Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (40 page)

Lucrezia had wanted to keep back the messenger so that she could write a letter to Francesco in her own hand, but childbirth had left her too weak to do so. She stressed that a reconciliation with Alfonso would be a good excuse for him to come to Ferrara and that before his departure Alfonso had said that such a move by Gonzaga would be welcome to him. She could hardly have made her feelings plainer: ‘[She] says you must do this [reconciliation] because you will soon be able to come to where she is.’ Emotional and confused, Lucrezia at one moment wanted to speed Strozzi on his way, the next asked him to stay and keep her company. ‘Write to her in any case so that it does not appear to her that you are cold,’ Strozzi implored him.
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This was Strozzi’s last known letter: whether or not Gonzaga did respond is unknown. But, using sickness as a pretext, he did not in the meantime venture from Mantua, probably still wary of the Este. Alfonso might have been absent but the more ruthless and hostile Ippolito was still there and often visited Lucrezia. Alfonso made an astonishingly rapid return from the French court on 13 May, going straight to visit Lucrezia and his son.

Violence was never far from Lucrezia’s life. Even as she rejoiced in her newborn son and the fulfilment of her duty as Duchess of Ferrara, which made her position impregnable, the murder of two people close to her reminded her of her Borgia days in Rome. On 5 June she wrote to Francesco Gonzaga: ‘On Sunday night around midnight Don Martino, a Spaniard, formerly a
capellano
of the late Duke my brother who has been in my service, was treacherously killed by brutal wounds in the face and head by a jealous Moor . . .’ Should the man, whom the bearer of the letter would describe, pass through Mantuan territory, she begged Francesco, according to the agreement he had with Alfonso, to arrest him and hand him over to her as ‘a homicide and traitor’. This young priest, di Prosperi reported, was the one who had helped the Duke Valentino escape. Having dined in the Palazzo del Corte with Lucrezia’s household, he was on his way to his room near the church of San Paolo when the attack occurred. The murderer was apparently never found.

That night of 5-6 June, three weeks after Alfonso’s return, an even more sinister murder occurred. On the morning of the 6th, Ercole Strozzi’s body was found in the middle of the road at the corner of the church of San Francesco, with twenty-two stab wounds in his body and his hair pulled out. His crutch lay beside him and he was wearing spurs, having ridden out on his mule to take a little fresh air and been ambushed by persons unknown. Despite his horrific wounds there was no blood on the ground: clearly he had been killed somewhere else and his body dumped by San Francesco. It was an obvious act of terror, of the kind which Cesare Borgia would not have hesitated to order, but why had it been committed? And by whom?

A week later di Prosperi was still uncertain as to the identity of Ercole Strozzi’s killers. Strozzi’s widow, Barbara Torelli, had also been the widow of Ercole di Sante Bentivoglio, with whom she had been on the bitterest of terms.Various names came up, including those of the Bentivoglio, who were hardly in a position to arrange such things at the time. Among them were Angela Borgia’s husband, Alessandro Pio da Sassuolo, for no conceivable reason other than the fact that his fierce mother was a Bentivoglio, and even Giovanni Sforza’s brother, Galeazzo, who had married one of Barbara’s daughters and was involved in a quarrel with his mother-in-law over his wife’s property in Bologna. ‘Of the malefactors and authors of the death of Messer Hercule Strozzi there are those who point one way, others another, but no one dares to speak for fear of coming up against a brick wall and voicing a dangerous opinion . . .,’ he wrote ten days later.

Ercole’s brothers, Lorenzo and Guido Strozzi (the first of whom had married another of Barbara’s daughters, Costanza), announcing his death on Barbara’s behalf to Francesco Gonzaga, exhorted him to carry out a vendetta against the murderers of‘such a faithful servant’ as Ercole had been to him. Barbara, recovering from the recent birth of her daughter by the murdered Ercole, also looked to Gonzaga for protection. Gonzaga had promised to stand as godfather to Barbara’s child, but cautiously after Ercole’s death deputed Tebaldeo to perform the office in his stead. It is noticeable that the Strozzi did not turn to the lord of Ferrara who, in the circumstances, could have been expected to institute investigation and punishment of the death of a man who, as a former
Giudice dei XII Savi
, had been a prominent administrator, a close friend of Lucrezia and a renowned poet and man of letters. Nothing happened, just as nothing had emerged after the deaths of Gandia and Bisceglie. Ercole Strozzi’s biographer Maria Wirtz cites a letter written twenty-four days after the murder by one Girolamo Comasco to Ippolito d’Este naming Masino del Forno as the author of the crime.
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Seizing a victim by the hair was a signature of del Forno’s operations, as had been noted in his violent arrest of Ippolito’s chamberlain, Cestatello, the previous year. Masino del Forno was one of the most loyal and ruthless of the senior Este brothers’ henchmen: if he was involved so were they, a fact which would explain the failure even to search for the killer. Two years later, in June 1510, Julius II openly accused Alfonso of the crime during an acrimonious interview with Alfonso’s envoy, Carlo Ruini. Julius was a man of explosive temperament, deeply hostile to Alfonso at that time, but he was exceptionally well informed and only the Pope could have made such an accusation without fear of the consequences.

