Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (49 page)

Lucrezia was left to govern in her own name, and to carry out the
Examine
and the audiences as usual. She frequently invited Alfonso’s gentlemen to dine with her. Alfonso’s concern for the safety of his family was shared by Lucrezia who wrote to Rome on the morning of his departure a letter to be communicated to the Pope in her name and that of Alfonso. It was intended to avert any suspicion Leo might have had concerning Alfonso’s journey to France by underlining the fact that he had been summoned by the King of France, and to assure the Pope that, wherever he might be, Alfonso was most disposed to obey the Pope ‘as his devoted and obedient son and servant’. She added her own profession of devotion to the Pope in whatever he wished and begged him, ‘in the absence of the Duke to hold ourself, our children and state commended to him’.
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Shortly after Alfonso’s departure for France, Lucrezia received news of her mother’s death in Rome. ‘My mother is still ill and her life must end soon,’ she had written to Isabella. The term she used was ‘
la matre
’ – the mother – not
‘mia matre
’ – my mother – unconsciously revealing the distance there had always been between herself and Vannozza. The news of her death did not reach Alfonso until he arrived in Paris: to his letter of condolence, Lucrezia replied in a handwritten letter referring to her mother’s death in very curious terms: ‘I thank Your lordship infinitely for the comfort you have given me in your most welcome letter . . . which has completely alleviated that small residue of chagrin which against my will I have sometimes felt for the death of my mother. That is enough, I do not want to hear any more of it . . .’
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The lack of grief is extraordinary when compared with the terms in which she spoke of the death even of Jofre. Lucrezia had not seen her mother since she had left Rome seventeen years before. While Cesare had been close to Vannozza, Lucrezia seems to have remained distant from her, devoted to her father and regarding Adriana de Mila as her mother. Few letters from Vannozza survive in the Este archives and those that do are businesslike rather than affectionate. The first, dated February 1515, asks for Lucrezia’s and Alfonso’s favour with the Duke of Milan against a Giovanni Paolo Pagnano in Milan who was claiming that she owed him 300 ducats. It is couched in the kind of complaining, almost hysterical, language that any daughter being asked a favour might find tiresome:

‘This Pagnano,’ Vannozza wrote,

thinks of nothing else but to give me some annoyance and trouble me as long as I live. Thus I pray Your Excellency that you should make every effort to ensure that I am once and for all freed of such persecution and to find some expedient so that I may no longer be in fear which certainly would be the cause of the total ruin of myself and the few means which I have. My need is that Your Excellency together with the Most Illustrious Lord Duke your consort should send a discreet and amiable servant to the Most Illustrious Duke of Milan with favourable letters from you, in which you pray the Most Illustrious Lord Duke to intervene with the said Paolo and induce him to perpetual silence and in the end order him that, given my good reasons, he must no longer molest me . . . He [Paolo] as a man lacking in respect has always wished to act against me, as if I were the most vile person in the world, thinking perhaps that I was abandoned and derelict of every help and favour, and that I would not find anyone to speak for me, but I thank almighty God . . . that neither He nor men of the world have abandoned me, and so again I pray and urge you with all the strength of my heart that Your Excellency will not fail me with your help and favour . . .

She signed herself ‘La felice et infelice matre Vannozza Borgia’ – ‘The happy and unhappy mother, Vannozza Borgia.’
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Apart from politely wishing Lucrezia good health and that of her family, the letter contained nothing of a personal nature or expression of affection, which might be thought odd, considering that Lucrezia was some six months pregnant with her daughter Leonora and that her son Alexandro was perpetually ill.

