The Borgias (35 page)

Writing to comfort Lucrezia, who had also suffered a bout of puerperal fever after the birth, Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, invited her to stay at Borgoforte, a castle on the border of Ferrara and Mantua that belonged to his family.

The thirty-nine-year-old Francesco was by no means a captivating personality, but his presence would be some comfort to Lucrezia after the departure of Giulio and the death of her baby. Besides, it would annoy Isabella d’Este, who was eight months pregnant, and whose discomfiture Lucrezia always found pleasurable. So she agreed to meet Gonzaga at Borgo forte, where, in his brusque and didactic way, he did his best to comfort and entertain her, even offering to send an envoy to Spain to hear news of Cesare; and when the time came to leave the castle, she wrote to Alfonso to tell him that she had been invited to accompany the marquis to Mantua on her way home to Ferrara. ‘I have been urged with such passion,’ she wrote to him, ‘to go tomorrow to visit the illustrious Marchioness, that, although I resisted strongly, I could not but obey.’

She had reason to be grateful for having done so. The Mantuan court possessed an enviable collection of works of art that Isabella was delighted to show her guest, books and jewels, enamels, glass and silver, and paintings not only by Perugino and Lorenzo Costa but also by Andrea Mantegna.

Mantegna, appointed court painter in 1460, had completed work on the Camera degli Sposi in the ducal palace in 1474, a project commissioned by Francesco’s grandfather, Marquis Lodovico. For Francesco himself, he had painted the nine huge canvases of the
Triumph of Caesar
, which were later bought by King Charles I and are now in the Orangery at Hampton Court. For Isabella, Lucrezia’s hostess, he had painted the
Parnassus
in 1497 and, three years later, the
Triumph of Virtue
, both now in the Louvre.

By the time he had finished work on the
Triumph of Virtue
, Mantegna was nearly seventy years old, a grumpy old man, by no means so well off as he thought he ought to be and in constant dispute with his neighbours. He was also in dispute with the illustrious Isabella over an antique bust of the Empress Faustina, which he had offered to sell her for 100 ducats, far less than he thought it was worth. Eventually, after treating the offer with disdainful silence, Isabella agreed to acquire it by settling the old artist’s debts up to that amount.

Lucrezia left Mantua at the end of October, having greatly annoyed the heavily pregnant Isabella by having so obviously aroused in her husband the passions and desires he was more in the habit of feeling for his wife’s maids-of-honour. Travelling in Francesco’s ceremonial barge, she arrived at Belriguardo, where she was greeted by Alfonso and by Giulio, his banishment rescinded by his indulgent half-brother.

A few days later, Giulio was returning to Belriguardo from a hunting expedition, riding along the road toward the villa, when he was met by a furiously jealous Cardinal Ippolito d’Este; he had been spurned, yet again, by the pretty Angela Borgia, who had scornfully told the cardinal that his brother’s liquid brown eyes were worth more to her than ‘the whole of your person.’ In an excess of rage, Ippolito now shouted orders to his four footmen to kill the man and put out his eyes, those eyes that Angela had told him she so extravagantly admired. Ippolito’s footmen obediently
pulled Giulio from his saddle to the ground, where they stabbed at his eyes with their daggers until his face was covered with blood and his eyelids almost severed.

Ippolito rode back to Belriguardo with the news that he had found Giulio lying on the ground and wounded; the footmen fled abroad. Men were sent out to carry him back to the villa, and urgent summons were sent to surgeons at Ferrara. Giulio seemed to be on the point of death or, at least, blinded for life.

Cardinal Ippolito at first denied all responsibility for the incident; then he claimed that the four footmen were ‘formerly in our household.’ Alfonso, reluctant to have his own brother arraigned on a charge of murder, took care that this version of the events was sent to every court in Italy, where it soon became the subject of gossip. In a private letter to Isabella, however, Alfonso confessed the terrible truth, begging his sister not to reveal the true details of ‘this shameful act’; Isabella replied that it was too late, that every barber in the market place knew what had really happened. Like Alfonso, she was also shocked; when Ippolito himself fled to Mantua hoping to find refuge at his sister’s court, she was so horrified by what he had done that he was soon forced to leave.

