‘Do not trust anyone. . . And take care not to be seen writing because I know you are watched very closely. . .’
– Pietro Bembo to Lucrezia shortly after her accession as Duchess, 10 February 1505
On Saturday 25 January 1505, Ercole died after days of fever and shivering fits. Di Prosperi wrote to Isabella that on the Friday evening he had had what appeared to have been a stroke, brought on, it was thought, by the administration that morning of auro potabile(water mixed with gold). From the hour that his state had worsened, Alfonso and Giulio had never left his side and in the morning he died peacefully, surrounded by his sons and brother. Of the expected turbulence between the Este brothers, which was to make the following year a dangerous one for the family, there was no sign. Di Prosperi wrote of the death of Ercole and the accession of Alfonso: ‘For the one I condole with Your Ladyship and for the other I congratulate you all the more having seen everything come to pass in union, peace and love. . .’
On hearing of Ercole’s death, the Giudice dei Savi, Trotti, ordered the palace bell to be rung, and the people and the members of the Council (Savi) summoned to his office. He had ready the golden staff of office and the sword of justice for Alfonso’s investiture. Having announced the death of Ercole and the elevation of the new Duke, his eldest son, they proceeded to the Camera de la Stufa Grande in Alfonso’s apartments. There Alfonso, seated in an armchair and wearing a mantle of white damask lined with fur, a white cap and a collar of gold and jewels, was ceremonially invested with the office and insignia of Duke. After a speech by the Guidice dei Savi he was presented with the bacheta (baton), the symbol of his sovereignty, and the sword for the defence and maintenance of the State, whereupon he made a speech of response promising to be a good lord to all his subjects in love and justice, followed by the cry ‘Alfonso, Alfonso, Duca, Duca!’ Afterwards, mounted on a great courser, he rode through the streets to the sound of trumpets, shouts, the ringing of bells, and schioppi (bursts of gunfire), through a violent blizzard of snow, with Ippolito on his right hand and the Venetian visdomino on his left, followed by Giulio and Ferrante. He dismounted at the cathedral where the Giudice and the Saviswore fealty.
Lucrezia, through all her troubles and indeed dangers, had finally succeeded to the secure position of Duchess of Ferrara. While Alfonso was being greeted as Duke by his people, Lucrezia, splendidly dressed in a camorra of crimson velvet and a gown of whitetabi with long golden fringes and a jewelled headdress, received recognition as their Duchess by the leading gentlewomen of Ferrara. She had watched the acclamation of Alfonso and his progress through the piazza from the windows before going down to meet him. It was a triumphant moment for both of them when they met, both ‘with happy faces’ as di Prosperi described it. Bowing, Lucrezia made as if to kiss his hand but Alfonso raised, embraced and kissed her, and hand in hand they went to show themselves to the people; then she returned to her apartments while Alfonso remained to receive the plaudits of the populace, before going up to join Lucrezia with whom he dined, together with their court favourite, the jester, il Barone, ‘in great joy’.
Ercole’s funeral took place two days later, when his body was carried through the streets bearing the Order of the Garter given him by the King of England to his burial place in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. ‘It is not too much to say,’ Gardner, the historian of Ercole’s court, wrote, ‘that of all the Italian sovereigns in the epoch of the Borgia, Ercole d’Este is the one sympathetic, almost the only not ignoble figure.’ Although, for all his piety, he could be time-serving, devious and untrustworthy, Ercole was undoubtedly the maker of modern Ferrara, almost doubling the city in size, with an entire new quarter to the north, magnificent ramparts and broad new streets lined with palaces, rebuilt churches and convents. He had employed artists of distinction, such as Cosimo Tura, Ercole de’Roberti, and, as his principal architect, Biagio Rossetti. The work was completed by the time of his death; the ‘city of silence’ of today – its works of art, magnificently decorated palaces and colourfully emblazoned buildings a pale shadow of Ercole’s Ferrara, half obliterated by earthquakes and the exile of the Este family – is still largely his creation. At the time of Ercole’s death, the Este court was the most cultured in Italy, the centre of theatre and music. His household included one of the largest companies of musicians and singers in Italy and he had even begun a purpose-built theatre, the building of which was discontinued by Alfonso. Ercole’s children did not inherit his extreme piety, and the mantle of protector of religion in the city was to fall upon Lucrezia. Indeed, the principal loser by Ercole’s death was Sister Lucia whose downfall was immediate. Already unpopular with her fellow nuns for the ducal favour she had enjoyed, she was accused of artificially renewing the wounds of the stigmata and deprived of all authority and precedence within the convent. Then aged only twenty-nine, she was kept a virtual prisoner by the other nuns until her death forty years later.