Vannozza remained obsessed with the machinations of Pagnano, writing another complaining letter to Lucrezia about it. It seems that in Ippolito d’Este she found a more sympathetic ear, and indeed the tone of her letters to him is far more agreeable, even insinuating, as she returned to the charge against Pagnano. Between July and October 1515 she wrote him no fewer than five letters on the subject, the last thanking him with abject gratitude for his efforts: ‘We have received a most welcome letter from Your Reverend Lordship,’ she wrote on 14 September, ‘for which we render you infinite thanks for the great love and charity you have borne us, particularly in this business of ours. No words could express our gratitude sufficiently so we pray to The Most High to keep you in that state which we most desire. Thus, I ask My Most Reverend and Illustrious Lord if possible that you could press this Pagnano in such a way that he will see the prudence of not disturbing me as he does. I swear to God that [I feel] shame rather than the loss that an usurious merchant should bring me to this . . .’
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Even the intervention of Ippolito, as Archbishop of Milan, had not produced an effect a month later. Ippolito fell ill and Vannozza was clearly panic-stricken, returning to the whining mode which she had used with Lucrezia. ‘No words can express,’ she wrote to him on 15 October,

the melancholy I feel at the sickness of Your Reverend Lordship and I have good reason to because I have no other hope in this world than Your Lordship and God knows that I do not rest day and night praying God that he should restore you to health and guard you from betrayals and traitors. And more, my Lord, I am most grieved that I am not in a position to come and be of service to you as I was to the late Duke and still more I am troubled by the persecution of Paolo Pagnano which would be enough if I was some woman or other that had no one and what grieves me more is that no regard is had for Your Lordship and for this My Lord I pray you that for the love you bear Jesus Christ you will not allow this man of nothing to tear me to pieces . . .

It was a question of 2,000 ducats owed over two or three years. If Ippolito could not settle it in her favour, she said, it would result in her dishonour and ruin.

The struggle against Pagnano was still going on in April 1517 when she again appealed to Ippolito for help. This time Pagnano, with the powerful help of Gian-Giacopo Trivulzio, Marshal of France and one of the most celebrated
condottieri
of his day, was trying to obtain sentence against her in a high court of law. She accused them of trying to have her and her emissary murdered. Signing herself ‘La felice et infelice. Como matre’ (‘as mother’), the correspondence appears to have ended.

Money, as it would appear from the above, was a driving force in Vannozza’s life. For all her complaints of ruin and destruction, she was a woman of considerable property. Apart from her handsome house in the Monti quarter, she owned other properties which she rented out: one large building contained three artisan’s shops with rooms above. Two of the shops were inhabited by leather workers and their wives, who earned their living as laundresses, and one by a Florentine carpenter; above, two of the rooms were occupied by Margarita Mole and Lactantia, courtesans, the third by Madonna Montesina, ‘a poor old Spanish woman’. In another building, rented out by Vannozza and also divided into three shops, one was occupied by a blacksmith, the two others by courtesans, one of them, Madonna Laura, a Spaniard, the other a cheap prostitute of the sort known as ‘
de la candeleta
’ – by the candle in the window, a sign of their trade. In 1483, three years after Lucrezia’s birth, she and her second husband, Giorgio della Croce, had rented the ‘Leone’, the first purpose-built inn in Rome and one of the most renowned, no doubt a profitable undertaking. She bought a second hostelry, the ‘Vacca’, near the Campo dei Fiori. She also appears to have raised money to finance her business undertakings: apart from borrowing from Paolo Pagnano, among the documents in the Archivio di Stato in Rome relating to her is a list of jewels, annotated ‘List of the things which are in pawn’.
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In the latter years of her life, like other rich Roman matrons she bought peace for her soul and forgiveness for her sins with charitable donations. The fashionable church of Santa Maria del Popolo, much favoured by the Borgias, was a particular focus for her generosity. She endowed a chapel there in which Giorgio della Croce and their son Ottaviano were buried, as she was to be herself. She ordered marble ornaments for her chapel from the celebrated Andrea Bregno, including her arms, to be placed above the arch; she also donated a house on the Piazza Pizzo di Merlo, which may have been the one in which Lucrezia spent her early years, to this same church. In 1517 she donated the building which had been the Osteria della Vacca to the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Consolazione, a refuge for poor and sick women, with the condition that three masses should be said a year, one for her, one for Giorgio della Croce and one for Carlo Canale (the afterlife she envisaged for herself would certainly be crowded with men). To the same hospital she donated a silver bust of Cesare which disappeared, probably in the Sack of Rome in 1527.

