‘Thus conditions were at peace in Italy and beyond the mountains’
– Francesco Guicciardini, writing of the year 1518
As Duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia was required to be both splendid and domestic, playing a multitude of roles – Governor of the state, leader of a brilliant court, hostess, mother and wife. The suspension of military operations against Ferrara allowed her and Alfonso to enjoy life in the city and to continue to beautify their surroundings, a process necessarily interrupted by war.
Carnival of 1518 was exceptionally gay: at the instance of the Cardinal d’Aragona, Alfonso issued an edict permitting masking in the streets, although for fear of violence the maskers were only allowed to carry staves of a specified dimension and length. The usual spate of pre-Lenten marriages took place, among them that of one of Lucrezia’s damsels, the daughter of Giovanni Valla to Ippolito da li Banchi. An unusual feature of the carnival festivities was tilting at the quintain by both young men and girls with lances of considerable size—‘including one Madonna of ours [i.e. Ferrarese] I leave to your imagination which one it was’, di Prosperi primly commented. Even the young princes, Ercole and Ippolito, took part, ‘with such dexterity that it was a pleasure to see them’, he said. There was dancing in the Corte for three evenings running before the end of carnival.
But now, from 18 February, di Prosperi wrote, ‘at court every one is keeping a Lenten way of life, even the little lords’. Alfonso had exempted them so that they could eat meat but they had pleaded with him to allow them to keep to the Lenten diet. Lucrezia was ill with a fever but she had kept Lent, as had Alfonso and the children.
The consumption of food throughout medieval and Renaissance Europe was governed by the dictates of the Church and regulated by a precise annual rhythm which predicated dietary regimes. According to the Church abstinence from eating meat and all animal products, including, to the distress of many, cheese, was the rule on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday as well as on the eve of important festivals and, of course, the forty days of Lent. Since for them fresh fish was always in relatively short supply and the prices high on days of ‘magro’, the poor confined themselves to beans, chickpeas, fruit and vegetables while for the rich, as Antonio Costabili’s banquet for Fabrizio Colonna showed, abstinence from meat was scarcely a hardship.
Due to the difficulty of keeping food fresh, the predominant taste in dishes of the day was of preservatives – salt or sugar. In Lucrezia’s kitchen, the pig was the most useful animal, prepared in various ways and used in the making of salami, and sausages (zambudelli) and prosciutto. Salted ox tongues were also appreciated for their practicality. Sugar and spices from the East were important ingredients – among them pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and tamarind, as were vegetables – radishes, carrots, garlic, onions, spring onions and leeks. Scented herbs were much in use – notably basil, sage, bay, marjoram, mint and rosemary. Sugar was the predominant luxury article in cooking, in meat and fish dishes as well as confectionery; it came via Venice from the Orient or via Genoa from Portuguese Atlantic sources, notably Madeira. Fruits in syrup of sugar and spices were particularly appreciated by Isabella d’Este who frequently requested them from Lucrezia’s ‘Vincentio spetiale’. They also raised capons, calves, peacocks and guinea fowl(galline da India), kid, ducks and swans, supplemented by game in season, and, given the lagoons, waterways and lakes of the Po area, they ate a great variety of fish, notably eels from Comacchio and carpioni provided by Isabella from Lake Garda. Then there were cheeses and pasta dishes.
Banquets were a ritual affair, often a movable feast held in different rooms at different seasons, with trestle tables covered with white cloths, napkins and choice decorations, the dressers or buffets (credenze) loaded with the family silver and gold plate, and crystal flasks. In the recent years of war, the Este plate – including Lucrezia’s – had much of it disappeared in pawn or been melted down to provide finance for the defence of Ferrara, and the court had been reduced to eating off pottery made by Alfonso himself. Tapestries would be specially hung. Guests were offered perfumed water with which to wash their hands at the beginning of the meal and between courses – scented with rose petals, lemon, myrtle, musk; even the toothpicks were scented and the cloths changed after each course were often decorated with sweet – smelling herbs. Hot courses of at least eight dishes each from the kitchen alternated with cold courses served from the credenza and, at Lucrezia’s court, the whole elaborate performance – the decoration of the table,credenza and room, the service and the organization of the musical accompaniment and intermezzi – was planned and choreographed by the most famous scalco, or steward, of the century, Cristoforo da Messisbugo, who entered the Este service in 1515. He came from an old Ferrarese family and his social status was high enough for him to have entertained Alfonso twice in his own house; his book, theBanchetti, published posthumously, was a bestseller. In entertainments, as in theatre and buildings, the Este court of the late fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century set the standard for the other Italian courts.
Lucrezia’s accounts books show the extent of her involvement in the running of her household. On 24 January 1516, for example, I her chancellor lists twenty-five heifers each known by name, among them ‘Violet’ and ‘Rose’. A five-page bill details her commissions for shoes for herself and her household including Girolamo Borgia, Cesare’s son. Another accounts book for 1507 details payments by ‘Vincenzi banchero’ (Vincenzi the banker) on Lucrezia’s orders to a variety of recipients: to a Domenico Sforza for two flasks of Malvasia wine; to Ascanio da Vilaforo, bookseller, for binding seven books for Lucrezia; salaries for her staff including the faithful ‘Sanzo spagnolo’, Tullio, a member of Giovanni Borgia’s household, Bartolommeo Grotto, his tutor, and Cola, another of his servants; a payment to her gentleman, Sigismondo Nigrisolo, for the cost of a coffer he gave to Dalida de’Puti, Lucrezia’s singer; to a chairmaker, a table-decker (aparecchiador); Tromboncino and Porino, singers; il Cingano, ‘the Gypsy’, a favourite of Alfonso’s; to jewellers; a Spanish (probably Jewish) embroiderer; a saddler; a ‘Chatelina del forno’, possibly a member of the formidable family of Masino and El Modenese; and Tomaso da Carpi, a painter.2 The official annual accounts were conscientiously signed by Lucrezia herself. She was still signing them in the last year of her life.
