Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (32 page)

From 1503 only one letter survives, written in a secretarial hand and asking Francesco to help a member of her household in his affairs at Mantua, while for the same year there are nine letters from Lucrezia to Isabella, all of an administrative nature; this is presumably because Francesco spent a great deal of his time that year with the French armies going against Naples, leaving Isabella in charge.

In the spring and summer of 1504, when Alfonso was on his travels and Duke Ercole was ailing, Lucrezia, following the example of the Duchess Eleonora, took a regular part in the
Esame
delle Suppliche
(Examination of Petitions) and much of her correspondence arose out of the cases presented to her there. Many of the requests were for pardons or the release of prisoners held in Mantua. When Gonzaga did nothing about them, she repeated her requests firmly until he complied. While in Ferrara, he had promised to release to her a certain Bernardino della Publica, imprisoned for murder. When he failed to do so, she wrote insistently and several times, finally and sharply five months later: ‘I beg you to fulfil your promise . . . release [Bernardino della Publica] and send him to me as soon as possible . . .’ Her competence must have impressed Francesco because in one letter she thanked him for all the kind things he had said about her to Duke Ercole which had been repeated to her.

Towards the end of April, Gonzaga (with Isabella) again visited Ferrara for the annual St George’s Day races, inspiring flirtatious letters of regret on his departure from Lucrezia and her ladies. From the beginning, immediately after Gonzaga had left Ferrara, she and her ladies had entered into a conspiracy to seduce him. On 8 May 1504, her ladies wrote a collective lament for his absence, feeling themselves half alive, they said, for the lack of his ‘benign, kind, sophisticated and divine presence’, his ‘divine virtues and exalted and angelic manner’. Angela Borgia and Polissena Malvezzi were particularly concerned to do his bidding, ‘principally when we see the affection borne by our most excellent Duchess, who in all our conversations never ceases to hold the sweetest memories of you’. The letter was signed ‘the most dedicated damsels of the most excellent Duchess’.
¹⁹
Polissena wrote the same day describing court festivities and adding, ‘But every delight gave little pleasure to Her Ladyship or to me, her servant, since Your Illustrious Lordship was not present.’

Lucrezia was anxious to please her brother-in-law whenever the opportunity arose. Typically, Francesco was anxious to have some fine horses of Cesare’s which were being kept in the Rocca di Forlì by the castellan, de Mirafuentes, as he had made clear during his May visit. Lucrezia immediately contacted de Mirafuentes, as she told Gonzaga in a letter of 11 May, enclosing the castellan’s reply: ‘I only beg of you to signify if there is anything else you need in this case and if I can be of help to you because I assure Your Excellency that you will find me always most prompt and well-disposed in this and in anything else you know that I can be of service to you,’ At the end of July, responding to further requests from Francesco about the horses, she told him that she had written immediately and with the greatest urgency to the castellan and was sure that he would obtain what he desired.

As early as 1502 Lucrezia had taken under her protection the beautiful Barbara Torelli, maltreated wife of Ercole Bentivoglio, son of Giovanni, lord of Bologna. Barbara, a cultivated and intelligent woman of a noble family of Ferrarese origin, had taken refuge in Ferrara because of the Este friendship for her family and because she found the cultured Este court congenial. She seems to have been a difficult woman, and the nuns with whom she first lodged complained to Lucrezia that they did not wish to keep her, whereupon the compassionate Lucrezia had persuaded a Messer Alfonso Calacagnino to have her in his house,
²⁰
Two years later Francesco Gonzaga took up the cause of Ercole Bentivoglio at the instance of his own brother, Giovanni Gonzaga, who was related to Bentivoglio through his wife, Laura. He sent a trusted servant, Marcantonio Gatto, to request Lucrezia that Bentivoglio’s daughter, Costanza, be taken from her mother and sent to Mantua to Giovanni Gonzaga’s house. Lucrezia replied in the beautiful hand of Tebaldeo that she had hastened to do as he asked, despite her status as Barbara Torelli’s protector: ‘And in this case she has shown herself somewhat difficult: nonetheless, to satisfy Your Lordship’s desire, I have operated in such a manner that Madonna Barbara, her mother, has consented, albeit unwillingly. And so the girl will go with Marcantonio whom you sent here for this purpose . . .’
²¹

