Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance ItalyViking, 2004 - 421 pages "Lucrezia Borgia's name has been a byword for evil for more than five hundred years. The illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI, she has been charged with murder by poisoning, incest with her father and brother, and complicity in their political assassinations." "She was twelve years old when her ruthless father became Pope, only thirteen when forced into her first marriage to suit his political ends, seventeen when for the same cynical reasons, she was made to divorce her husband. There were dark rumours of an illegitimate child fathered by the Pope and chroniclers called her 'the greatest whore in Christendom'. Her second husband soon outlived his political usefulness and was murdered on the orders of her brother, Cesare. It was only with her third marriage that Lucrezia came into her own as Duchess of Ferrara, the enlightened ruler of a magnificent court, a capable administrator and a woman of intelligence and compassion." "Far from being a helpless pawn, Lucrezia was a survivor, skilfully navigating her way through a dangerous world in a time of war and fratricidal conspiracy, carrying on love affairs under the nose of her jealous husband and his spies. In this portrait Sarah Bradford reveals the true woman behind the myth. Using contemporary documents, including hundreds of letters by Lucrezia herself, Bradford has drawn a portrait of an extraordinary woman in extraordinary times, bringing to life the magnificence and the violence that was the Renaissance." --Book Jacket. |