Alfonso had now resumed work on new rooms in the Corte and his own particular camerini in the via coperta. In 1508, before war had interrupted him, he had begun work on a ‘studio of fine marbles’ designed for his collection of statues, ancient and modern, and other antiquities and had already completed a small new chapel constructed of fine marble and nutwood from Venice next to the rooms. That same year he had taken delivery of a series of marble reliefs from the sculptor Antonio Lombardo which he had ordered two years previously for his ‘Studio di Marmo’. Twenty-eight of these are now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, one of which is dated and inscribed ‘In 1508 Alfonso, third Duke of Ferrara, established this for his leisure and tranquillity’, while another bears a quotation from Cicero expressive of Alfonso’s reserved character – ‘Never less alone than when alone’. Early in 1518 di Prosperi recorded Alfonso’s building operations as proceeding ‘at a furious pace’.3 He was widening part of the via coperta and building above it a sumptuous set of new rooms. By early April they were working on the fabric and the windows, so that now the family dined in the first camera dorata. On the 17th, despite suffering from gallstones for which he was purging himself and taking ‘syropi’, Alfonso was reported as taking great pains over the scaffolding of his rooms. The outside walls of the camerini had been finished and the marble floors laid within by the end of August.4 On 4 October di Prosperi reported that Alfonso was overseeing daily the completion of the camerini, where the glass and wooden frames of the windows had already been installed though their surrounds had not been finished and it was doubted that Alfonso would be able to sleep there that winter. When Isabella saw it, he said, she would find it twice as pleasing as she had found it before: ‘the more so that in that small piazza stalls have been set up as they used to be to sell goods as they did in the great piazza, to give a more pleasant aspect. Among other things you will see above all the exits to these camerini various heads and figures by antique and modern sculptors, and the studio most beautifully decorated and with its fine pavement . . .’
Work continued during Alfonso’s absence at the French court that winter: ‘There has been made a bridge or, as we say in our dialect, a pezolo, which crosses the way entering the cortile of the Corte; that is from the salon where the Duchess gives audience in the hot weather and connects with the apartments allotted to the daughters of Messer Hannibale [Bentivoglio] which were formerly occupied by Messer Niccolò da Correggio and before him used by Duke Borso. This bridge has been made for easier access to the Rooms of the Lady Duchess. And the beams above the Corridor of the Corte, that is the balcony of the Duke’s Rooms which look over the vegetable market, are finished.’5
Alfonso was revealing an unsuspected passion and taste for decoration. His nephew, Isabella’s son Federico, visiting Ferrara in June 1517, lodged in the first set of new rooms and was impressed, reporting that he had seen, probably in the Studio di Marmo, ‘a most beautiful camerino all made of Carrara marble and panels with beautiful figures and foliation excellently worked and adorned with vases and statuettes modern and antique made of marble and metal . . .’6 In Rome Raphael was looking out for ancient works of art for Alfonso, as Costabili reported to him. Alfonso employed the greatest contemporary artists. On 19 February 1518 Titian sent him designs for two balconies. All that year the decorations for the new rooms proceeded, including the installation of marble pavements, cornices, friezes, fireplaces, windows of glass and crystal glass, gilded ceilings and painted façades.
In February 1513 Mario Equicola wrote to Isabella that Alfonso ‘cared only for commissioning pictures and seeing antiquities’. His major artistic project was the commissioning of a series of paintings by the great masters on classical subjects for his camerino.While in Rome for Leo X’s coronation in 1513 he had tried without success to persuade Michelangelo to contribute, but the project actually began with Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods, completed in 1514, and continued with three of Titian’s greatest paintings,The Worship of Venus, Bacchus and Ariadne and The Andrians. He also commissioned a frieze and a canvas from Dosso Dossi for the same room.
All traces of Lucrezia’s new decorations in the Castello and the Corte have vanished. Her earliest important commission was for a series of eight canvases in tempera on historical subjects, destined for the vaulted ceilings of her rooms in the Torre Marchesana in the Castello, originally ordered in 1506. As her interest in religion deepened so her taste in paintings changed. While her husband thought only of classical subjects, Lucrezia commissioned from Fra Bartolommeo a Head of the Saviour during his stay at court in early 1516.
Lucrezia’s concern for the spiritual welfare of her citizens led her to back her confessor, Fra Thomaso, in a substantial move against the Dominican monks of Ferrara who had not been behaving themselves. In the presence of Alfonso, his gentlemen, the leading citizenry and the Vicar of the Order, they had been warned that if any one of them failed to conform to the observant life, he must leave the city within three days. The other monks and friars were alarmed that the same thing might happen to them. ‛God make it that we see the other religious, priests and friars with the rest of Christendom come to a better reform,’ di Prosperi wrote. She had, through the intercession of Isabella when she visited Ferrara in the autumn of 1517, obtained permission from Cardinal Gonzaga for Fra Thomaso to preach in the cathedral at Mantua that Lent.