To all intents and purposes Alfonso had been in charge of Ferrara since his return, while the dying Ercole consoled himself with music, a choir of boy singers and the performance of a keyboard player. As the new Duke, Alfonso immediately showed skill and good grace in dealing with both his family and his subjects, ensuring that his brothers had enough money to live in style in the palaces with which their father had provided them. More importantly he addressed the economic situation of Ferrara, impoverished first by the war against Venice and then by Ercole’s great passion – the building of the new city, all of which had to be paid for by increased taxation. Ercole’s last years had been a saga of maladministration. To raise money he had resorted to the sale of offices and to commuting punishment to payment of fines, to such an extent that Sanudo talked of extortion and gross profiteering, while even the faithful di Prosperi wrote of ‘enormities worthy of being deemed corruption’. Alfonso abolished many of his father’s taxes and abandoned the system of the sale of offices. Despite spending his mornings hawking and hunting with his brothers, he directed most of his attention to the reform of the state: ‘The Lord thinks of nothing else but how to satisfy his subjects to the best of his ability,’ di Prosperi recorded.1 He sacked several officials and abolished various tax exemptions granted by his father. He sent to Venice to buy grain to avert the famine that was threatening, and made a state visit there in May, accompanied by Ferrante and Giulio, where he was received with signal honour by the Doge. From the beginning he had shown respect for Lucrezia’s administrative abilities by instituting on 31 January the ‘Examine’ for private petitions under her charge, assisted by Niccolò Bendideo, who was to become her secretary, and Hieronymo Magnanimo. She carried out her office, according to di Prosperi, with ‘intelligence and good grace’.
One of Alfonso’s first acts was to have the ceiling raised on the ‘secret way’, the via coperta built by Ercole as a passage between the Palazzo del Corte and the Castello. This crossed the moat from the eastern side of the palazzo over a small bridge to the Ravelin, a tower with foundations in the moat, and from there over a drawbridge to enter the castle. As a child, at the time of the rebellion of Niccolò d’Este, Alfonso had escaped with his mother from the palazzo through this passageway to the safety of the castle. Now he was connecting new rooms in the Palazzo del Corte to Lucrezia’s apartments in the Castello to make communication with her easier and more discreet, instead of having to go to the castle outside by the ‘via Courta’. This has been represented by Lucrezia’s biographer Maria Bellonci, who persistently denigrated Lucrezia’s relationship with Alfonso, as inspired by jealousy, so that he could spy on Lucrezia and surprise her at any hour. It was in fact designed not only for convenience but to satisfy Alfonso’s own desire for privacy. Alfonso, who to a great extent shared his father’s passion for rebuilding and decoration, indulged it whenever he could during the few untroubled early years of his reign. He modified the via coperta with a new roof and a new drawbridge, over which he built a colonnaded gallery, lit by many windows. On 4 February, di Prosperi reported to Isabella: ‘I believe Your Ladyship will have heard about the passage being built above the via Courta for access between the Corte and the Castello, but also he [Alfonso] has ordered a ‘lumaga quadra’ [a spiral staircase] by which His Lordship wishes to be able to descend into the piazzetta without going by the Corte or the Castello, by night and by day.’ Far from making these improvements to spy on Lucrezia, Alfonso was making it easier to come and go to his whoring without drawing attention to himself.
In the wake of Ercole’s death there was naturally a reorganization of the ducal households. There was, as usual, a swirl of rumour surrounding Lucrezia; di Prosperi, diligently but with only partial success as for obvious reasons he was held at arm’s length by Lucrezia, attempted to divine what was going on for Isabella’s information. On 1 January he wrote that as Duchess she would take on the living expenses of her court as she had at first ‘because those of her household had proved themselves incapable of providing for their needs’. She had also disgraced Polissena Malvezzi and ordered her immediately out of the household: ‘the cause no one knows but I believe she must have had good cause because she is known to be most wise’. Polissena, the woman who had entered so wholeheartedly into the flirtation with Francesco Gonzaga, turned out to be a malicious gossip and it was possibly on that account that Lucrezia so summarily dismissed her. Bembo’s friends, Ercole Strozzi and Antonio Tebaldeo, whom he had specifically linked with Lucrezia in his dedicatory letter for Gli Asolani, were both, according to Gardner, given ‘a severe fright by Alfonso at the beginning of his reign. Isabella’s secretary, Benedetto Capilupo, wrote to her on 3 February that Ercole Strozzi was in great danger because he had all the people against him and was out of favour with the Duke, and hinted that there was something more that he would tell her in person.2 Early in April, a panic-stricken Tebaldeo wrote to Francesco, begging for a post in Mantua because ‘this duke hates me, though I know not why, and it is not safe for me to stay in this city . . .’ Possibly Lucrezia protected them – for the time being at least, since they remained in Ferrara. Bembo had written his long, passionate letter to Lucrezia on 10 February of that year, enjoining the utmost secrecy: ‘Do not trust anyone . . . And take care not to be seen writing because I know you are watched very closely. . .’ One possible spy may have been Girolamo da Sestola, nicknamed ‘Coglia’, principally a musician and dance teacher, but also, according to the historian of Ferrarese music, a ‘courtier, horseman, dancer, musician, spy, newsmonger and emissary’.3 Apart from choreographing the dancing for Lucrezia’s wedding, he had acted at various times for Ercole, Alfonso, Ippolito and as an informer for Isabella. Another may have been a Gascon, Gian de Artigianova, a court singer known as ‘Gian Cantore’, who had recruited the famous composer Josquin Desprez for Ercole, and acted as confidant and pimp for Alfonso, and agent for the other Este. Bembo may also have been referring to members of the court, such as Beatrice de’Contrari, an intimate of Isabella.
