Lucrezia Borgia

Summary (from the publisher): The very name Lucrezia Borgia conjures up everything that was sinister and corrupt about the Renaissance—incest, political assassination, papal sexual abuse, poisonous intrigue, unscrupulous power grabs. Yet as bestselling biographer Sarah Bradford reveals in this breathtaking new portrait, the truth is far more fascinating than the myth. Neither a vicious monster nor a seductive pawn, Lucrezia Borgia was a shrewd, determined woman who used her beauty and intelligence to secure a key role in the political struggles of her day.

Born the illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Cardinal Borgia and his scheming mistress, Vannozza Cattanei, Lucrezia was twelve when her father became Pope Alexander VI and thirteen when she was forced into her first marriage. She would marry twice more, gaining increasing power with each match, until she came into her own as duchess of the city-state of Ferrara. Bradford argues that in her maturity Lucrezia was an enlightened ruler, kind and decisive in time of war, generous to the poets and artists of her court, passionate in love, and utterly indifferent to sexual morality.

Drawing from a trove of contemporary documents and fascinating firsthand accounts, Bradford brings to life the art, the pageantry, and the dangerous politics of the Renaissance world Lucrezia Borgia helped to create. Bradford is an expert on the Borgia family and in Lucrezia she has found a subject ideally suited to her gift for narrative and psychological insight. Sex, gossip, murder, astonishing beauty, and ambition— this is the Renaissance at its most irresistible.

Review: Infamous down through the centuries, this biography attempts to shed light on the real woman behind the rumors. Lucrezia Borgia was the beloved illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia who became Pope Alexander VI. Her father arranged a series of marriages for her, each more illustrious than the last, until with her third marriage she became the duchess of the city-state of Ferrara. 

Throughout her life, Lucrezia was repeatedly accused  of licentious behavior, including incest with both her father and brother. While she certainly had little sexual morality and most definitely had lovers during her marriages, there's little to no evidence that she had a sexual relationship with her adoring father and brother Cesare. Yet she was more than just a sexual pawn. She was intelligent and generous and was trusted with leadership in her father and later husband's absences. She was unlucky as a mother, having difficult pregnancies and lost several children to miscarriage, stillbirth, and early deaths. She died tragically young herself, after a difficult childbirth. 

This was a well researched biography that is based on significant historical documents and firsthand accounts. I appreciated that the author gave background on not only Lucrezia but her family, for it was truly her famous family that landed her in the life that she had. Yet at times this text was exceedingly dry and seemed to wander a bit far into the family's background and far from its titular focus on Lucrezia. I also wish there had been more detail about the fate of her children and rest of her family after her death. Yet overall an insightful book that sheds light on a historical figure whose record is shadowed by rumor and myth. 

Stars: 4