Relations between Lucrezia and Isabella had become more friendly than in the past, although there was always a certain spikiness between them. The balance of power had swung towards Lucrezia since the estrangement between Isabella and Francesco. Isabella was humiliatingly forced to have recourse to Lucrezia to obtain what she wanted from Francesco, over whom her enemy Tolomeo Spagnoli was increasingly in the ascendant. On one occasion she appealed to Lucrezia to obtain a pardon for a condemned man from Francesco. Lucrezia replied that although it had been much against her will to intervene to divert the course of justice, and she had not expected to get favours from Francesco as Isabella had seemed to think she would, nonetheless she would do anything in her power to help her and when she had read Isabella’s commendation for the ‘poor little man condemned to death’ (‘quel poveretto condannato a morte’) she had written as best she could to Francesco, moved by the great pity the case had inspired in her. Moreover, she had even got ‘the illustrious Lord Hercule’ to write as well, while she had sent another letter in her own name to Messer Tolomeo. ‘Your Ladyship may imagine what content I feel when also to me no favour is granted,’ she continued.7 She did in fact write to Gonzaga and to Tolomeo in favour of the ‘poveretto’, one Gabriel Comascho, condemned to death for killing a constable. To Tolomeo she wrote asking him to bring the matter to Gonzaga’s attention, and to Francesco himself she addressed a passionate plea for mercy. Comascho was a man ‘of good family, and a person who has never been known to commit any other crime, and this killing was not deliberate but in a fight to which Comascho had been provoked’.8 Isabella, meanwhile, appears to have haughtily complained, to which Lucrezia replied with some asperity: ‘Your Excellency can be most certain that when you ask of me something which I cannot achieve, I am very sorry for it. And if I had had to write to the Illustrious Lord Marquis for my own purpose and need, I could not have written more warmly than I did for Gabriel Comascho to satisfy Your Excellency to whom I enclose the letters which I have received which are not as I would have wished . . .’9
On a more pleasant note, Lucrezia had thanked Isabella for a recipe for ‘el Juleppo’ (?an infusion), which Isabella had sent her in the hope that it would do her good. Lucrezia had been unwell since Isabella left but she was sure that the ‘Juleppo’ would help her ‘principally because it comes from you who I know loves me like a sister: I will soon try it when the weather cools’. She did not know what was wrong with her but joked, ‘it must be as ‘Catherina che suona’, one of her musicians, sings ‘because fortune wills it’.10References to Lucrezia’s ill health become increasingly frequent in di Prosperi’s reports over these years. On 4 March he wrote that Alfonso, who had been hawking in the Barco and was planning to hunt wolf, put off his plans because of Lucrezia’s delicate state of health and forbade her from continuing her Lenten fasting and dieting.11
Five days later, however, she was seen in public again. On 14 March she dispatched an envoy, il Nasello, to Naples for what di Prosperi thought were negotiations regarding ‘her brother, Don Giovanni’, although it was more likely that it concerned the winding-up of Rodrigo Bisceglie’s affairs. Giovanni Borgia, like Rodrigo Bisceglie, had been under the official tutelage of Cardinal Cosenza, who was joined in that office by Ippolito d’Este in November 1501, presumably in preparation for Lucrezia’s marriage to Alfonso. Giovanni remained Spanish at heart: he liked to sign himself ‘Don Juan de Borja’ and his letter of condolence to Alfonso on Lucrezia’s death was written not in Italian but in Castilian, in a looping, immature hand.12 Giovanni Borgia was the one member of Lucrezia’s extended family whom Alfonso found hard to stomach. While he liked Cesare’s son Girolamo, and had him in his household after Alberto Pio left Carpi for Rome, Giovanni Borgia can best be described as a nuisance. It would appear that he was now back in Ferrara because in May one of his men killed a squire employed by the ducal sons. Enraged by such a ‘cruel and arrogant case’ touching on his own family, Alfonso was determined to arrest him and tortured other servants of Giovanni’s suspected of having spirited the culprit away.13 In June, di Prosperi reported that Lucrezia too was angry about the case: ‘Alberto di Petrato, a servant of the Lady Duchess was placed in the Castello for having helped the escape of those of the household of Don Giovanni [Borgia] who murdered under the loggia of the piazza a squire of the Lord’s sons and it seems that Her Excellency has been angry with him until now.’ Lucrezia, however, with her customary mercy, later released him. Giovanni Borgia had gone to Rome before Alfonso arrived from Venice on 3 June, ‘and it was conjectured that he had done so because he was no longer well regarded by the Duke’.14 He remained there until early September when di Prosperi reported that he would be given a pension by the King of France and would go to the French court. He was to be a source of endless irritation to Alfonso on his own visit there, and it is a measure of his deep affection for Lucrezia that he did so much for the wretched youth. The feckless creature had been nominated Duke of Camerino by his father Alexander and among Lucrezia’s papers are several documents relating to the estate, I5 but on the fall of the Borgias the Varano family, close connections of the Este, swiftly returned there.
Not only was Lucrezia indulgent towards her worthless half-brother, but she also looked out for the interests and education of another half-brother, Rodrigo Borgia, her father’s last child, born in the final year of his pontificate. From two letters of the faithful Borgia follower Juan Las Cases, written in May and September 1518, it appears that this Rodrigo Borgia had gone from Rome to Salerno in the Kingdom of Naples and that Lucrezia had written somewhat peremptorily, demanding to know how his studies were proceeding. Las Cases gave various excuses, including illness, for failing to reply sooner and expressed a great desire to go to Ferrara to see her ‘to talk about old times’.16 In September, Las Cases wrote again assuring Lucrezia that the chaplain sent to tutor ‘Dom Rodrigo’ had been instructed as she wished to get him to say his offices and to keep him ‘in the love and fear of God’.