As the summer months passed the tone of the letters became more intense and the two exchanged verses, mentioned by Luzio but which have since disappeared. On 10 July, Francesco wrote that he was sick from being deprived of ‘the air of Ferrara which so suits me and of Your Ladyship’s conversation which brings me such pleasure’, excusing himself for not being able to write in his own hand or send the sonnets he had promised her.
²²
‘I received your letter and understand that your tardiness in writing was due to your indisposition which grieves me,’ Lucrezia replied, ‘but there was no need to use such terms to me because I am certain of your feelings towards me, for which I will always be truly grateful. And I applaud Your Lordship for passing these tiresome times in pleasures and delightful pastimes as you describe to me. Of ours here, there is no need to describe them since Your Excellency well knows of what sort and quality they are. I am happy you should make fun of us if it gives you pleasure. I and the other ladies here think you are right, and thus Madonna Giovanna, Dona Angela [Borgia] and I myself kiss your hand . . .’
²³
Five days later she was making plans to see him again: Ercole, who had been gravely ill in June, had been on a pilgrimage to Florence in fulfilment of a vow he had made. He had invited Lucrezia to meet him at the frontiers of Modena, on his return, which seemed to Lucrezia to provide a convenient opportunity to meet Francesco.
²⁴
That she did indeed go to Modena is evident from a letter written from there on 25 July, but there is no mention of a meeting, only of thanking him for news of Alfonso who had written to her himself from Paris informing her that he would be returning to Ferrara on 12 August.

Francesco appears, however, to have made a tentative attempt to see her, according to a letter from Alfonso to Isabella of 3 October which reveals a little of the manoeuvres required. Isabella had written to him informing him that her husband desired to go to Comacchio, the villa in the Po delta used by the Este for hunting and particularly fishing. Apparently Francesco had said that he did not want to disturb Alfonso, who was in the midst of taking the water treatment
(‘questa mia aqua da bagni’),
probably mud from Abano, but Alfonso said it would be a great displeasure for him not to accompany Gonzaga there; he had only not replied earlier, he said, because he had been waiting to see if Lucrezia wanted to go or not:

Yesterday morning she departed with our uncle Sigismondo and a goodly company of ladies and gentlemen to go to Comacchio which, with the journey, will be about ten or twelve days. As soon as she returns I will let you know so that you can tell the Marchese what day he can leave there [?Mantua] and come to Ferrara because I intend at all costs to accompany him [to Comacchio]. And in these few days I will finish my water treatment and His Lordship will be content to wait these few days in order to have the greater enjoyment. And to have better lodging than he could at present there because the people I have mentioned are there. . . Please remind him that the fewer people he brings the more comfortable he will be . . .
²⁵

Presumably Francesco had hoped to have Lucrezia to himself at Comacchio without her husband’s surveillance; if so, he (and probably also she) was disappointed.

It is tempting to speculate that Alfonso had written to defer Francesco Gonzaga’s journey to Comacchio in order that he should
not
see Lucrezia there. Certainly it would appear so from a letter Lucrezia wrote to Francesco on 28 October after she returned to Ferrara: ‘Not having been able personally to see Your Excellency and speak to you on your journey to Comacchio as I greatly desired. . .’, she was sending her ‘major-domo’ to him with the request she would have made him. The object of this request was a strange one: the release to Lucrezia ‘in absolute freedom’ of a certain Antonio da Bologna, a formerly trusted courtier of both Francesco and Isabella, who had been condemned by Gonzaga for abusing his position by ordering expensive clothes for himself while pretending that they were for the Marquis and his family. Gonzaga had apparently bluntly refused Lucrezia’s request: she then wrote him, in her own hand, a passionate and imperious demand that he should do as she asked. Quite why she should have been so attached to Antonio da Bologna is a mystery; that he was a young man of charm and allure is, however, clear from other references. Gonzaga must eventually have released him because not long afterwards he secretly married (becoming her second husband) Giovanna d’Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi, the protagonist of Webster’s drama, and was murdered in 1513 by a Gonzaga connection, probably on the orders of her brother, Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona, a cousin and intimate of the Este.
²⁶

