“The Marriage Portrait” - Maggie O’Farrell

 

🎨 I read this book on the return flight from London and its semi-mysterious aspect (debating the nature of Lucrezia’s marriage) was interesting. O’Farrell’s writing is rich with historical detail, and I particularly liked her exploration of the relationships between various royal women as well as the political intrigue of Renaissance Italy. She puts a fine point on just how much even wealthy, aristocratic women depended on the whims and caprices of the men in their lives - fathers, husbands, and brothers.

That said, TMP was not as captivating as O’Farrell’s “Hamnet”. It had a plodding pace (the real action doesn’t begin until Lucre is married off, but we spend an inordinate amount of time in her childhood), and the ending was unsatisfying.

🎨 The main character in TMP is Lucrezia de’Medici - the quirky, artistic third daughter of the grand duke. It is her portrait that is the titular reference. She spends her childhood happily in the shadows of her 3 older siblings. With significant alliances are to be made for them, no one particularly notices young Lucre which enables her to skulk around palazzo walls, gratifying her curiosities and getting lost in cultivating artistic pursuits.

Everything changes when her oldest sister dies prior to her wedding to Alfonso, the duke of Ferrara. Overnight, young Lucre becomes a valuable pawn in the political machinations of the time. She finds herself wearing her sister’s wedding dress and substituted in her place. In her few interactions with Alfonso when he was engaged to her sister, Lucre recalls that he was kindly and took an interest in the childish goings on in Lucre’s life. Small spoiler ahead…

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Thrust into a new court in Ferrara, with Alfonso’s formidable sisters, Lucre learns 2 things quickly: 1) there are more sides to her husband than the friendly art lover of her childhood, and 2) her value to the court doesn’t lie in her beauty, virtue, or her dowry; chillingly, her value lies in producing a male heir for the dynasty when all signs suggest her husband is impotent. 

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🎨 I’d still recommend TMP to historical fiction lovers because of O’Farrell’s skill at conjuring up Renaissance Italy for us. I think Gregory Maguire’s take on the Borgias was the last novel I read that was set in this time period. O’Farrell also succeeds in ratcheting up the psychological thriller aspect of what kind of person is Lucre’s husband in reality? It just took some time to unravel.