Vannozza died on 26 November 1518, aged sixty years, four months and thirteen days. By the time of her death she had achieved wealth and respectability but she was still remembered principally for her association with Alexander VI and their children. Sanudo reported in a letter from Rome of 4 December 1518: ‘The other day died Madama Vannozza who was the woman of Pope Alexander and mother of Duke Valentino and the Duchess of Ferrara.’ News of her death was cried through Rome as befitted a celebrity of her stature, according to the letter: ‘And that night I found myself in a place where I heard cry “
la parte
” in the Roman manner with these formal words, “. . . Know ye that Madonna Vannozza is dead, mother of the Duke of Gandia!”’ As a member of Rome’s most prestigious lay spiritual association, the Company of the Gonfalone, her funeral was well attended by the leading nobles and citizens. She was buried, Sanudo’s correspondent continued, ‘with pomp almost the equal of a cardinal . . . The chamberlains of the Pope attended which does not normally happen to anyone.’ Her tombstone proudly recorded her relationship with Cesare, Juan – she even included Jofre – and Lucrezia, with their resounding titles. It was the only part of her tomb to survive and can still be seen today, removed to the porch of the little Basilica di San Marco, opposite the flamboyant Vittorio Emanuele Monument. Even the mass celebrated on the anniversary of her death (for which she had undoubtedly paid) was cancelled in the mid eighteenth century by the confraternity responsible, by then ashamed of the infamous Borgia connection.
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Alfonso and Lucrezia were a close partnership at this time, in their care for Ferrara and, above all, their children. His concern for her was obvious, as was his love. As Lucrezia had watched him mature over the difficult years of war, she had come to admire, respect and love him and she was proud of his achievements. When he reached Milan he took the trouble to write a letter in his own hand (which has since disappeared), a rare concession for a ruling prince. Lucrezia replied thanking him for the news of his arrival in Milan and ‘what you have achieved there, and of your departure on your way [to France] . . .’ She had clearly written to him on the day of his departure, the 24th, and she was reproving him for not having written to her sooner: ‘Even if it arrived tardily it was timely enough to hear of your wellbeing and that the tardiness was not your fault as I had thought . . . God be praised for it and for mine and our children.’ She sent him all the latest news, enclosing a letter from Henry VIII of England, thanking him for the lute which Alfonso had sent him, and one from the Duchess of Milan asking for the stallions to be sent as soon as possible. She also gave him the latest international news to keep him up to date: a friend had seen an autograph letter from Charles V, ‘His Catholic Majesty’, to the King of France, reaffirming their friendship and asking for the King’s daughter, Charlotte, to be substituted for her sister, Louise, his bride under the terms of the Treaty of Noyon, who had since died.

Lucrezia had been kept informed since the outset of Alfonso’s journey by his companions, who included her favourite doctor, Lodovico Bonaccioli, Alfonso Ariosto and Alfonso’s secretary in France, Bonaventura Pistofilo, who also wrote to his colleague in Ferrara, Obizzo da Remi. En route on the day of Alfonso’s departure Pistofilo wrote a hasty note to Obizzo saying that Alfonso was in high spirits with his company and that Lucrezia should be so too. From their correspondence it would appear that Alfonso, although far less pious than his father, had inherited his interest in saintly nuns and prophetesses. He commissioned Pistofilo to find out whether there was anyone with a reputation for sanctity in the state of Monferrato where they had lodged with the Marchioness and specifically to pass on to Lucrezia what Alfonso himself had heard from her – that some months past, when the Marquis was dying, she had brought in a holy woman from Bologna who was reputed to have the gift of prophecy, ‘but this had brought them little fruit’.
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At Turin, Alfonso received an urgent message from the King to speed his journey to arrive before the English envoys with their company of eight hundred horse who were to be received with great pomp. Alfonso took the post-horses provided, with a few companions – Sor Enea, Messer Vincenzo, Alfonso Ariosto, il Cingano and il Mona, leaving the rest of his company to continue their normal journey.
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