Di Prosperi dropped repeated hints to Isabella about the changes in Lucrezia’s household. In May he reported that one Benedetto, a pupil of Hieronymo Ziliolo, was to be in charge of Lucrezia’s wardrobe (household accounts), ‘and for this they say that all her Spaniards will have to go’. In June he wrote, ‘It seems that it is the will of Our Lord that Madonna Elysabeth [presumably Elisabetta senese] and all the other foreign men and women who are in the Household of the Illustrious Lady his Consort should leave, including the Neapolitans and Samaritana Romana, whence they are all in a state which Your Ladyship may imagine. The causes of this I believe Your Ladyship will judge according to your own opinion. Above all, Count Lorenzo Strozzi has been deprived of the office of Seneschal [Sescalcharia] . . .’ He added that Madonna Beatrice de’Contrari, a favourite of the Este (and particularly of Isabella), ‘is said to be going to join Lucrezia’s household and to live in the Palace. . . and that Tromb[onc]ino [the famous singer-composer] and d. Thebaldeo would be among the number of those forced to leave. . .’
Di Prosperi was not always totally reliable. Several of those mentioned by him as being dismissed were still members of Lucrezia’s household a year later. Lucrezia was passionate about music and Bartolommeo Tromboncino, composer of frottole, lutenist and the most celebrated and highest paid of the court musicians, who had moved from the court of Isabella that year (no doubt much to the latter’s disgust), was still with her in 1506-7 and remained with her until she could no longer afford to pay him during the years of war, when Ippolito took over his salary. Significantly he was the only Italian musician outside Rome or Naples to compose frottole with Spanish texts, something which must have been done to please Lucrezia. As a woman she was not allowed to maintain a chapel choir of her own, but she had other musicians for her secular entertainments. They included Dionisio da Mantova, ‘Papino’; the fact that he was a Mantuan lutenist and composer (as was another of Lucrezia’s musicians, Paolo Poccino, who joined her in 1505) probably further annoyed Isabella. Niccolò da Padova, the ‘Niccolò Cantore’ of Lucrezia’s wedding company from Rome, was a lutenist, singer and composer of frottole. Then there was Ricciardetto Tamburino, a pipe and tabor player, and a woman singer, Dalida de’Putti, who eventually became one of Ippolito’s mistresses. On 20 June, di Prosperi wrote that Lucrezia’s Spaniards were preparing to leave but that for the moment nothing was known about her ladies. And on the 23 red he reported that Giovanni Valengo had replaced Lorenzo Strozzi, and that apart from him and Benedetto of the wardrobe, not one of Lucrezia’s household would be permitted to live in the Castello, apart from thecredenciero and some staffieri (squires). Later he reported that Ercole Strozzi had been removed from office ‘and various things are said of him’. Apart from this, he and his brother Guido were said to be in dire financial straits.
In the letter quoted previously, Bembo referred to ‘some solace to your anguish with my letter’. Lucrezia’s anguish, indeed her central preoccupation, was connected with the fate of Cesare. Since he had arrived in Spain towards the end of September 1504—ironically at the very same Valencian port, Villanueva del Grao, from which his great uncle Alfonso Borgia, the future Pope Calixtus, had set sail to found the Borgia fortunes in Italy – Cesare had been imprisoned in the fortress of Chinchilla, 700 feet up in the Valencian mountains. Isolated as he was, he still had friends and supporters: his Spanish cardinals, Lucrezia, and his brother-in-law, Jean d’Albret (moved by the grief of Cesare’s wife, Charlotte, his sister), continued to plead for his release with Ferdinand of Aragon, but the shadows of Juan Gandia and Alfonso Bisceglie hung over him and Queen Isabella was his implacable enemy. She, however, died at Medina del Campo on 26 November 1504, an event which raised the hopes of Cesare’s partisans. Cesare himself made a fruitless attempt to escape; early in 1505 unfounded rumours swept Italy that he was free and well received at the Spanish court by Ferdinand who hoped to make use of him in Italy for his own purposes. Isabella d’Este learned of them from Benedetto Capilupo who reported to her from Ferrara on 3 February.4 Lucrezia had soon discovered that these rumours were not true; she grieved for her brother and persisted in her attempts to gain his release. Among those she enlisted in her cause was Francesco Gonzaga, who was in Ferrara for Ercole’s funeral. A few days later, di Prosperi, on a courtesy visit to Lucrezia in the Castello, found her lying on her bed conversing with Stefano della Pigna, a distinguished Venetian envoy, celebrated astrologer and friend of Gonzaga.