Cesare’s two illegitimate children, Girolamo and Camilla Lucrezia, were under her eye in Ferrara, the former as a page at court, the latter as a nun at San Bernardino. Both were now teenagers, having been born between 1501 and 1502 of mothers unknown, although in a document of 1509 legitimizing Camilla, Lucrezia stated that she was born of Cesare, married, and an unnamed married woman. Cesare’s one legitimate child, his daughter by his wife, Charlotte d’Albret, Luisa or Louise, born in May 1500 and whom he had never seen, was just under seven years old when he died. She never visited Ferrara but wrote dutiful letters to her aunt Lucrezia.17 She married, aged seventeen, an elderly and distinguished soldier and courtier, Louis de la Trémouïlle, in 1517. And Lucrezia, according to her accounts books, also kept in touch with Juan Gandia’s widow and son.18
Early in May 1518 Alfonso went to Abano to take the waters for his health, leaving Lucrezia in sole charge (Ippolito having left the previous year with a huge retinue of hunting dogs, stallions and leopards to look after his interests in the bishopric of Eger in Hungary). ‘The Lady Duchess has remained as Governor and is most expeditious in our affairs at present: it is true that sometimes she asks counsel of the Magistrates to assist her,’ di Prosperi wrote on 16 May. ‘And up till now they have tortured some persons arrested for going about without light at night, so everyone is on their guard . . .’This offence was apparently considered so grave that Alfonso had written to Lucrezia about it from Abano, demanding that they should be tortured because they were armed when arrested. Lucrezia responded, pleading not to be forced to torture them. Her letter gives an interesting insight not only into her own merciful character but into the class-based nature of Ferrarese justice. On 15 May she wrote to Alfonso giving her reasons for her actions:
More than one cause induced me not to torture [dare la corda] Giovanni Battista Bonleo, first because when he was arrested it was only just after the prescribed hour and he was wearing his day clothes and not things that would give rise to suspicion of any evil intent, but having only gone out and was returning home. And then I remembered the proclamation that the corda should not be given to any gentleman nor of the condition he is, I did not think I was wrong to have respect to his house and relations, but I have kept this decision between ourselves and released him on security of 200 ducats. And nor do I think I did wrong in releasing Verghezino because the podestà told me that Your Excellency had ordered him to have great respect for all the Cardinal’s household, and the others were released at the instance of Sismondo Cistarello [probably Ippolito’s untrustworthy wardrobe master, Sigismondo Cestarello] who gave a simple testimony that they were servants of the Cardinal . . . but . . . on investigation of this and suspecting it was not true, I ordered them to be re-arrested . . .
In another letter of 19 May she attempted to calm Alfonso’s anger against a son of Annibale Bentivoglio who had been accused of violence against the Ferrarese officers who were taking a Bolognese to prison and on the next day it was another case of mercy for a man arrested armed with a sword but without a light. This time it was ‘Leonardo, a nephew of Giacomo di Lunardi, who has charge of il Boschetto who, when it was intended to proceed against him according to the proclamation, I was prayed by him that if I would not grant him any other grace . . . he would willingly pay the 25 ducats than suffer the tre tratti di corda. I had him therefore held in prison until I could inform Your Excellency and have your opinion . . .’ Francesco Gonzaga was also bombarded with letters from Lucrezia in her role as administrator of justice, no less than three that month concerning the arrest of a criminal, Alfonso Rampino, ‘my Ferrarese subject’.
On 24 May, Lucrezia addressed a housewifely letter to Alfonso requesting six guinea fowl eggs for hatching, reminding him that, when she had requested some of his fowl for a friend, he had told her that guinea fowl did not survive being moved and promised that he would give her eggs when the season came. At the end of the month while Alfonso was still away, this time having gone from Abano to Venice where he was most honourably received, the two Duchesses of Urbino, Elisabetta and Leonora, arrived on a formal visit. Lucrezia sent her sons out to meet them accompanied by the leading gentlemen and ladies of the court, while she herself waited to greet them, standing at the head of the marble staircase leading to the Corte. She accompanied them to their apartments above the loggia overlooking the piazza where Francesco Gonzaga used to stay and which were now normally occupied by her sons, who for the past month had been staying in the apartment in the great garden of the Castello.
She appears to have been ill again: Di Prosperi was guarded as to the nature of her illness: ‘for a few days now she has not left her apartments because of an indisposition which I think you know of’, he told Isabella on 30 May. Describing the Duchesses’ visit to Alfonso, Lucrezia told him that she had put them in ‘Your Lordship’s rooms’ and had given them not just one camerino, as he had ordered, but both camerini with the Stufa Grande, and had taken their own son Francesco to stay in her apartment, so that they could be more honourably lodged and she could have easy access to them. She had put Emilia Pia, Duchess Elisabetta’s great friend, and the ladies in Don Ercole’s rooms. Anxious to demonstrate to Alfonso the efforts she had made to make them comfortable and to present his possessions to the greatest advantage, she had heard that they wanted to see his‘boschetto’, the new villa – later known as the Belvedere – which Alfonso had begun to build five years earlier on a sandy island in the Po just outside Ferrara. She had had it furnished and arranged ‘so that it will give them pleasure and they will praise it’. Yet, despite Lucrezia’s efforts, di Prosperi told Isabella that the two Duchesses had ‘taken little pleasure from their stay, principally because of the late hours which we are accustomed to eat’.
