Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (33 page)

Letters from Ferrara announce that Duke Ercole is gravely ill, in imminent danger of death. On this occasion the Cardinal Regino told the Venetian orator that Donna Lucrezia, consort of Lord Alfonso, was his
‘comare’
[literally meaning co-godparent, which in those days implied a closer relationship than it does now], and in all her affairs bows [‘
fa capo
’] to your most Reverend Signory and that she serves you willingly, since she is a virtuous lady and well loved by him: with some other words spoken with considerable reserve and prudence, by which he tacitly wished to insinuate that, in case of the death of the aforesaid duke, she and her husband would be recommended to Your Serenity; saying, however, that she would not do otherwise, for her goodness and justice; . . . saying that it was almost common opinion among those who do not judge well of the affairs of Your Excellency from not understanding this, that she on the death of the Duke will be making some change in that state.
³¹

Since the death of Alexander VI and the accession of Julius II, Ferrara was again a state suspended between the expansionist ambitions of the papacy on the one hand and Venice on the other. Julius II had made it clear in his dealings with Ercole that he was no friend to Ferrara and its ruling family; his favouring of Ferrante, which had led Ippolito to leave Rome in a rage, indicated that he might well cause trouble by using Ferrante as an instrument in any succession quarrels. Alfonso had chosen to placate Venice, the power on his borders, rather than the probably implacable papacy. In September he had made a journey to Venice with the specific aim of obtaining the support of the Signory. Now, as the crisis of Ercole’s death approached, he was supported by Lucrezia who well knew how to exploit her still-powerful connections. As Christmas of 1504 approached, Alfonso was beginning to throw off his ‘Prince Hal’ image while Lucrezia looked forward to attaining the supreme position she had always wanted, as undisputed Duchess of Ferrara. For the first time, they were a true partnership and, once again, Lucrezia was pregnant.

11. Duchess of Ferrara

‘Do not trust anyone. . . And take care not to be seen writing because I know you are watched very closely. . .’

– Pietro Bembo to Lucrezia shortly after her accession as Duchess, 10 February 1505

On Saturday 25 January 1505, Ercole died after days of fever and shivering fits. Di Prosperi wrote to Isabella that on the Friday evening he had had what appeared to have been a stroke, brought on, it was thought, by the administration that morning of
auro potabile
(water mixed with gold). From the hour that his state had worsened, Alfonso and Giulio had never left his side and in the morning he died peacefully, surrounded by his sons and brother. Of the expected turbulence between the Este brothers, which was to make the following year a dangerous one for the family, there was no sign. Di Prosperi wrote of the death of Ercole and the accession of Alfonso: ‘For the one I condole with Your Ladyship and for the other I congratulate you all the more having seen everything come to pass in union, peace and love. . .’

On hearing of Ercole’s death, the
Giudice dei Savi,
Trotti, ordered the palace bell to be rung, and the people and the members of the Council (
Savi
) summoned to his office. He had ready the golden staff of office and the sword of justice for Alfonso’s investiture. Having announced the death of Ercole and the elevation of the new Duke, his eldest son, they proceeded to the Camera de la Stufa Grande in Alfonso’s apartments. There Alfonso, seated in an armchair and wearing a mantle of white damask lined with fur, a white cap and a collar of gold and jewels, was ceremonially invested with the office and insignia of Duke. After a speech by the
Guidice dei Savi
he was presented with the
bacheta
(baton), the symbol of his sovereignty, and the sword for the defence and maintenance of the State, whereupon he made a speech of response promising to be a good lord to all his subjects in love and justice, followed by the cry ‘Alfonso, Alfonso, Duca, Duca!’ Afterwards, mounted on a great courser, he rode through the streets to the sound of trumpets, shouts, the ringing of bells, and
schioppi
(bursts of gunfire), through a violent blizzard of snow, with Ippolito on his right hand and the Venetian
visdomino
on his left, followed by Giulio and Ferrante. He dismounted at the cathedral where the
Giudice
and the
Savi
swore fealty.

Lucrezia, through all her troubles and indeed dangers, had finally succeeded to the secure position of Duchess of Ferrara. While Alfonso was being greeted as Duke by his people, Lucrezia, splendidly dressed in a
camorra
of crimson velvet and a gown of white
tabi
with long golden fringes and a jewelled headdress, received recognition as their Duchess by the leading gentlewomen of Ferrara. She had watched the acclamation of Alfonso and his progress through the piazza from the windows before going down to meet him. It was a triumphant moment for both of them when they met, both ‘with happy faces’ as di Prosperi described it. Bowing, Lucrezia made as if to kiss his hand but Alfonso raised, embraced and kissed her, and hand in hand they went to show themselves to the people; then she returned to her apartments while Alfonso remained to receive the plaudits of the populace, before going up to join Lucrezia with whom he dined, together with their court favourite, the jester, il Barone, ‘in great joy’.