It was a horrible summer at Ferrara; it was very hot, the plague had reappeared and there was widespread hunger. Early in May, Lucrezia had written an urgent official letter to Francesco Gonzaga asking him to speed through his territories the grain and food supplies which Alfonso had ordered from Piemonte. In July, di Prosperi reported that there was panic in the city because of the plague, and that all the citizens who could had left, only the poor and the merchants remaining: fifty to seventy corpses were being buried every day. In August he wrote that there had been 1,500 dead since the first outbreak of the plague and even more of hunger. The Este scattered to their country villas and palaces: Alfonso left for Belriguardo in mid June, returning briefly because of the grain crisis (and presumably to deal with Lucrezia’s household changes). Ippolito was nearby at Vigoenza. Lucrezia went to Modena with Alfonso’s uncle, Alberto d’Este, and her court. She was in frequent correspondence with Francesco Gonzaga, sometimes by private messages sent via Alberto Pio da Carpi, the humanist and bibliophile lord of Carpi, friend of Aldus, Bembo and Strozzi, with whom she had placed Cesare’s son Girolamo. On 19 July she wrote to thank him for some caps – scotie — he had sent her ‘by the present bearer’, ‘for which since they are most perfect, I thank you as much as I can and all the more because I recognize that in remembering me so often you give me more cause to be grateful to you every day. . .’
Plague had broken out in Modena too, but for Lucrezia help for Cesare was again in the forefront of her thoughts. After his failed escape he had been transferred from Chinchilla to the great keep, the Torre de Homenaje, of the castle of La Mota at Medina del Campo, in the heartland of Castile. It was considered impossible to escape from the castle with its central keep, four enceintes, single access gate and deep defence ditches, but from Cesare’s point of view it had advantages. He was no longer isolated. Medina del Campo was the great emporium of Castile: fairs held there brought bankers, merchants and traders from all over Europe; it was also one of the seats of the Spanish court.
Lucrezia renewed her efforts to secure his release and Alfonso was prepared to help her. Two messengers arrived at Modena from Cesare asking her to help by sending an ambassador to Rome. She had asked Niccolò da Correggio when he left there to take this message to Alfonso. She received a speedy response: on 1 July she wrote to thank Alfonso with all her heart for the letter he had written to Beltrando Costabili, Ferrarese envoy at Rome, ‘so that he can intercede for the liberation of the Most Illustrious Duke my brother. I have read the letter and it could not be better, according to my heart and desire. Then I sealed it with the impression of your seal which you sent me and forwarded it to Rome . . .’5
The letters she wrote to Alfonso were far more formal than those she addressed to Gonzaga. She wrote to him about business and administrative affairs, the appointment of a new podestà for Modena, whether or not she should condemn a man, local quarrels and the need for him to provide the nuns of the convent of Corpus Domini with food since the plague prevented them from begging. She reported to him about her fever and diarrhoea on 9 July, probably caused by the bad water and great heat, then thanked him for his concern and offer to send her a doctor, which she would not need because she was better. In another she retailed what she was doing to save ‘Your Lordship’s “Morro” [Moor]’, whom he had left with her and who she was having treated by her favourite doctor, Lodovico Bonaccioli. Bonaccioli suspected Alfonso’s ‘Moor’ had the plague: he had a high fever, a swollen left side and beneath his groin a huge swelling. Sadly the Moor later died. As a result, Lucrezia, being very pregnant, now moved from her present rooms to the former Rangoni house, but dared not leave the city for fear of causing panic. She received the envoy of the King of France and discussed with him the matter of Cento and La Pieve, still unresolved since the time of her dowry agreement, and now the subject of vituperative discussion between the Pope and Ippolito. Later the principal French commander, M. de Lapalisse,6 visited her, accompanied by a gentleman of the French court, bringing extremely kind letters from the King and Queen of France for Alfonso and herself. At times Lucrezia felt it necessary to soothe Alfonso, begging him not to impose inquisitions and punishments on the couriers if certain letters did not arrive as quickly as he would like—‘I would be so grateful’. The tone of the letters might not have been passionate but they were friendly and affectionate: ‘I pray God that he may keep you for many years in health and happiness: the comfort and encouragement you have given me with your good-hearted letters have given me incredible pleasure . . .’ she wrote from Modena on 26 July.
In mid August she again asked Gonzaga for his help for Cesare. ‘I have always recognized that Your Lordship through every twist of fortune has borne a singular love to the Duke my brother,’ she wrote with a startling disregard for the facts.
And being well disposed towards everything that might be to his ease and honour as if you were his flesh and blood brother. [Therefore] with every faith in you I am asking your present favour for his liberation for which at the moment I am negotiating in Rome to send the Cardinal Regino to His Catholic Majesty with the licence and favour of His Holiness Our Lord. The Most Reverend Cardinal, on being asked if he would willingly go, has graciously answered that he would be happy to do so: all that remains is the permission and favour of the Pope. Whence, knowing the love His Beatitude bears Your Lordship, I earnestly beseech you to write to His Beatitude, pressing him to give permission to the Cardinal, and to write with such efficacy to the Catholic King that the Duke be liberated because I know for a fact that what His Holiness wishes will be done.