Lucrezia was unwell again in August and had not been seen since the 15th, which di Prosperi attributed to ‘il solito male suo’ – her usual sickness – without giving details. She wrote to Alfonso about their sons: Ercole had gone that morning out of Ferrara, as he had ordered, but Ippolito stayed behind because he felt sick but did not appear to be in danger of serious illness. Perhaps because of concern for her and because she was not well enough to carry on government, Alfonso returned to Ferrara and plunged himself into administration: he divided his foreign secretariat between Opizo, or Obizzo, da Remi for Milan and France, and Bonaventura Pistofilo for Rome and Venice. In Lucrezia’s place he himself gave audiences in the Examine – ‘may God make it that he perseveres [in this] to the content and wellbeing of his subjects’, commented di Prosperi which, with other subsequent remarks, implied that Alfonso was not much given to administration. A week later he was still energetically taking part, giving audiences before breakfast, and afterwards taking the Examine with the two secretaries, Hieronymo Magnanimo and the Counsellors of Justice. He was enjoying himself, di Prosperi said, particularly the audiences – ‘as I remember did your Mother of most happy memory’. ‘And, in truth, it is a most lordly thing and of the greatest contentment to his subjects . . . that no one can consider himself with too much influence with His Lordship but all are considered almost equal [my italics].’He took an interest in improving the defences of Ferrara, visiting every morning the quarter known as the Borgo di Sotto, where a fosse and ramparts were being created, the ramparts to be as high as or higher than the tallest palazzo in the city. Walls and towers were being built to house artillery ‘The pity of it is,’ wrote di Prosperi, ‘that almost all the houses in that Borgo are being levelled, including that beautiful monastery of S. Silvestro founded so long ago by San Maurelio, our patron saint.’ When he returned to Comacchio, Lucrezia again took up the business of the Examine and gave audiences, which she did every day he was away.
Towards the end of November, Alfonso left for the French court to see if he could achieve some concrete action over Modena and Reggio. Leo had promised to hand over the two cities to Alfonso on payment of the 40,000 ducats which he [Leo] had paid the Emperor for them, plus 14,000 ducats he claimed to have spent on the administration of those cities. This had been formally agreed in a notarial document drawn up in Florence in February 1516, backed by Alfonso’s two royal supporters, Francis I and Henry VIII, when Alfonso had promised to pay the money demanded by the Pope. Nothing, however, had resulted and Leo was now planning to marry his nephew, Lorenzo de’Medici, to a French princess and give him Ferrara. When summoned by Francis I to Paris to attend the entry of the English ambassadors in December following an Anglo-French rapprochement, Alfonso hastened to comply.
Before he left he called a meeting of the gentlemen and leading citizens and told them formally: ‘I have called you here to tell you that the King of France’s Majesty writes that I should go to him. That is all I have to say except that I commend to you my wife and children and my state [le cose mie]: and if anything untoward should happen that you should do for them what you would do for me.’ For a man known to be taciturn, the words were few enough but all the more effective for that. His hearers remained ‘moved and mute’ for a while, then ‘reminded him of the faith which the people had always shown him and that His Lordship should not doubt of it, to which he replied that this heartened him to leave and otherwise he would not have departed.’19
Lucrezia was left to govern in her own name, and to carry out the Examine and the audiences as usual. She frequently invited Alfonso’s gentlemen to dine with her. Alfonso’s concern for the safety of his family was shared by Lucrezia who wrote to Rome on the morning of his departure a letter to be communicated to the Pope in her name and that of Alfonso. It was intended to avert any suspicion Leo might have had concerning Alfonso’s journey to France by underlining the fact that he had been summoned by the King of France, and to assure the Pope that, wherever he might be, Alfonso was most disposed to obey the Pope ‘as his devoted and obedient son and servant’. She added her own profession of devotion to the Pope in whatever he wished and begged him, ‘in the absence of the Duke to hold ourself, our children and state commended to him’.20
Shortly after Alfonso’s departure for France, Lucrezia received news of her mother’s death in Rome. ‘My mother is still ill and her life must end soon,’ she had written to Isabella. The term she used was ‘la matre’ – the mother – not ‘mia matre’ – my mother – unconsciously revealing the distance there had always been between herself and Vannozza. The news of her death did not reach Alfonso until he arrived in Paris: to his letter of condolence, Lucrezia replied in a handwritten letter referring to her mother’s death in very curious terms: ‘I thank Your lordship infinitely for the comfort you have given me in your most welcome letter . . . which has completely alleviated that small residue of chagrin which against my will I have sometimes felt for the death of my mother. That is enough, I do not want to hear any more of it . . .’21
The lack of grief is extraordinary when compared with the terms in which she spoke of the death even of Jofre. Lucrezia had not seen her mother since she had left Rome seventeen years before. While Cesare had been close to Vannozza, Lucrezia seems to have remained distant from her, devoted to her father and regarding Adriana de Mila as her mother. Few letters from Vannozza survive in the Este archives and those that do are businesslike rather than affectionate. The first, dated February 1515, asks for Lucrezia’s and Alfonso’s favour with the Duke of Milan against a Giovanni Paolo Pagnano in Milan who was claiming that she owed him 300 ducats. It is couched in the kind of complaining, almost hysterical, language that any daughter being asked a favour might find tiresome:
‘This Pagnano,’ Vannozza wrote,
thinks of nothing else but to give me some annoyance and trouble me as long as I live. Thus I pray Your Excellency that you should make every effort to ensure that I am once and for all freed of such persecution and to find some expedient so that I may no longer be in fear which certainly would be the cause of the total ruin of myself and the few means which I have. My need is that Your Excellency together with the Most Illustrious Lord Duke your consort should send a discreet and amiable servant to the Most Illustrious Duke of Milan with favourable letters from you, in which you pray the Most Illustrious Lord Duke to intervene with the said Paolo and induce him to perpetual silence and in the end order him that, given my good reasons, he must no longer molest me . . . He [Paolo] as a man lacking in respect has always wished to act against me, as if I were the most vile person in the world, thinking perhaps that I was abandoned and derelict of every help and favour, and that I would not find anyone to speak for me, but I thank almighty God . . . that neither He nor men of the world have abandoned me, and so again I pray and urge you with all the strength of my heart that Your Excellency will not fail me with your help and favour . . .