Wirtz argues that Alfonso had Ercole Strozzi killed out of jealousy because he himself was in love with Barbara, and that the timing of the crime, only thirteen days after their alleged marriage, is significant. But di Prosperi had reported on 16 September the previous year that Ercole had married Barbara Torelli, and Strozzi himself had announced his marriage in distinctly unromantic terms to Gonzaga in a letter of 23 September. Wirtz and indeed most historians seem to be unaware of this, which destroys their theory of the significance of the marriage in provoking Alfonso’s homicidal jealousy. Jealousy there may have been on Alfonso’s part but not of Barbara Torelli – rather, of Lucrezia. Alfonso had never liked Ercole Strozzi and had removed him from office as soon as he could. But his most cogent reason for disliking Strozzi was the part he played as go-between in the romance between Lucrezia and Gonzaga. It may even have been a warning signal to Francesco. Although Alfonso, reserved and secretive as he was, never gave any sign that he knew of the clandestine correspondence between his wife and his brother-in-law, it is inconceivable that Ippolito’s intelligence system would not have picked up on it. Did his sister Isabella know or suspect something? It is entirely possible. Ferrara at night was as lawless as any other Italian city of the time, but it is not credible that such a violent murder could be committed by an ordinary criminal and the evidence of it, the body, dumped publicly in a main street in the city centre. Had it been any ordinary criminal, the Este would have been bound to pursue the case. They did not. Equally, they could have arranged for Strozzi simply to disappear. The violent nature of the incident and the alleged involvement of Masino del Forno point directly to Ippolito and Alfonso, who were not only constantly at odds with Francesco Gonzaga but also jealous for Este honour, touching as it did on the wife of Alfonso, mother of the Este heir, and the husband of Isabella.

Luzio absolves Alfonso of the murder, pointing the finger at the Bentivoglio, quoting from a letter which Barbara Torelli wrote to Gonzaga from Venice early the next year: ‘Who took my husband from me, is causing his children to lose their inheritance and seeking to threaten my life and make me lose my dowry . . .’ Yet in the next breath, Luzio claims that Alfonso was not only less bloodthirsty than had been rumoured but never left a crime unpunished, whatever the circumstances. In this case, however, he probably did. Luzio’s conclusion was that the Bentivoglio killed Ercole to revenge themselves on Barbara for her intransigence over her dowry. Ercole Strozzi, supported by Lorenzo Strozzi, had taken Barbara’s part in a dispute with her over her daughters’ dowries but since Lorenzo later joined forces with Barbara’s other son-in-law, Galeazzo Sforza, against her he can hardly have suspected the latter of involvement in Ercole’s murder. And why should anyone have been willing to protect the Bentivoglio, stateless, under interdict and enemies of the Pope as they were? Although the brothers Guido and Lorenzo Strozzi had made common cause with Barbara to beg Francesco Gonzaga to pursue a vendetta against the killer or killers of Ercole, there is no evidence that they took it further. After five hundred years, the crime remains unsolved: as in the Borgia days, the killer was too important to be identified. And in Ferrara that pointed to the Este as either instigators of or complicit in the murder of Ercole Strozzi. It is always possible that Ippolito was the prime mover but, if he was, he could not have done so without Alfonso’s agreement and Alfonso was in Ferrara when the crime took place.