Poor Lucrezia was indulging in fantasy: the last thing the Pope would want was il Valentino at liberty to stir up trouble again, as he undoubtedly would. With an even more astonishing lack of reality she suggested that Francesco should write to the one man living whom Cesare had perhaps injured the most, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, asking him to try to keep the Pope ‘to this effect’. She begged Francesco to write these letters and send them to her by her courier so that she could forward them to Rome; also he might think it possible to write to one of his friends there who might be able to influence the Pope: ‘the Illustrious Lord my brother and I will be beholden to you and remember this kindness . . .’7 At the same time she wrote to Ippolito asking him to write to the Pope recommending Cardinal Regino’s mission; Ippolito responded with a ‘wonderfully satisfactory’ letter which she sent on to Rome under her seal.8
Meanwhile, Lucrezia had sent her trusted and long-serving major-domo, Sancho, who had come with her from Rome, to Spain for news of Cesare. The difficulty of communication was such that she did not receive Sancho’s reports from Segovia of 5 September until 10 October and even then all he could tell her was that he had been kindly received by the Duke of Alba and intended to go and visit Cesare.9
Lucrezia had moved from Modena to Reggio with her court on 14 August and it was there on 19 September in the citadel at the eleventh hour that she gave birth to a son, Alexandro, named in honour of his papal grandfather. Couriers were straightway sent to inform not only Alfonso but Francesco Gonzaga. An hour after the birth she felt cold in her legs which were wrapped in hot cloths; fever then came over her which lasted for five hours. Poor little Alexandro was a sickly child and unwilling to take the breast, Lucrezia warned Alfonso, who rushed ‘per stafeta’ (by the posts or post horses) to see his wife and child before returning to Belriguardo.
From Venice, Pietro Bembo wrote a gracious letter of congratulations on Alexandro’s birth: ‘Especially precious and cheering was it for me since I cannot tell you how anxiously it was awaited in view of the cruel disappointment and vain hopes of last year.’ This was evidently a response to the public proclamation of the birth but apparently Lucrezia was still close enough in touch to write personally to Bembo about it. On 30 September he replied saying how glad he was to hear that she and the baby were in good health. It is clear from this letter that Lucrezia and Bembo had parted for good, since he refers nostalgically to ‘those days in my good Messer Ercole’s Ostellato which often still keeps house for that only part of me which can dwell there now . . .’10
Less than a month later, the baby’s condition had deteriorated to the point that Alfonso sent his finest doctor, Francesco Castello, to see him. On 13 October, Lucrezia wrote to Alfonso enclosing the doctor’s report on their child. Her words sounded ominous; the arrival of Castello had been a great comfort to her and everything would be done ‘for the conservation and health of our little son’. At the same time the pregnant Isabella was unwell at Mantua and asked for Beatrice de’Contrari and the comatre, who were at Reggio in attendance on Lucrezia and her child. Lucrezia, she told both Alfonso and Francesco, agreed to send Beatrice to Mantua accompanied by her nephew, Lorenzo Strozzi, but after consultation with Castello she felt she could not release the comatre : ‘our little son has been gravely ill in these past days,’ she wrote to Francesco, ‘and although, thank God, he has begun to take the breast he is in such a condition that he will not be able to do without the Comatre . . .’ Three days later Alexandro died having suffered several fits and convulsions. The loss of a second child by Alfonso within the space of three years caused Lucrezia profound grief, as she told Francesco, the more so in that this child had reached full term and been born alive, and that being male it would have been the Este heir. News of Alexandro’s death did not reach Bembo until the end of November when Tullio, Bembo’s manservant, brought him a letter from Lucrezia. As somewhat cold comfort he sent an astrological chart which he had had prepared for the baby in Venice ‘by a man skilled in this art as soon as I received notice of his birth, so that Your Ladyship may discover some consolation in reflecting that we are truly in great part ruled by the stars . . .’11 He did not write to her again for more than seven years.