Alfonso had in fact arrived in Ferrara on 8 August, earlier than expected, the reason for his hasty return being the severe illness of Ercole; there were rumours of rivalries among the Este brothers over the succession and mutual suspicions which were to erupt in violence over the next two years. Sanudo had reported on 7 June: ‘From Ferrara the news comes that the Duke is ill; Don Alfonso is in France and is going to England, so that a messenger has been sent after him for him to return, because his father is in great danger; and if at his death he should not be found in Ferrara, the second brother, Don Ferrando [Ferrante], who is loved by the people, could be made Lord.’
²⁷
Ferrante had returned from Rome, his head turned by the welcome given him there by the Pope, his godfather, whose favourable treatment of him had enraged his brother, Ippolito. This may well have given him ideas that he might have been invested with the Dukedom by the Pope in Alfonso’s absence. Bernardino Zambotti also recorded that Alfonso hurried back, ‘thinking that he was in danger of not succeeding to the lordship of Ferrara, if his father died in his absence’.
²⁸
Speculation as to the succession was rife in Rome and in Venice, as the Venetian envoy in Rome, Giustinian, reported to the Doge on 29 June: ‘It was said that there were letters from Ferrara that the Lord Duke had had a return of his malady and was in great danger of his life. As to what will happen in the event of his death, various judgements are passed, and all conclude that there must be great dissensions among his sons, and that the absence of Don Alfonso will be greatly to his disadvantage, since the Cardinal, who is popular with the people, is in Ferrara . . .’
²⁹

Lucrezia had clearly been relying on Francesco to help her if Ercole died while Alfonso was away and had obtained his promise to do so, as a letter to Francesco from Marcantonio Gatto makes clear. Gatto was one of the private messengers employed that year by Lucrezia and Francesco to convey letters and confidences too risky to be committed to paper. On 6 June, precisely at the time Ercole first fell ill, Gatto wrote to Francesco reminding him of the promise he had given to Lucrezia to go to Revere, within easy reach of Ferrara, should she have urgent need of him: ‘Everyone has offered the Lady their support should the Duke die and to dedicate their souls and their lives to her service – and above all the Cardinal [Ippolito] . . . although most people do not trust him,’ he wrote. ‘Many other things I will keep to tell you personally that I do not dare to write confirming that all this city will be in favour of the Lady, when they intend however to cry
“Turco!”
in the piazza. . . Believe Gattino, [little cat] My Lord, that you alone can do more in this city than all the house of Este together. . .’
³⁰
The story behind this last letter reflects the feverish atmosphere in Ferrara as Ercole’s reign was clearly coming to its close. Gatto was a very minor player who was in reality no more than a messenger. It does, however, demonstrate Lucrezia’s fears as to what might happen to her if Ercole, her principal protector, died while Alfonso was abroad, with Cesare out of the game and the Borgias’ greatest enemy on the papal throne.

Lucrezia’s last letter of that year, written on 17 December, was carried by hand to Mantua by Gatto. In it she asked Francesco to trust him as he would herself (the conventional formula for confidential messages) and ‘hold him as the most faithful servant which he is’, asking him to give effect to his promise that he would take him (Gatto) into his service. It was written when Ercole was on his deathbed; the content of her message via Gatto can never be known but clearly related to the latest situation and its possible dangers. Gatto was a fool who had got into deep water; Lucrezia, compassionate and appreciative of loyal servants, thought it better that he should stay out of Ferrara under Gonzaga’s protection. Ippolito for one would not have hesitated to eliminate him had he got wind of the gist of Gatto’s letter to Gonzaga.

Less than ten days earlier, on 8 December, Giustinian had reported Lucrezia as taking an important political initiative to protect herself and Alfonso in the event of Ercole’s death: