“Words pressed themselves into her memory, like a shoe sole into soft mud, which would dry and solidify, the shoe print preserved for ever. Sometimes she felt filled up, overstuffed with words, faces, names, voices, dialogues, her head throbbing with pain, and she would be set off-balance by the weight of what she carried, stumbling into tables and walls. Sofia would put her to bed, curtains drawn, and make her drink a tisana, and Lucrezia would sleep. When she woke her head would feel like a cupboard that had been tidied: still full but more orderly.”
from Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait
There is a work of art, a piece of literature, and a handful of facts that loosely inform the protagonist at the centre of Maggie O’Farrell’s most recent novel. Lucrezia de’Medici was born in Florence in 1545 and was married in 1560 to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara at the age of fifteen. She died in 1561, less than a year after her wedding. While it is officially recorded that she died of “putrid fever,” her death remains suspicious and debated, some believing that she was murdered by her husband.
These facts, along with the only known portrait of Lucrezia by Agnolo Bronzino—depicting her against a dark background and wearing the jewels that represent the two families joined in matrimony—as well as “My Last Duchess,” a dramatic monologue by Robert Browning, which captures the Duke of Ferrara’s chilling presence and cruelty, are the pieces that form and inform Lucrezia’s life. There is little biographical information on Lucrezia but in The Marriage Portrait, O’Farrell extends a hand to Lucrezia’s picture so she may climb out of the confines of the painting to move, to breathe, and to speak once more in the pages of a novel.
The Marriage Portrait opens in 1561 in a remote fortezza, it is evening and Lucrezia sits across from her husband and comes to the sudden realization that he intends to kill her. The narrative then oscillates between this opening scene and Lucrezia’s childhood and adolescence in the palazzo in Florence. We are introduced to our young protagonist as she wanders through hallways and stairwells, as she is educated alongside her brothers and sisters by tutors, as she eavesdrops on hushed conversations, and as she visits the menagerie in the basement, mesmerized by a tiger enclosed in a dark cage. We witness her keen intuition and her artistic talent as she exercises her skills, and we witness her seclusion as she is often ostracized from her family.
While the early years of Lucrezia’s life are composed in a loose biographical fashion—perhaps the fictional biography of a young artist even—the months leading up to the wedding see a young girl ushered into adulthood and womanhood as she anxiously grasps at her life in the palazzo. The tension that opens O’Farrell’s novel then permeates Lucrezia’s marriage as she is confined and kept under a watchful eye, and as she slowly gathers bits of information on the man she married and on the family she married into. If the earlier chapters seem biographical, this section can only be described as gothic as it is punctuated by chilling moments and heart-stopping scenes.
The swing between past and present allows tensions to build and chapters to inform one another, sparking intriguing and satisfying moments of revelation as we begin to connect the dots. But, we know how this story ends, it is revealed in the “Historical Note” at the beginning of the text and within the first chapter. And yet, while we are moving towards a known conclusion, O’Farrell still manages to craft an unexpected, devastating, and hopeful ending to The Marriage Portrait that I had to read three times over just to make sure I fully grasped and appreciated its ending.
O’Farrell has constructed a story, a character, and a life around what little is known of Lucrezia, and has reminded us of the importance of fiction to historical figures who would otherwise be entirely forgotten. This is a novel about art and observation; about cruelty and violence against women; about intuition, intelligence, and hope; and about the resilience of female friendships and relationships. The Marriage Portrait will transport you to Italy, will fill your imagination with the objects and rooms that compose its various settings, and will leave you with the unforgettable Lucrezia, gloriously revived by O’Farrell!
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A big thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for sending me a copy of O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait to review!
I’m still keeping an eye out for reviews (anxious to hear what other people thought!) and interviews, but if I can recommend one so far, it would be the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast, Bookshelfie with Maggie O’Farrell. Happy reading!
Sydney K Erickson 
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