For Lucrezia, too, the romance was in the past. Ten days after her baby’s death, as soon as she had received a letter from Alfonso saying how much he would like to see her at Belriguardo, she was making plans to meet Francesco en route at Borgoforte.12According to Isabella’s biographer, Luzio, who was not exactly prejudiced in favour of either Francesco or Lucrezia, Francesco was ‘beside himself with joy at the news’, writing on 25 October in a letter which has since disappeared, ‘we would not wish to have acquired a great treasure . . .’ than the news he had just received of her projected arrival.13 Luzio dates Lucrezia’s stay with Francesco at Borgoforte as the beginning of a declared love affair between the two, facilitated once again by Ercole Strozzi, an old friend of Gonzaga, who had just happened to issue on 27 October 1505 a humorous invitation to an eight-day wildfowling contest based at his villa at Ostellato. Luzio seems to have believed that the affair was platonic, given the difficulties the two of them had in meeting, but it is hard to credit that two people with the sexual records of Francesco and Lucrezia would not have taken advantage of any opportunity of having a physical relationship when it was offered. Despite all the difficulties it was to be a mutual and long-lasting passion. After spending the night at Borgoforte, where he offered a dinner for Lucrezia and her party, Francesco insisted on escorting her to Mantua despite her ‘resistance’, as she disingenuously informed Alfonso in a letter written from Borgoforte:
Your Excellency will see from this letter how the Most Illustrious Lord Marquis truly battled with me and forced me with such a vehemence and desire that I should go tomorrow to visit the Most Illustrious Marchioness: and how much resistance I put up. Nonetheless I was forced to obey and thus must go there tomorrow by all means. And he has sent for many court carriages and horses. And he says that he will secretly lead me into the castle and I will be there tomorrow in the company of the Marchioness and will lodge there with my ladies and in the morning he will send me in his bucentaur wherever I planned to go . . . that is via La Stellata and Bondeno, then to Monastirolo and Belriguardo . . . Here the Marchese has done me much honour and festivity and has lodged me very well in the house which belonged to Hieronymo Stanga . . .14
But as soon as she had arrived back at Belriguardo, where Alfonso joined her, she wrote formally to Francesco expressing her great gratitude for all the kindness he had shown her not only at Borgoforte but also at Sermide (on the border between Mantuan and Ferrarese territory) and on board the ship.15
Five days later she wrote to him again, thanking him for his kind letter as another example of the love and affection which existed between them. Among the subjects which they had discussed together had been, obviously, Cesare. Francesco told her that he would send an envoy to Spain; Lucrezia was delighted because the man would be able to take with him two letters which she enclosed, one to the King of Spain, the other to Cesare. She was trying all means to have her brother released, suggesting that Francesco should also write to the King and to any people he might know ‘with authority in that Kingdom’. Soon she hoped to return to Ferrara because for some days past ‘things have been going well there’.
But things were not going well in Ferrara, at least as far as the Este family was concerned. After a miserable summer of heat, plague and famine, sibling rivalries had already surfaced and were about to plunge the princely family into one of the darkest episodes of its history, known as the ‘Congiura’, the Conspiracy. The roots of the trouble lay in the proud, competitive temperament of the Este which extended to rivalry over musicians. Ercole’s cherished stable of musicians, some of whom enjoyed the status of cappellani(chaplains) had included one Don Rainaldo who, at the end of 1504, was working for Giulio, the most musical of the Este, but who was coveted by Ippolito for his own ‘cappella’. Towards the end of 1504, as Ercole lay dying, Ippolito had approached Don Rainaldo, who agreed to join his household. Don Rainaldo subsequently disappeared and it was thought he was dead; in fact, he had been spirited away by Ippolito and secluded in the Rocca del Gesso, a stronghold which belonged to Giovanni Boiardo, Count of Scandiano and nephew of the famous poet Matteo Maria Boiardo, the author of Orlando Innamorato.
Some time towards the end of May 1505, Giulio, burning with resentment against his half-brother, the cardinal, had discovered the whereabouts of Don Rainaldo. Having asked both Alberto Pio da Carpi and Enea Furlano, nicknamed ‘il Cavaliero’, both members of Gonzaga’s circle, for armed men and crossbowmen, without telling them the reason (or so Pio later testified), he went to stay with Ferrante at a place called Le Lame, near Carpi. From there he went to the Rocca del Gesso, took away Don Rainaldo and returned with him to Ferrante. Furious, Ippolito discovered what had happened and complained to Alfonso, whose right-hand man he now was. Alfonso then ordered Giulio to appear before him at Modena and exiled him from the Ferrarese state on the grounds that he had caused grave offence to Boiardo. Ferrante had also been summoned to Modena and ordered to stay there although not under arrest. According to the historian of the Congiura, Riccardo Bacchelli, it was at this point in August 1505 that Lucrezia had attempted to mediate, calling upon Giulio and Ferrante to hand over Don Rainaldo, and persuading the priest to take refuge in the fortress of Casalgrande. Alfonso then wrote Lucrezia a firm letter intimating that she should not meddle in this affair: Giulio had offended him deeply and as punishment Alfonso ordered that he should be exiled to Brescello, present himself each day to the ducal commissary there, and go no further than two miles outside the town. ‘We wish that this our decision you will make known by Niccolò Bendideo, our secretary, warning Don Giulio to obey us, because, if he fails to do so, Your Ladyship may know that we will proceed to other means.’ There was nothing more Lucrezia could do; the wretched Giulio was forced to comply. The loyal di Prosperi, as an old follower of the Este, was anguished by the situation, as he told Isabella; he was sure that Don Giulio would never think of doing anything to harm his brother the Duke. But Alfonso and Ippolito were very close at this time, the one at Belriguardo, the other at nearby Vigoenza, and seeing each other every day, a situation which could not bode well for Giulio.
