Giulia Tofana

Giulia Tofana was a seventeenth-century Italian woman whose name became attached to Aqua Tofana, a notorious poison said to have been supplied to women seeking to kill abusive or unwanted husbands. The surviving historical record is much thinner than the later legend. Documentary scholarship connects a Giulia Mangiardi, also known as Tofana, with Palermo and Rome and records her death in 1651.

The Tofana tradition became one of Europe’s most persistent stories about secret poisoning, women’s remedies and domestic murder. Giulia Tofana also worked as Apothecary and alleged poisoner. Giulia Tofana was born in Palermo, Sicily and died in Rome, Papal States.

In Cathryn Kemp’s A Poisoner’s Tale, Giulia Tofana grows up in the shadow of her mother, Teofania, an herbalist whose remedies include Aqua Tofana, an undetectable poison supplied to women trapped in violent marriages. In Deborah Swift’s The Cameo Keeper, the election of Innocent X instead pulls them into the politics of the Pamphilj family, especially when Mia is invited to serve the pope’s formidable sister-in-law Olimpia Maidalchini. Mia’s new position becomes dangerous because Olimpia is determined to find Giulia Tofana. Protecting her mother places Mia at odds with powerful patrons and with Jacopo’s own obligations. Giulia Tofana is treated fictionally in Deborah Swift’s The Fortune Keeper, Deborah Swift’s The Poison Keeper, and Deborah Swift’s The Silkworm Keeper.