Lucrezia is shown in his playful descent to her level by imitating her pet mouse. O’Farrell exposes Lucrezia’s surprise in the juxtaposition of Alfonso’s distance from her—being referred to as “the fiancé” with legendary Roman ancestors—with this childish gesture. The two sides of Alfonso’s personality are so astonishingly different from each other that Lucrezia almost feels they are made up.

“He leads her up a spiral staircase slippery with moisture and moss. She must cling to his hand so her shoes don’t skid, so she doesn’t stumble on the hem of her gown.”

The structure of the spiral staircase has built-in suspense, as the view of what is at the top is not immediately apparent. However, the moisture and moss indicate that the damp perils of outdoor life have been brought inside. This makes Lucrezia, with her feverish constitution, even more vulnerable, as does the impractical long skirt of a noblewoman. This combination reduces her to a childlike state of clinging and dependency on Alfonso.

“Nothing, however, Lucrezia heard, as she loitered behind the panels of her mother’s chambers, would surpass in opulence the dress Maria would wear. It would be spun from pure gold, overlaid with silk from her mother’s insectarium […] Maria would glow as she walked up the aisle of the church, the gold chosen to enhance her creamy complexion and the blue to bring out the chestnut glints in her hair: a gown such as this would never have been seen before.”

This passage conveys the phenomenon of the bride as spectacle, as Lucrezia’s sister Maria is given a dress akin to a wonder that has never been seen before. The hyperbole of a human being glowing in a dress spun from pure gold is akin to a fairy tale and speaks to the Medici family’s legendary richness. Nevertheless, this wealth is not only from patriarchal sources but also from Eleanora’s ingenuity with her insectarium. The dynastic role of daughters is emphasized when Lucrezia automatically inherits the dress upon her marriage to Alfonso.

“She rested her elbows on the nursery table, in the rooms she had lived in all her life, but her very body felt unfamiliar to her, as if it wasn’t hers, as if these arms and legs and head belonged to another, as if she could no longer tell it how to sit in a chair […] There was a sense that something or someone had crept up unseen and now stood at her back.”

When Lucrezia hears that she is to take Maria’s place as Alfonso’s bride, O’Farrell conveys her shock and disbelief by showing how ill at ease she is in her body. The familiar act of sitting at the nursery table becomes strange, and she loses a sense of being able to operate as she usually does. The feeling that her body is not her own and belongs to a shadowy figure who has “crept up unseen” indicates that she is overwhelmed at having her destiny detached from her own will.

“A patch on her shift, halfway down, dark red and the shape of a landform, a distant and unmapped island surrounded by a vast white sea. She realized there was a familiar heavy feeling in her abdomen, as if a fist was clenching and unclenching.”

Although Lucrezia has been having her period in secret for over a year, the spectacle of the blood before her mother means that she will be forced into marriage. The image of an unmapped island in a vast sea is a metaphor for being on new terrain and being forced to enter it. The simile likening menstrual pain to a clenching and unclenching fist alludes to Lucrezia’s resistance to what is happening to her.

“She had the strange and unaccustomed sensation of having been observed and, perhaps, understood. How odd it was that the person who seemed to comprehend her, to see into her very soul should be a man who had glimpsed her only once.”

The aptness of Alfonso’s engagement gift to Lucrezia reveals his skill at seeing what motivates and pleases others and using this knowledge to his advantage. Lucrezia, an overlooked child, is initially flattered at being observed, even by a man who had seen her only once before.

“She cannot talk about the complex, snarled thread between them, not now, with the cathedral around the corner, cannot say that she is scared, that her fear of marriage and what lies ahead is so consuming that it fills the vacant space beside her in the carriage, travels along with them, its clawed feet hooked into the seat.”

This passage conveys the sense that Eleanora and Lucrezia have run out of time to repair their relationship as the image of the cathedral where Lucrezia will step into her future slides into view. The metaphor of a snarled thread indicates a thorny bond and also misunderstandings between mother and daughter. Lucrezia’s inability to confide her fears about marriage indicates her isolation and foreshadows the lack of support she will receive from her family when she enters her new commitment.

“He says again that he will not hurt her, she must not be scared, he will not hurt her, he will not, he promises, the words whispered in his new rasping voice. And then he hurts her anyway.”

The contrast between Alfonso’s repetitive utterances, presented in reported speech, that he will not hurt Lucrezia during sex and the direct statement that he hurts her regardless indicates her lack of preparation for this experience and her visceral dislike of consummating her marriage. The reference to “his new rasping voice” indicates that sexual desire changed his demeanor and alludes to Alfonso’s various personalities.

“It is as if he is formed of two halves of a cast, like a sculpture, and has been fused down his central line.”

As Lucrezia contemplates Alfonso’s sleeping form, she develops a metaphor of him being formed from two halves of a cast. The sculptural fusion of two separate halves alludes to Alfonso’s dual natures and the fusion of seemingly incompatible traits in his character.

“Why must she and Emilia enact this ritual every day? Does it make that much of a difference? It occurs to her, for the first time, that she need not submit to this, if she doesn’t want to. There is no one here to check, no one here to inspect her.”

