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The Marriage Portrait
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Florence and Ferrara, 1550s–1561. Lucrezia de’ Medici, the imaginative third daughter of Cosimo I de’ Medici, expects to remain an overlooked member of Florence’s ruling family, free to observe the palace and pursue her painting. When her elder sister dies before marrying Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, Lucrezia is selected in her place and sent as a teenage bride to a court governed by ceremony, dynastic anxiety and concealed rivalries.
Lucrezia’s position depends upon producing an heir, while Alfonso’s charm increasingly gives way to control and menace. As she sits for the portrait intended to secure her public image, she studies the duke, his formidable sisters and the shifting alliances around them, searching for a means to preserve an identity the court is determined to reshape. The novel reimagines the brief life of the historical duchess as a struggle for autonomy and survival within Renaissance marriage politics.
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