Eventually, when Giulio had partially recovered his sight, Ippolito was admitted back into Ferrara, where he was induced to make a guarded apology; and that, Alfonso hoped, would be the end of the matter. But Giulio, still in great pain and finding comfort only in darkened rooms, remained bitterly resentful, not only of the cardinal but also of Duke Alfonso, whom he blamed for not charging Ippolito with his crime.

The duke and duchess returned to Ferrara, as was the custom, to celebrate Christmas, New Year, and Carnival in the ducal
capital. Lucrezia clearly enjoyed herself, joining in the dancing, relishing the saucy comedies that she asked to be performed at the ducal theatre during Carnival, when she became a familiar figure in the streets, through which she rode wearing a mask, sometimes in a white dress, at other times gold. She did what she could to comfort Giulio, endeavouring to find him a profitable appointment with the Knights of Malta. She also went out of her way to help the tiresome, importunate Angela Borgia, who had discarded the no longer handsome Giulio without, apparently, a second thought and had recently been betrothed to the young Alessandro Pio and now badgered Lucrezia for help in purchasing an extravagant trousseau, including an extremely expensive dress of cloth-of-gold.

While the court laughed and joked and danced, Giulio remained in his darkened room, his resentment growing as he listened to the revelries outside on the city streets. He had begun to recover his sight; at first murky outlines could be seen of faces and objects, but his vision soon cleared. Still in intolerable pain, however, he thought of little other than the revenge he would inflict on Ippolito and Alfonso. He was joined by his half-brother Ferrante, his companion in the carefree exploits of earlier days, who had hopes of usurping Alfonso as Duke of Ferrara. They discussed ways of achieving their aims; they drew others, as incompetent as themselves, into their conspiracy; they discussed methods of poisoning, possible ambushes, traps and snares and disguises. ‘Something sinister is being planned,’ Isabella d’Este’s friend Bernardino di Prosperi wrote to her at Mantua. ‘I don’t think things will ever be right again between Don Giulio and the Cardinal.’

Meanwhile, Cardinal Ippolito’s informers had begun to hear rumours of the plotters and their wretched schemes; during the
summer several men, including one of Giulio’s servants, were arrested. Giulio himself took advantage of Alfonso’s absence from Ferrara on a trip to Venice, to escape to the security offered by Isabella in Mantua. When the duke came home in early July, he ordered his half-brother to return home. Giulio refused, claiming that his life was in danger in Ferrara. In an attempt to mediate between the brothers, Francesco Gonzaga formally requested Alfonso to guarantee Giulio’s safety. Alfonso replied that he promised to stand surety for Ippolito’s actions but warned Giulio that he could not protect him from the law if he was to be found guilty of treason.

Finally it was Ferrante who betrayed the conspirators and told of Giulio’s involvement in the affair. Alfonso was appalled at the realization that his own brothers were plotting his assassination. Ferrante was arrested, along with the other plotters, with the exception of Giulio, who preferred to remain in Mantua under the protection of Francesco and Isabella.

The trial opened on August 3; and a month later all were found guilty and condemned to death by execution. Alfonso, however, had been fond of his brothers and decided to reprieve them, sentencing the two young men instead to life imprisonment in the castle dungeons. For Ferrante, life imprisonment entailed captivity for forty-three years until his death; for Giulio, fifty-three years, until he was released by his great-nephew, Lucrezia’s grandson Duke Alfonso II.

At the end of November 1506, after a year that had seen her husband suffer so much anguish, Lucrezia brought him news that gladdened both their hearts; she was pregnant again and would, God willing, bear this child. At the same time welcome news arrived from Spain: Cesare had escaped from prison and was on his way to
the safety of the court of his brother-in-law, who was now king of Navarre. Lucrezia awaited eagerly to hear what he would do next; she herself was prepared to do all she could to help him.

