The Marriage Portrait

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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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

Symbols & Motifs

The Marriage Portrait

Both in the novel’s title and in Alfonso’s collection, the marriage portrait that Il Bastianino and his assistants paint of Lucrezia stands in for the real woman and is an important motif throughout the narrative. O’Farrell acknowledges that little is known of the historic Lucrezia’s personality and life experiences and that the only portrait available to her is one commissioned by her parents before her marriage by Angnolo Bronzino, circa 1560. While her wearing of both Medici and Este jewelry in this portrait makes it symbolic of her marriage, the scale of the portrait is diminutive, and the expression on Lucrezia’s face is “uncertain, apprehensive.” To O’Farrell’s knowledge, the Ferrarese portrait to which Robert Browning refers in his poem and on which her novel elaborates is fictional. Still, the novel’s title and its attempt to portray Lucrezia and the realities of her marriage elaborate on this gap in the historical record.

The painting of the portrait, which occupies the second half of the novel, has a dual function: satisfying Alfonso’s ego and showing the truth of Lucrezia’s essence. Initially, when Alfonso behaves as a pleasant groom, these two endeavors are joined; he laments the Medicis’ oversight in failing to have Lucrezia flatteringly painted and endeavors to correct this with a work that will remove her from obscurity and advertise her beauty to the world. However, at the sittings he is eager that the painting should show “her majesty, her bloodline” (333), favoring a rendering over her dynastic power over a presentation of her true self (333). As Lucrezia is immobilized at her sitting and tweaked into uncomfortable positions, she becomes increasingly objectified. This is reinforced when Alfonso demands that her dress alone be painted at a sitting, while she is locked in her rooms to keep her out of trouble. His obsession with the iconography of the portrait, which portrays the ankle-length hair that he loves and had lopped off at the physician’s command, indicates his wish to stay in that promising early phase of his marriage, when Lucrezia was more a representation than a person and had the capacity to fulfill his wishes.

However, in addition to Alfonso’s requirement that the portrait should make Lucrezia appear sufficiently regal, Jacopo’s involvement ensures that it also shows her as self-possessed and ruling over herself. Paintbrush in hand, signaling her vocation as an artist, “she stares out at the viewer with frankness close to defiance” (375), indicating her fierce discomfort at being the object of another’s gaze. Lucrezia, on contemplating the portrait, feels that it “is her, yet not her; it is so disturbingly like her, while being completely unlike her” (375). This paradox accompanies the sensation that the portrait could displace her and render her superfluous. This feeling is especially apt given her sense that Alfonso intends to kill her and keep the portrait as a souvenir of her one-time potential. However, O’Farrell’s ending shows Lucrezia moving on from the marriage portrait to paint other works herself, a feminist rendering that allows her to define herself rather than being delineated by her marriage and her dynastic potential.

Death

Death is a constant motif in the novel, especially with regard to marriage and female sacrifice. Lucrezia begins to be aware of the “unbearable” fact that women could be sacrificed according to their male relatives’ wishes in the schoolroom when she learns about Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia; he tricks her into thinking that she will marry Achilles, though he means to kill her. Lucrezia feels this injustice viscerally, imagining that “Iphigenia, with her slit throat, like a vibrant scarf, would shuffle up to the bed where Lucrezia lay, and she would paw at the blankets, wanting to touch Lucrezia with her cold, bloodied fingers” (33). Here, Lucrezia has the sensation that the mythical Iphigenia wants to make contact with her body to let her know that what happened to her was real. There is also an underlying implication that Iphigenia might contaminate her with a similar fate, given the parallel narrative of Lucrezia’s experiences in the Fortezza when Alfonso means to kill her.

Indeed, the specter of female sacrifice presides over Lucrezia’s marriage with Alfonso from the beginning, as the union takes place following the death of her sister Maria, the original betrothed. Lucrezia never forgets that she took her sister’s place. Although Maria is the deceased one, Lucrezia feels that she is the ghost and that her sister will return at any moment demanding to know what Lucrezia is doing in her wedding dress.

Alfonso’s infertility later becomes resonant of death, as it thwarts the purpose of the couple’s dynastic marriage, which is to produce heirs. After a year passes without Lucrezia’s becoming pregnant, during which challenges to Alfonso’s position mount, he is pushed into a desperate position. Although his infertility is an open secret in his court, Alfonso deflects attention from it by subjecting his wife to the scrutiny of a physician and thereby diminishing her own health and spirit. Lucrezia’s dream of children eluding her grasp also prefigures the notion that the marriage has no future, and death is the only alternative for terminating it, as divorce is illegal.

When the physician’s treatments do not work, Alfonso immediately starts arranging the circumstances for Lucrezia’s death; he will frame her as sickly and buy himself time to look for a new bride. Lucrezia escapes with Jacopo’s help, but the fulfillment of Alfonso’s plan requires a female corpse, leaving her maid, Emilia, to be sacrificed. Inverting Lucrezia’s replacement of Maria at her marriage, in which a live woman replaced a dead one, a dead woman replaces a living one in the case of Emilia’s murder.

The Court

The court is a crucial motif throughout the novel. Both in Florence and in Ferrara, it is the public arena for the display of dynastic power and propriety. Each court has its own distinctive style, evident in Lucrezia’s noticing of the differences in dress and entertainment in Ferrara. The Ferrara court strikes Lucrezia as especially “refined,” given the preference for poetry and music over the acrobats or little people’s displays that were favored in Florence. To 15-year-old Lucrezia, the Ferrara court seems a more adult environment than the Florentine one, which has an abundance of young children and a menagerie that entertains them. Alfonso’s preference for the castrated male singers also implies his cruel aesthetic and foreshadows his treatment of his wife, whom he will also mutilate and objectify. When she enters the Ferrara court as an eager young bride who is eager to impress, Lucrezia attempts to adjust her dress to the Ferrarese style and keeps quiet about the nature of entertainment in her family of origin, for fear that the Medicis might be perceived as vulgar.

While lavish displays were undoubtedly a key part of court life, Italy’s ruling families knew that how they appeared at court could bolster or diminish their position and, in the worst-case scenario, spell the end of their dynasty. Although the Medicis seem relatively secure in O’Farrell’s novel, their cultivation of their public appearance is evident in Cosimo and Eleanora’s accompaniment of Lucrezia to her wedding in a carriage. Cosimo is wearing chainmail in case the spectacle gives rise to an attempt on his life, and Eleanora is anxious to find evidence that the crowd loves them. Similarly, they manage their image by staging opulent wedding masques that display their wealth and generosity, but they forbid Lucrezia from attending them, as it is not the custom for young brides to do so. Ironically, although the wedding is hers, Lucrezia gains more strength and virtue by being invisible.

Lucrezia’s wish for solitary exploration and sincere relationships makes her a poor fit for court life, where women are continually accompanied by ladies-in-waiting who force them into uncomfortable dress and unnecessary rituals. Eleanora reminds her that making genuine friendships is not her purpose; people at court will attempt to curry favor with her to secure their own positions. While Alfonso tries to manage Lucrezia’s appearances at court, alternately subjecting her to periods of ostentatious performances and imprisonment in her rooms, Lucrezia devises her own methods for freedom of movement by adopting Emilia’s style of dress. Despite having the word portrait in its title, the main character finds more freedom in obscurity than in display.