She signed herself ‘La felice et infelice matre Vannozza Borgia’ – ‘The happy and unhappy mother, Vannozza Borgia.’22
Apart from politely wishing Lucrezia good health and that of her family, the letter contained nothing of a personal nature or expression of affection, which might be thought odd, considering that Lucrezia was some six months pregnant with her daughter Leonora and that her son Alexandro was perpetually ill.
Vannozza remained obsessed with the machinations of Pagnano, writing another complaining letter to Lucrezia about it. It seems that in Ippolito d’Este she found a more sympathetic ear, and indeed the tone of her letters to him is far more agreeable, even insinuating, as she returned to the charge against Pagnano. Between July and October 1515 she wrote him no fewer than five letters on the subject, the last thanking him with abject gratitude for his efforts: ‘We have received a most welcome letter from Your Reverend Lordship,’ she wrote on 14 September, ‘for which we render you infinite thanks for the great love and charity you have borne us, particularly in this business of ours. No words could express our gratitude sufficiently so we pray to The Most High to keep you in that state which we most desire. Thus, I ask My Most Reverend and Illustrious Lord if possible that you could press this Pagnano in such a way that he will see the prudence of not disturbing me as he does. I swear to God that [I feel] shame rather than the loss that an usurious merchant should bring me to this . . .’23
Even the intervention of Ippolito, as Archbishop of Milan, had not produced an effect a month later. Ippolito fell ill and Vannozza was clearly panic-stricken, returning to the whining mode which she had used with Lucrezia. ‘No words can express,’ she wrote to him on 15 October,
the melancholy I feel at the sickness of Your Reverend Lordship and I have good reason to because I have no other hope in this world than Your Lordship and God knows that I do not rest day and night praying God that he should restore you to health and guard you from betrayals and traitors. And more, my Lord, I am most grieved that I am not in a position to come and be of service to you as I was to the late Duke and still more I am troubled by the persecution of Paolo Pagnano which would be enough if I was some woman or other that had no one and what grieves me more is that no regard is had for Your Lordship and for this My Lord I pray you that for the love you bear Jesus Christ you will not allow this man of nothing to tear me to pieces . . .
It was a question of 2,000 ducats owed over two or three years. If Ippolito could not settle it in her favour, she said, it would result in her dishonour and ruin.
The struggle against Pagnano was still going on in April 1517 when she again appealed to Ippolito for help. This time Pagnano, with the powerful help of Gian-Giacopo Trivulzio, Marshal of France and one of the most celebrated condottieri of his day, was trying to obtain sentence against her in a high court of law. She accused them of trying to have her and her emissary murdered. Signing herself ‘La felice et infelice. Como matre’ (‘as mother’), the correspondence appears to have ended.
Money, as it would appear from the above, was a driving force in Vannozza’s life. For all her complaints of ruin and destruction, she was a woman of considerable property. Apart from her handsome house in the Monti quarter, she owned other properties which she rented out: one large building contained three artisan’s shops with rooms above. Two of the shops were inhabited by leather workers and their wives, who earned their living as laundresses, and one by a Florentine carpenter; above, two of the rooms were occupied by Margarita Mole and Lactantia, courtesans, the third by Madonna Montesina, ‘a poor old Spanish woman’. In another building, rented out by Vannozza and also divided into three shops, one was occupied by a blacksmith, the two others by courtesans, one of them, Madonna Laura, a Spaniard, the other a cheap prostitute of the sort known as ‘de la candeleta’ – by the candle in the window, a sign of their trade. In 1483, three years after Lucrezia’s birth, she and her second husband, Giorgio della Croce, had rented the ‘Leone’, the first purpose-built inn in Rome and one of the most renowned, no doubt a profitable undertaking. She bought a second hostelry, the ‘Vacca’, near the Campo dei Fiori. She also appears to have raised money to finance her business undertakings: apart from borrowing from Paolo Pagnano, among the documents in the Archivio di Stato in Rome relating to her is a list of jewels, annotated ‘List of the things which are in pawn’.24
In the latter years of her life, like other rich Roman matrons she bought peace for her soul and forgiveness for her sins with charitable donations. The fashionable church of Santa Maria del Popolo, much favoured by the Borgias, was a particular focus for her generosity. She endowed a chapel there in which Giorgio della Croce and their son Ottaviano were buried, as she was to be herself. She ordered marble ornaments for her chapel from the celebrated Andrea Bregno, including her arms, to be placed above the arch; she also donated a house on the Piazza Pizzo di Merlo, which may have been the one in which Lucrezia spent her early years, to this same church. In 1517 she donated the building which had been the Osteria della Vacca to the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Consolazione, a refuge for poor and sick women, with the condition that three masses should be said a year, one for her, one for Giorgio della Croce and one for Carlo Canale (the afterlife she envisaged for herself would certainly be crowded with men). To the same hospital she donated a silver bust of Cesare which disappeared, probably in the Sack of Rome in 1527.