This passage refers to the relative freedom Lucrezia experiences at the delizia. The repetition of negatives in the last sentence refers to the lack of witnesses to restrain her comportment, contrasted with the spectacle of Florence. However, she will endure far more control and privation in Ferrara.

“There, tied to a hazel tree, is an animal like a horse, but smaller, with a graceful, sloping head and a long, whisking tail. It is pure white, from the long mane that drapes over its neck, down to the smooth fetlocks. Strapped around its middle is a red leather side-saddle, embossed in gilt, with gold bells on its fringes.”

The white mule is a reference to the animal mentioned in Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess.” It signifies the luxury and rarity that Alfonso, a collector of art, values. This image is reinforced by the saddle’s costly embellishment. Even though this animal is a gift for Lucrezia, it also reinforces that she, like the specially chosen mule, is ultimately Alfonso’s possession. The mule’s hybrid nature also speaks to the duality of Alfonso’s nature.

“How peculiar it seems to her, in that moment, to have saved the life of another. It has, she is dimly aware, created an invisible yet indissoluble tether between her and this man […] She feels it; he feels it. They know it and they know each other’s thoughts and they sense each other’s actions and fears.”

Lucrezia’s chance saving of Jacopo’s life creates a bond between them. The “indissoluble tether” will reappear when he saves her life by insisting that she leave her husband. Their connection is composed of loyalty and the sensing of each other’s thoughts and fears, which O’Farrell conveys through the repetition of verbs related to feeling and knowing.

“I want something that conveys her… […] majesty, her bloodline. […] She is no ordinary mortal: treat her thus. Ensure, please, the portrait reflects that, above anything else. I want everyone who looks upon this to know instantly what she is: regal, refined, untouchable.”

Alfonso’s instructions to Lucrezia’s portraitist, Il Bastianino, convey that what he values most in a wife is dynastic power. He wishes the portrait to be iconographic in showing the might of Lucrezia’s family’s wealth. The collection of adjectives at the end of the passage—“regal, refined, untouchable”—indicates that he wants her status to be exhibited over her personality.

“When Lucrezia glances back at them from her saddle, they look like ancient sylvan spirits, faces tinged green by the ever-moving leaves of the forest.”

Lucrezia’s rear glance at Elisabetta and Contrari before they are brutally punished and separated by Alfonso is tinged with nostalgia and imbues their relationship with poignancy. The reference to nature in their forest-green-tinged faces and the classical allusion to pagan sylvan spirits indicate that they are natural lovers, rather than dynastic spouses joined by pragmatic interests.

“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 its embroidery, with all the knots and weave and secrets on display.”

This passage illustrates the freedom that Lucrezia finds in masquerading as her maid, whose dispensable nature is exemplified by likening her to an inanimate object. The reference to the wrong side of the embroidery, which intrigues Lucrezia more than the fine side, indicates her restless curiosity and desire for knowledge.

“Most of all, I would advise you most strongly, my darling, to pay attention to your own position at court, which will only be truly assured by the birth of an heir. I have no doubt that motherhood will bring you the peace and security you so desire.”

Eleanora advises Lucrezia to tame her imagination and pay attention to her conjugal duty of providing Alfonso with an heir. The repetition of “most” reflects Eleanora’s anxiety for her daughter’s position at court, and the phrase “peace and security” acknowledges that Lucrezia may be in danger unless she manages to bear a male child. This reflects the era’s ideas that marriage was about procreation and the survival of a dynasty.

“She finds, reflected in their startled faces, a testament to how changed she is. In the raising of Maurizio’s brows, she knows that her face is pale and gaunt; in the dying stutter of Il Bastianino’s words, she feels the ragged tresses of her severed hair, tied at the nape of her neck.”

This passage conveys that Lucrezia has gone from satisfying the male gaze to offending it. O’Farrell describes her change from youthful fecundity to an image of gaunt, shorn punishment through the eyes of the men who painted her to confirm that her marriage destroyed her beauty and the fertile power she brought into it.

“She feels, she realizes, as if she is suddenly absent from this room, or disappearing from it, evaporating into the air. The Duchess is present, in the painting. There she stands. Lucrezia is unnecessary; she can go now. Her place is filled; the portrait will take up her role in life.”

Witnessing the portrait, Lucrezia feels like a superfluous impostor, as the virtuous, perfect image representing her takes her body’s place. This heightens the sinister sense of her impending death, especially as O’Farrell’s metaphors of her evaporating into the air make her seem like a ghost.

“She is, however, no match for the two of them. They are men in the prime of their life, their bodies trained and lethal. […] The Duchess cannot win but still she fights. Alfonso has always said that she had within her an untamable element to her spirit. It takes them longer than they anticipated, but of course they triumph in the end.”

O’Farrell’s description of “the Duchess’s” (Emilia’s) fight with Alfonso and Leonello during suffocation encapsulates the battle of womanhood against a patriarchal system in which everything is set against her. She cannot overcome the men’s cultivated physical and institutional power. Still, her “untamable” spirit is a force of resistance, if only because it makes their task harder.