The murder of Ercole Strozzi did not, however, deter Lucrezia from pursuing her passion for Gonzaga, although it certainly increased Gonzaga’s reluctance to take risks. As we have seen, Lucrezia was reckless and determined in pursuing her objectives. As a Borgia, she enjoyed an element of danger: she also thought she could get away with it. She knew Alfonso was devoted to her and she had recently borne him his longed-for son. She thought, probably rightly, that she could manage him if she continued their harmonious relations at every level and conducted her private passion with discretion. In any case in Alfonso’s absence she carried on a frequent official correspondence with Gonzaga on administrative matters. Somehow she induced Lorenzo Strozzi to step into his late brother’s shoes as go-between. From Finale en route to Reggio on 30 June 1508, only a few weeks after Ercole’s death, she wrote in her own hand a letter of recommendation to Gonzaga on behalf of Lorenzo who was to take it in person to Mantua: ‘Since Count Lorenzo Strozzi is coming to you as no less devoted a servant of yours than was Messer Hercole his brother, I could not fail to write these few lines both to remind you of my goodwill towards you and to recommend the Count in every occurrence when he may turn to you, you will also hear from him personal matters of mine. I pray you to give him faith as if he were myself.’ Strozzi’s reward was to be the favour of Francesco and Lucrezia. In another letter in her own hand of 19 October she thanked Francesco for the favour he had shown Strozzi in some case which has given her the greatest pleasure ‘for the love she bears the Count for his merit and virtues’.

This time no pseudonyms were used and the language was less passionate, so as not to arouse suspicion should it be intercepted. Strozzi signed the letters with his own name, but, reading between the lines, Lucrezia’s continuing desire to see her recalcitrant lover is evident. She was at Reggio, accompanied by Strozzi, when he wrote to Gonzaga, attempting to lure Gonzaga to a rendezvous with her. The language was formal, the intention clear. The Most Illustrious Duchess, he said, wanted to let Gonzaga know that within eight or ten days she would have to leave for Ferrara because of the Duke’s departure from there. But, because Her Ladyship wished to speak personally to him if possible, she urged him to come to Reggio because nothing in the world would give her more pleasure: ‘I reminded her that Your Lordship was confined to bed: she said she would order many prayers to be said at Reggio and in Ferrara that Your Lordship would soon be free [from his illness] and come to her. Also that if it were permitted it would not have been difficult for her to go there and speak to you and visit you. She regrets his illness as much as if it were her own. More she never heard that Your Lordship was in bed, or she would have sent a message of condolence which she will do.’ Lucrezia, he told Francesco, had been very ill of a bloody flux of which she has now recovered, but which prevented her from writing in her own hand to plead with him to come to Reggio by all means. ‘I excused you on the grounds that you will not be able to come but Her ladyship commanded me that in any case I write to you and I have done what she ordered . . .’ Lucrezia was so anxious for an answer, he said, that Francesco should either respond to his letter directly, where it would be delivered into her hands, or to Ferrara whence he would see that it ‘flew to her’.
¹⁴

Gonzaga does seem to have been genuinely ill, as he wrote in a graceful, affectionate letter dictated to his formidable secretary, Tolomeo Spagnoli, Isabella’s
bête noire,
who was probably not unwilling to further his master’s romance with her rival. Only the state he was in, Gonzaga wrote, could have prevented him from seeing the Lady Duchess, his most cordial sister, whose good wishes and prayers have had a restorative effect. He had heard of her illness with great displeasure, for ‘such a fine body should be spared any infirmity’. He asked Strozzi to assure her that one of the principal reasons he wanted to be totally free of his malady was to see her again.
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Even one of Lucrezia’s jesters, ‘Martino de Amelia’, entered into the game, writing from Reggio addressing Francesco as ‘Illustrious Lord Marchese of Mantua, entirely the Duchess’s’ and describing how he had transformed himself into Gonzaga’s image to console the Duchess and amuse the Duke and the Cardinal. Lucrezia, he said, had thought of visiting him but was now not going (possibly because of the arrival of Alfonso and Ippolito), signing himself ‘Martin, your slave for the great love my Lady Duchess bears you’.
¹⁶
Lucrezia herself followed this up three days later with a private note to be sent to Francesco by a messenger carrying a letter from Alfonso, who would tell him of her date of departure from Reggio. Through October and November, Lucrezia continued to send messages to Gonzaga via Strozzi, ostensibly asking him to further Strozzi’s cause.At times she would scribble her own notes with a covering letter from Strozzi; sometimes Strozzi would be the bearer of messages from her ‘which could not be written’. Gonzaga, however, remained in Mantua and Isabella visited Ferrara in November without him.