Vannozza died on 26 November 1518, aged sixty years, four months and thirteen days. By the time of her death she had achieved wealth and respectability but she was still remembered principally for her association with Alexander VI and their children. Sanudo reported in a letter from Rome of 4 December 1518: ‘The other day died Madama Vannozza who was the woman of Pope Alexander and mother of Duke Valentino and the Duchess of Ferrara.’ News of her death was cried through Rome as befitted a celebrity of her stature, according to the letter: ‘And that night I found myself in a place where I heard cry “la parte” in the Roman manner with these formal words, “. . . Know ye that Madonna Vannozza is dead, mother of the Duke of Gandia!”’ As a member of Rome’s most prestigious lay spiritual association, the Company of the Gonfalone, her funeral was well attended by the leading nobles and citizens. She was buried, Sanudo’s correspondent continued, ‘with pomp almost the equal of a cardinal . . . The chamberlains of the Pope attended which does not normally happen to anyone.’ Her tombstone proudly recorded her relationship with Cesare, Juan – she even included Jofre – and Lucrezia, with their resounding titles. It was the only part of her tomb to survive and can still be seen today, removed to the porch of the little Basilica di San Marco, opposite the flamboyant Vittorio Emanuele Monument. Even the mass celebrated on the anniversary of her death (for which she had undoubtedly paid) was cancelled in the mid eighteenth century by the confraternity responsible, by then ashamed of the infamous Borgia connection.25
Alfonso and Lucrezia were a close partnership at this time, in their care for Ferrara and, above all, their children. His concern for her was obvious, as was his love. As Lucrezia had watched him mature over the difficult years of war, she had come to admire, respect and love him and she was proud of his achievements. When he reached Milan he took the trouble to write a letter in his own hand (which has since disappeared), a rare concession for a ruling prince. Lucrezia replied thanking him for the news of his arrival in Milan and ‘what you have achieved there, and of your departure on your way [to France] . . .’ She had clearly written to him on the day of his departure, the 24th, and she was reproving him for not having written to her sooner: ‘Even if it arrived tardily it was timely enough to hear of your wellbeing and that the tardiness was not your fault as I had thought . . . God be praised for it and for mine and our children.’ She sent him all the latest news, enclosing a letter from Henry VIII of England, thanking him for the lute which Alfonso had sent him, and one from the Duchess of Milan asking for the stallions to be sent as soon as possible. She also gave him the latest international news to keep him up to date: a friend had seen an autograph letter from Charles V, ‘His Catholic Majesty’, to the King of France, reaffirming their friendship and asking for the King’s daughter, Charlotte, to be substituted for her sister, Louise, his bride under the terms of the Treaty of Noyon, who had since died.
Lucrezia had been kept informed since the outset of Alfonso’s journey by his companions, who included her favourite doctor, Lodovico Bonaccioli, Alfonso Ariosto and Alfonso’s secretary in France, Bonaventura Pistofilo, who also wrote to his colleague in Ferrara, Obizzo da Remi. En route on the day of Alfonso’s departure Pistofilo wrote a hasty note to Obizzo saying that Alfonso was in high spirits with his company and that Lucrezia should be so too. From their correspondence it would appear that Alfonso, although far less pious than his father, had inherited his interest in saintly nuns and prophetesses. He commissioned Pistofilo to find out whether there was anyone with a reputation for sanctity in the state of Monferrato where they had lodged with the Marchioness and specifically to pass on to Lucrezia what Alfonso himself had heard from her – that some months past, when the Marquis was dying, she had brought in a holy woman from Bologna who was reputed to have the gift of prophecy, ‘but this had brought them little fruit’.26 At Turin, Alfonso received an urgent message from the King to speed his journey to arrive before the English envoys with their company of eight hundred horse who were to be received with great pomp. Alfonso took the post-horses provided, with a few companions – Sor Enea, Messer Vincenzo, Alfonso Ariosto, il Cingano and il Mona, leaving the rest of his company to continue their normal journey.27
Lucrezia was delighted to hear of Alfonso’s safe arrival in Paris and replied thanking him effusively for the news; she was delighted by his honourable reception by the King and Queen, by ‘Madama’ (‘Madame Louise’, the King’s mother) and the leading nobles. ‘Your letters have given me indescribable contentment, [the news] has moved me to the heart,’ she wrote, telling him she had passed it on to her court to rejoice in. She was so pleased to hear that his journey had proved useful and that she could reassure him that everything in Ferrara was going well and peacefully in his absence. She ended with family news. Their son Ippolito had a rash and a slight temperature but nothing serious and neither one nor the other troubled him. She suspected Francesco might be about to go down with the same illness, ‘however he eats well and keeps fat and in these days I can hardly resist the urge to bring him to Your Lordship at the accustomed hour’. Ercole was well and continued to improve all the time. Their daughter was well and fat: ‘We all kiss your hand together . . .’28
She proudly kept Isabella informed of Alfonso’s successes at the French court, how he was welcomed and ‘caressed’ by the King and Queen and ‘Madama’, and what an honourable place he had been given at the formal reception of the papal legate. She described his magnificent appearance in Notre Dame for the swearing of the Anglo – French agreement: ‘in a robe of cloth of curled gold lined with ermine and in his bonnet, in place of a medal, his beautiful great diamond which, by the reports of our envoys, made a fine sight’.
Pistofilo and Bonaccioli wrote detailed reports of the magnificent entertainments – tournaments, jousts and banquets – with which Francis was entertaining the English ambassadors: ‘Yesterday and today there were jousts in which the King took part dressed in white with his company and M. St Paul [St Pol] led his company dressed in black’ in the great tournament on 22 December, Pistofilo wrote.This spectacle was followed by dancing ‘all’Italiana’ to the sound of shawms in the presence of the King and the English ambassadors until dinner was ready. ‘There was so much gold and silver displayed on the credenze that it would have satisfied the most avaricious soul,’ the secretary reported. The scene was lit by more than fifty torches in the hanging candelabra. The King sat in the middle of the table on a tribune beneath a baldachin in an armchair of gold brocade, with the English ambassadors alternating with the great ladies of the court on his right and left hand. Alfonso, Pistofilo noted proudly, was also among this most distinguished company. The meal was served ‘in the royal manner’ to the sound of trumpets, the dishes varied and copious. After dinner the tables were whisked away and there appeared twelve maskers dressed in black velvet who began to dance, then twelve others dressed in white velvet joined them, and then little by little many others, all most richly dressed and very elegant.
