Maggie O’Farrell, the author of Hamnet, has a new book out. The Marriage Portrait is another gorgeous, lushly written historical novel.
Lucrezia is the fifteen-year-old third daughter (a middle child) of the grand-duke of Florence. She has always been headstrong and a little difficult, so she is not a favored child. She finds solace (and fascination) in art and is able to lose herself in painting.
Unfortunately for Lucrezia, the main value of female children is their potential for marriage alliances. Lucrezia is wed to Alfonso, the duke of Ferrara. While Lucrezia is beautiful (her crowning glory is her ankle-length hair), intelligent, and talented, she is valued only as a breeder. It is an open secret that Alphonso has never fathered any illegitimate children. Yet if she does not provide him with an heir, the blame for the failure will fall upon her.
The story bounces back and forth between Lucrezia’s “current” conflict with her husband in a hideaway fortress and their courtship (bleak) and early marriage (bleaker). During this time, he commissions a marriage portrait of her that is to portray her regally in a gown of his own design. Alphonso is an interesting, frightening man, capable of charm and gentleness but also of secrecy and immense cruelty. Lucrezia is never sure which side of the man she will see. The atmosphere is gothic and claustrophobic. The ending is well foreshadowed; still it is creepy and thrilling to follow Lucrezia through to the end.
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