Her gaiety was plain for all to see that year during Carnival in 1507, when Francesco Gonzaga, now captain-general of the papal forces, came to Ferrara to discuss future operations with Duke Alfonso, who, by now quite unconcerned by his wife’s obvious attraction to this man, raised no objection to the attentions that she and Gonzaga paid to each other, to the time they spent in each other’s company, to their dancing together at ball after ball. Abandoned yet graceful, she threw herself energetically into the excitement of the palace dances until she had to take yet again to her bed.

All the excitement had proved too much for Lucrezia, who, in the middle of January, suffered yet another miscarriage. Alfonso despaired and chided his wife for her lack of proper care for her condition; too much dancing, he remonstrated, and too much revelry. She also had to endure the news, which arrived a few weeks later, that Isabella had given birth to her third son, whom she named Ferrante, in honour of her brother, languishing a prisoner in the castle dungeons.

‘T
HE HARDER
I
TRY TO PLEASE
G
OD
,
THE HARDER HE TRIES ME
’

O
NCE SHE HAD RECOVERED
from her miscarriage, Lucrezia took up with a reforming friar in the tradition of Savonarola who proposed, among many other penances, a tariff of ‘fines to curb profanities’ – 1 ducat for taking the name of a saint in vain, for example, or 2 ducats for an oath involving Our Lord or the Virgin Mary. This was too much for the good citizens of Ferrara, who proposed invoking the help of Duchess Lucrezia by sending a deputation asking her to propose to the friar that, rather than urging the punishment of blasphemers and the forsaking of cosmetics and décolletages, he should preach against more heinous sins. Lucrezia undertook to speak to him but seems to have contented herself by remonstrating with her ladies about their often scandalous behaviour.

Then, on April 22, 1507, an unexpected visitor arrived in Ferrara with dreadful news. It was one of Cesare’s squires, who had travelled from Navarre to tell Lucrezia that her brother was dead, killed in battle, as Cesare had always suspected he would be, some six weeks earlier, fighting for the king of Navarre. ‘The harder I try to please God, the harder he tries me,’ wept Lucrezia when she heard. In reply to a letter from her husband, who was in Genoa with Louis XII and had penned a hasty note to her commiserating with her loss, she wrote that she hoped he could ‘return home as soon as possible, which is what I wish with all my heart.’ She then, in her grief, took to her bed; indeed, she was not seen in public for so long that rumours abounded that she was pregnant again.

By the summer, however, she had recovered enough to renew her affair with Francesco Gonzaga, who she knew was deeply attracted to her and with whom she was in love. This was a dangerous liaison and became even more so when Ercole Strozzi – who had acted as go-between when Lucrezia was entangled with Pietro Bembo – and Ercole’s brother Guido Strozzi, who lived in Mantua, now became carriers of letters between the marquis and Lucrezia.

Their correspondence was interrupted at the end of 1507 when Lucrezia again became pregnant. On this occasion she was far from being so nervous as she had been during previous pregnancies. Indeed, she entered enthusiastically into discussion about the design of the baby’s elaborate cradle and its clothes and the interviewing of would-be wet nurses. She relished the sweetmeats that were sent to her from Spain by her sister-in-law as well as the almond pastries
filled with honey and nougat that she ate in the steaming water of her bath or while playing idly with her countless pearls.

And during Carnival at the beginning of 1508, it was noted, with relief, that Lucrezia was finally heeding the advice of her doctors, and the urgent entreaties of her husband, and was avoiding the excesses in which she had indulged in previous years, even to the extent of forgoing her pleasure in dancing. There was, however, plenty for her to enjoy: watching the jousts and the other displays of horsemanship; enjoying the daring feats of the tightrope walkers and acrobats; laughing at the ribald comedies performed in the theatre; and listening to the new songs she had commissioned specially for Carnival, which were performed, along with some of her old favourites, by the court musicians.