Ercole’s funeral took place two days later, when his body was carried through the streets bearing the Order of the Garter given him by the King of England to his burial place in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. ‘It is not too much to say,’ Gardner, the historian of Ercole’s court, wrote, ‘that of all the Italian sovereigns in the epoch of the Borgia, Ercole d’Este is the one sympathetic, almost the only not ignoble figure.’ Although, for all his piety, he could be time-serving, devious and untrustworthy, Ercole was undoubtedly the maker of modern Ferrara, almost doubling the city in size, with an entire new quarter to the north, magnificent ramparts and broad new streets lined with palaces, rebuilt churches and convents. He had employed artists of distinction, such as Cosimo Tura, Ercole de’Roberti, and, as his principal architect, Biagio Rossetti. The work was completed by the time of his death; the ‘city of silence’ of today – its works of art, magnificently decorated palaces and colourfully emblazoned buildings a pale shadow of Ercole’s Ferrara, half obliterated by earthquakes and the exile of the Este family – is still largely his creation. At the time of Ercole’s death, the Este court was the most cultured in Italy, the centre of theatre and music. His household included one of the largest companies of musicians and singers in Italy and he had even begun a purpose-built theatre, the building of which was discontinued by Alfonso. Ercole’s children did not inherit his extreme piety, and the mantle of protector of religion in the city was to fall upon Lucrezia. Indeed, the principal loser by Ercole’s death was Sister Lucia whose downfall was immediate. Already unpopular with her fellow nuns for the ducal favour she had enjoyed, she was accused of artificially renewing the wounds of the stigmata and deprived of all authority and precedence within the convent. Then aged only twenty-nine, she was kept a virtual prisoner by the other nuns until her death forty years later.

To all intents and purposes Alfonso had been in charge of Ferrara since his return, while the dying Ercole consoled himself with music, a choir of boy singers and the performance of a keyboard player. As the new Duke, Alfonso immediately showed skill and good grace in dealing with both his family and his subjects, ensuring that his brothers had enough money to live in style in the palaces with which their father had provided them. More importantly he addressed the economic situation of Ferrara, impoverished first by the war against Venice and then by Ercole’s great passion – the building of the new city, all of which had to be paid for by increased taxation. Ercole’s last years had been a saga of maladministration. To raise money he had resorted to the sale of offices and to commuting punishment to payment of fines, to such an extent that Sanudo talked of extortion and gross profiteering, while even the faithful di Prosperi wrote of ‘enormities worthy of being deemed corruption’. Alfonso abolished many of his father’s taxes and abandoned the system of the sale of offices. Despite spending his mornings hawking and hunting with his brothers, he directed most of his attention to the reform of the state: ‘The Lord thinks of nothing else but how to satisfy his subjects to the best of his ability,’ di Prosperi recorded.
¹
He sacked several officials and abolished various tax exemptions granted by his father. He sent to Venice to buy grain to avert the famine that was threatening, and made a state visit there in May, accompanied by Ferrante and Giulio, where he was received with signal honour by the Doge. From the beginning he had shown respect for Lucrezia’s administrative abilities by instituting on 31 January the
‘Examine’
for private petitions under her charge, assisted by Niccolò Bendideo, who was to become her secretary, and Hieronymo Magnanimo. She carried out her office, according to di Prosperi, with ‘intelligence and good grace’.

One of Alfonso’s first acts was to have the ceiling raised on the ‘secret way’, the
via coperta
built by Ercole as a passage between the Palazzo del Corte and the Castello. This crossed the moat from the eastern side of the palazzo over a small bridge to the Ravelin, a tower with foundations in the moat, and from there over a drawbridge to enter the castle. As a child, at the time of the rebellion of Niccolò d’Este, Alfonso had escaped with his mother from the palazzo through this passageway to the safety of the castle. Now he was connecting new rooms in the Palazzo del Corte to Lucrezia’s apartments in the Castello to make communication with her easier and more discreet, instead of having to go to the castle outside by the ‘via Courta’. This has been represented by Lucrezia’s biographer Maria Bellonci, who persistently denigrated Lucrezia’s relationship with Alfonso, as inspired by jealousy, so that he could spy on Lucrezia and surprise her at any hour. It was in fact designed not only for convenience but to satisfy Alfonso’s own desire for privacy. Alfonso, who to a great extent shared his father’s passion for rebuilding and decoration, indulged it whenever he could during the few untroubled early years of his reign. He modified the
via coperta
with a new roof and a new drawbridge, over which he built a colonnaded gallery, lit by many windows. On 4 February, di Prosperi reported to Isabella: ‘I believe Your Ladyship will have heard about the passage being built above the via Courta for access between the Corte and the Castello, but also he [Alfonso] has ordered a
‘lumaga quadra’
[a spiral staircase] by which His Lordship wishes to be able to descend into the piazzetta without going by the Corte or the Castello, by night and by day.’ Far from making these improvements to spy on Lucrezia, Alfonso was making it easier to come and go to his whoring without drawing attention to himself.