Isabella had done her best to mend the rift, taking the occasion of the birth of Alexandro to write to Alfonso asking him to pardon Giulio in honour of the occasion and that he should not exclude from public amnesty ‘a brother who not from malice but from lack of thought has fallen into error. This is no time,’ she continued, ‘to remember affronts and hatreds and if the Most Reverend Cardinal is of this way of thinking, I would remind him of the same.’16 Francesco Gonzaga also intervened on Giulio’s behalf, as Ferrante wrote gratefully to him on 24 September from Reggio. Del Forno (a member of the Modenese family who were very close to Alfonso and Ippolito) and il Barone had told him of the kind efforts he had made with Alfonso for Don Giulio for which he was most grateful. Now that Ippolito had arrived at Reggio, he begged Francesco to send a trusted emissary to bring a formal end to the feud between him and Giulio.17 As a result of these efforts by the Gonzaga, di Prosperi wrote on 12 October that Giulio had been allowed to return to Ferrara and had been to Belriguardo, adding with an optimism which was no more than wishful thinking: ‘I judge his case to be settled, thanks to the good offices of Your Ladyship.’
But matters were far from settled: the hatred and rivalry between the powerful cardinal and his reckless younger brother found a new cause which had nothing to do with chapel singers—Angela Borgia. Angela Borgia was the most beautiful and charming of Lucrezia’s ladies, graceful and elegant, according to her many admirers. And among those admirers in 1505 were Ippolito and Giulio. Angela is held to have enraged Ippolito by telling him: ‘Monsignore, your brother’s eyes are worth more than the whole of your person.’
She was also the closest of all her ladies to Lucrezia, who was concerned about her; she was now eighteen years old and a good marriage was a necessity. Earlier that year, on 10 March, after Gonzaga’s visit to Ferrara, Lucrezia wrote to him: ‘After Your Lordship’s departure from here I have spoken to Messer Cesari, the bearer of this letter, concerning some matters to refer to you about “el negotio” the business of Dona Angela . . .’ It may have been that Angela and Giulio had begun an affair which might make the question of a marriage all the more pressing. Less than a year later, on 18 January 1506, di Prosperi reported that Angela Borgia ‘had given birth on the ship’ but did not indicate the precise date of the birth, which could well have been some weeks before news of it reached him. She was still unmarried and no father was named, but tragic intervening events indicated who he might have been.
Shortly after Lucrezia returned to Ferrara, on 3 November 1505, Giulio, returning from a pleasure excursion in the meadows by the straight road leading to Belriguardo, ran into an ambush laid by Ippolito and his servants. He was dragged from his horse and stabbed in the eyes. The official version given by Alfonso in a letter of 5 November to Isabella was that the staffieri had done it of their own accord ‘perhaps to please their lord or perhaps because of some insult one of them had received from Don Julio . . .’ In a postscript, however, he confessed the truth. Ippolito had been present and had ordered the assault: ‘Don Julio returning from the fields as I have said, met the Most Reverend Cardinal, our brother, who had come there with four staffieri who he commanded “Kill that man: cut out his eyes”.’ There was no hope, they thought, for Giulio’s left eye, and no one could be sure about the vision in his right.
Unwisely, Alfonso gave a hostage to fortune by writing the next day to Francesco, including both versions he had given to Isabella, telling him to burn the postscript and only to disclose the official version which blamed it all on the staffieri and did not reveal Ippolito’s direct involvement.18
For a Renaissance prince to commit such damning information to paper is a measure of the shock Alfonso was feeling and his need for the support of his family and equals. It was quite out of character for a man normally so reserved and inclined to conceal his feelings and intentions. If either of these letters had fallen into the wrong hands – and couriers were frequently waylaid and spied upon – it could have caused him and his family enormous damage. As it was, the case intrigued Italy when the official version came out and was, of course, not believed to be the full story. In Rome Julius II was agog, embarrassing Beltrando Costabili with his acute questioning. Costabili wrote anxiously to Ippolito that the Pope was greatly desirous to know the cause of the attack on Don Giulio, asking the cardinal for instructions as to what he should say. On 14 November, Costabili reported that he had communicated the letters of Alfonso and Ippolito to the Pope who had found the case ‘most audacious’ and issued a brief for the capture of the delinquents should they be found in the States of the Church.19 (The nineteenth-century transcriber of this letter for Lord Acton could not resist a comment: ‘Marvellous impudence of the Cardinal Ippolito, who was the principal delinquent in the crime, having ordered his sicari[assassins] to carry it out, from envy of seeing Don Giulio preferred by a Lady.’) Five days later, however, Costabili informed Ippolito that the Pope no longer believed in the exactitude of the account he had been given—‘that he was of the opinion that the case had happened in another manner than Your Excellency’s account of it’. Needless to say, the guilty four were never brought to justice and it was rumoured that they had fled to Hungary.
Isabella and Francesco were outraged and sent Francesco’s surgeon Messer Andrea and another physician to attend Giulio, who wrote pathetically thanking them for their kindness ‘which has greatly alleviated my pain although it is most grave and almost insupportable’. Alfonso sent back the Mantuan doctors since the Gonzaga’s son, Federico, was ill; Giulio could see with his left eye and there were hopes of some sight returning to his right. Two weeks later di Prosperi visited Giulio to report to Isabella that her brother could see the outlines of people and things but could still not open his eyelid without using his hand as the muscle was so damaged; with his right he could only distinguish darkness from light and he was still in great pain. ‘God help him,’ di Prosperi added, ‘and from every side give that love and peace which there should be between good brothers for the good of their honour and of this Most Illustrious House . . .’ Alfonso had decided that the wisest course of action would be inaction, particularly against Ippolito, but tension and suspicion remained in the family. Ippolito went to Mantua without warning to visit Isabella, as Francesco nervously informed Alfonso who replied that he was grateful for Gonzaga’s firm determination not to receive anyone who might be unwelcome to him in Ferrara. But in the case of Ippolito, ‘Your Lordship must know that you have in no way disturbed us in any way by receiving His Most Reverend Lordship because it is our opinion and goodwill that he can go and stay wherever he wants in our dominions at his pleasure. And moreover Your Lordship has done well to receive his visit since it has in no way displeased us . . .’
At around the same time an act of private violence occurred which was probably in some way connected with the undercurrents of bad blood between the senior Este brothers and Francesco Gonzaga. Gonzaga’s principal favourite at court, Antonio Regazzi da San Secondo, known as ‘il Milanese’, was murdered by Enea Furlano, the courtier known as il Cavaliero, who happened to be married to one of Francesco’s illegitimate daughters. After a brief spell of imprisonment, he was released and exiled from Mantua. Bacchelli explicitly claims that il Milanese was killed on the orders or instigation of Alfonso and Ippolito.20 Furlano was afterwards often seen in Alfonso’s company and after Francesco Gonzaga’s death even his sentence of exile was reversed by Isabella.21
Unperturbed, Alfonso continued his ducal business, receiving his secretaries but no one else except for his brothers and intimate friends. He and Lucrezia were occupied with the extension and redecoration of their rooms. He spent hours overseeing the planting and working of his garden. The city was filling up again as the plague was now over and the citizens returning. Lucrezia came and went between Ferrara and Belriguardo, supervising the work on her apartments. ‘Yesterday I saw the Rooms which the Duchess is having made [in the Torre Marchesana of the Castello] which will be most beautiful,’ di Prosperi reported on 6 December, ‘as will a small salon where the balcony was: And from the rooms of His Lordship her Consort [the camere dorate in the Palazzo del Corte] you can proceed to Her Ladyship’s rooms without being seen from the piazza or anyone being aware of their passage unless they wished it to connect their private rooms with each other’s. For the present the Lady is staying in the rooms in the Castello where His Lordship was . . .’ Giulio was installed in an apartment in the Corte rather than his splendid palazzo in the Via degli Angeli, presumably for better security. Antonio Costabili told di Prosperi that Alfonso thought it was time to settle the differences between Ippolito and Giulio and that the cardinal should return to Ferrara for this purpose. On 24 December, di Prosperi was able to report that a reconciliation between the two had taken place.
Alfonso had sent Antonio Costabili for Ippolito who arrived accompanied by Count Lodovico Pico della Mirandola and had supper with Alfonso in his camerini. Subsequently Alfonso sent Hieronymo Ziliolo to Giulio to tell him of his great desire that he and the cardinal should be reconciled, and that he hoped Giulio would accede to this. At their meeting, Alfonso spoke first of the repentance felt by the cardinal and of his regret and of the goodwill in which he would hold Giulio, ‘whereupon the Cardinal added in most kindly and repentant words of how he would in future be a good and loving brother and other words of similar tenor’. Giulio then spoke a few words, addressing himself to Alfonso: ‘My Lord, you see how I am’, and then, turning to the cardinal, he said that he had to thank God and Our Blessed Lady who had granted him his sight. ‘And although my case has been most cruel and inhuman and done to me with no fault of mine, nonetheless I pardon Your Lordship and will not cease to be to you that good brother I have always been’, to which Ippolito replied pleasantly. Alfonso was seen to be deeply moved and ‘incapable of many words except to say that he prayed them to love each other and to enjoy this State with him’, warning them that if they did not do so he would be obliged to force them to comply. Unable to go on, he turned to Niccolò da Correggio to speak on his behalf. Finally, Ippolito and Giulio exchanged a formal kiss of peace. ‘God grant that things go from good to better,’ intoned the ever-optimistic di Prosperi.22
Lucrezia, who had been warned by Alfonso to cease any attempts at mediation that summer, had kept out of these Este family quarrels which were uncomfortably dangerous and still, as it was to turn out, far from settled. Her first year as Duchess of Ferrara had, apart from her romance with Francesco, not been a happy one. Her state of mind regarding her own fertility cannot have been enhanced by the news that Isabella had been safely delivered of a second son, Ercole, in November. And bitterest of all, perhaps, was her concern for Cesare’s continuing captivity.