Giovanni Borgia had arrived safely, Alfonso wrote to Lucrezia from Paris on 26 December with a singular lack of enthusiasm. ‘I have seen him and have set in train what is necessary for His Lordship for whom I will do all I can for love of Your Ladyship . . .’ Lucrezia was always anxious about Giovanni Borgia’s welfare: while Giovanni was on his way to Paris, she had written to Giovanni di Fino, their agent in Milan, informing him of Giovanni Borgia’s arrival there. Many of Alfonso Ariosto’s reports to Lucrezia concerned Giovanni, and his own and Alfonso’s efforts to advance his cause at the French court. Ariosto told her that even before Borgia had arrived he (Ariosto) had spoken to the King, to de la Trémouïlle, Cesare’s son-in-law, the Gran Scudero (Galeazzo da Sanseverino, Grand Ecuyer or Master of the King’s Horse) and de Lapalisse about him but had not been able to speak to Madama because Alfonso was there much occupied with Her Highness. The King had answered Ariosto so kindly that he thought that His Majesty would not fail to do his best so that Lucrezia could have ‘that courtesy that I told him you desired to have’ (presumably to take Giovanni into royal service). Pistofilo reported on 20 December that Alfonso and company were well but that Alfonso had not yet presented Giovanni to the King.
Alfonso finally found an opportunity of presenting Giovanni to the King in the presence of M. de la Trémouïlle and the Gran Scudero, when he was ‘seen and accepted’, Bonaventura Pistofilo reported to Lucrezia on 23 December, but since the King was in such company he (Alfonso) could not present him with Lucrezia’s letter of recommendation. Giovanni told Pistofilo that he wanted to send the letter to the Queen and Madama (instead of waiting to present it in person) whereupon Pistofilo reminded him that they could make him great and hold him dear. Borgia replied that he was ready to do any service but complained that they were too cold. ‘For my part,’ the harassed Pistofilo reported, ‘I reminded this Don Giovanni of that which seemed to me to be of profit to him.’ Eventually Giovanni succeeded in showing Lucrezia’s letter to the King and Madama, ‘by whom he is seen and welcomed very amiably when he attends them every day’, but Pistofilo had to report that nothing had yet been decided about his service and Borgia was running short of money. By 21 January he was also running out of hope: ‘The great promises made to Your Ladyship for the Lord Don Giovanni, seem to me to be very coldly executed, and I doubt that he will wish to stay here longer at his own expense. It pains me to have to write to Your Ladyship things that will be grievous, but . . . I feel I must because Your Ladyship should know everything.’ Giovanni was to remain behind when the Ferrarese party left, with Alfonso’s commendation to Madama and M. de Gramont (Gabriel, Cardinal-Bishop of Tarbes), but whether the tiresome and demanding young man ever received anything from them is not recorded. Lucrezia for her part thanked Alfonso warmly for all the care and favour he had shown Giovanni Borgia, ‘that brother of mine’.
Alfonso’s departure from Paris was delayed; the English ambassadors did not leave until 15 January but still he could not depart as Madama and the Gran Scudero were both ill and the King had left with his court for Saint-Germain to hunt stag. The Duke was therefore forced to wait until his return for a chance to talk about his affairs. He had written letters of thanks to the King and Cardinal (Thomas Wolsey) of England which the King had had read out in the English tongue, ‘vulgar inglese’, to all the lords and gentlemen attending him. The King had said many ‘amiable and honourable words about the Lord Duke and Your Illustrious Ladyship, as I will demonstrate when I return to Ferrara,’ Pistofilo reported. The papal legate had told him how much he wished to see Lucrezia if he could obtain licence from the Pope to pass by Ferrara. Meanwhile, Alfonso, with the leisure to go shopping, bought some civet cats which, Pistofilo wrote, ‘have become very tame, so that His Excellency unleashes them and they allow themselves to be treated like dogs, they are young and beautiful, the male particularly so. Messer Poteghino has bought a little pony [‘ubinetto’] for Ercole but it might be better for Francesco because it is very small.’
Alfonso finally left Paris on 24 January; on the eve of his departure he had dined privately with M. de Gramont and the Admiral (Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur de Bonnivet, admiral of France) together at his lodging. ‘They told him the best things in the world’, and when he left de Gramont presented him with the gift of a mule richly harnessed. For all the fine words, however, the mule seems to have been all that Alfonso actually received.
According to Pistofilo, the Duke was longing above everyone else to return to Ferrara. When Lucrezia heard the news she immediately wrote to Alfonso that ‘any remnants of sorrow’ for her mother’s death in her heart had been effaced by her ‘great joy and immense consolation at the news of your much desired swift return and the continuing good hope you give me of your affairs for which I thank the Lord God and await with high desire to hear from you personally of many other things which are too lengthy to write down . . .’ Ippolito and Francesco were well, she told him, although Francesco had lost a little weight. ‘I as usual listen to the readings of Galeazzo Boschetto with Ercole, who is very well.’
Alfonso arrived home on 20 February, having passed by Mantua. He went straight to see Lucrezia.