In the wake of Ercole’s death there was naturally a reorganization of the ducal households. There was, as usual, a swirl of rumour surrounding Lucrezia; di Prosperi, diligently but with only partial success as for obvious reasons he was held at arm’s length by Lucrezia, attempted to divine what was going on for Isabella’s information. On 1 January he wrote that as Duchess she would take on the living expenses of her court as she had at first ‘because those of her household had proved themselves incapable of providing for their needs’. She had also disgraced Polissena Malvezzi and ordered her immediately out of the household: ‘the cause no one knows but I believe she must have had good cause because she is known to be most wise’. Polissena, the woman who had entered so wholeheartedly into the flirtation with Francesco Gonzaga, turned out to be a malicious gossip and it was possibly on that account that Lucrezia so summarily dismissed her. Bembo’s friends, Ercole Strozzi and Antonio Tebaldeo, whom he had specifically linked with Lucrezia in his dedicatory letter for
Gli Asolani,
were both, according to Gardner, given ‘a severe fright by Alfonso at the beginning of his reign. Isabella’s secretary, Benedetto Capilupo, wrote to her on 3 February that Ercole Strozzi was in great danger because he had all the people against him and was out of favour with the Duke, and hinted that there was something more that he would tell her in person.
²
Early in April, a panic-stricken Tebaldeo wrote to Francesco, begging for a post in Mantua because ‘this duke hates me, though I know not why, and it is not safe for me to stay in this city . . .’ Possibly Lucrezia protected them – for the time being at least, since they remained in Ferrara. Bembo had written his long, passionate letter to Lucrezia on 10 February of that year, enjoining the utmost secrecy: ‘Do not trust anyone . . . And take care not to be seen writing because I know you are watched very closely. . .’ One possible spy may have been Girolamo da Sestola, nicknamed ‘Coglia’, principally a musician and dance teacher, but also, according to the historian of Ferrarese music, a ‘courtier, horseman, dancer, musician, spy, newsmonger and emissary’.
³
Apart from choreographing the dancing for Lucrezia’s wedding, he had acted at various times for Ercole, Alfonso, Ippolito and as an informer for Isabella. Another may have been a Gascon, Gian de Artigianova, a court singer known as ‘Gian Cantore’, who had recruited the famous composer Josquin Desprez for Ercole, and acted as confidant and pimp for Alfonso, and agent for the other Este. Bembo may also have been referring to members of the court, such as Beatrice de’Contrari, an intimate of Isabella.

Di Prosperi dropped repeated hints to Isabella about the changes in Lucrezia’s household. In May he reported that one Benedetto, a pupil of Hieronymo Ziliolo, was to be in charge of Lucrezia’s wardrobe (household accounts), ‘and for this they say that all her Spaniards will have to go’. In June he wrote, ‘It seems that it is the will of Our Lord that Madonna Elysabeth [presumably Elisabetta senese] and all the other foreign men and women who are in the Household of the Illustrious Lady his Consort should leave, including the Neapolitans and Samaritana Romana, whence they are all in a state which Your Ladyship may imagine. The causes of this I believe Your Ladyship will judge according to your own opinion. Above all, Count Lorenzo Strozzi has been deprived of the office of Seneschal
[Sescalcharia]
. . .’ He added that Madonna Beatrice de’Contrari, a favourite of the Este (and particularly of Isabella), ‘is said to be going to join Lucrezia’s household and to live in the Palace. . . and that Tromb[onc]ino [the famous singer-composer] and d. Thebaldeo would be among the number of those forced to leave. . .’

Di Prosperi was not always totally reliable. Several of those mentioned by him as being dismissed were still members of Lucrezia’s household a year later. Lucrezia was passionate about music and Bartolommeo Tromboncino, composer of
frottole
, lutenist and the most celebrated and highest paid of the court musicians, who had moved from the court of Isabella that year (no doubt much to the latter’s disgust), was still with her in 1506-7 and remained with her until she could no longer afford to pay him during the years of war, when Ippolito took over his salary. Significantly he was the only Italian musician outside Rome or Naples to compose
frottole
with Spanish texts, something which must have been done to please Lucrezia. As a woman she was not allowed to maintain a chapel choir of her own, but she had other musicians for her secular entertainments. They included Dionisio da Mantova, ‘Papino’; the fact that he was a Mantuan lutenist and composer (as was another of Lucrezia’s musicians, Paolo Poccino, who joined her in 1505) probably further annoyed Isabella. Niccolò da Padova, the ‘Niccolò Cantore’ of Lucrezia’s wedding company from Rome, was a lutenist, singer and composer of
frottole
. Then there was Ricciardetto Tamburino, a pipe and tabor player, and a woman singer, Dalida de’Putti, who eventually became one of Ippolito’s mistresses. On 20 June, di Prosperi wrote that Lucrezia’s Spaniards were preparing to leave but that for the moment nothing was known about her ladies. And on the 23 red he reported that Giovanni Valengo had replaced Lorenzo Strozzi, and that apart from him and Benedetto of the wardrobe, not one of Lucrezia’s household would be permitted to live in the Castello, apart from the
credenciero
and some
staffieri
(squires). Later he reported that Ercole Strozzi had been removed from office ‘and various things are said of him’. Apart from this, he and his brother Guido were said to be in dire financial straits.