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Artis-Ann
Features Writer
1:00 AM 18th January 2025
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‘There She Stands / As If Alive’: The Marriage Portrait By Maggie O’Farrell

This novel is loosely based on Robert Browning’s poem My Last Duchess which itself is based on what is known of the true story of Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, who was believed to have murdered (or ordered the murder of) his young wife, Lucrezia di Cosimo de Medici. Browning was inspired by the portrait of Lucrezia which can be seen at the Palatine Gallery, close to Browning’s Florence residence. If you know the poem and recognise the chilling nature of the title I have given this piece, you assume to know the end of the story before you start, but O’Farrell adds a twist – nothing is certain.

The time-frame of the narrative frequently shifts and the novel opens with Lucrezia fearing Alfonso wants to kill her. It then takes the reader back in time to the birth and childhood of Lucrezia, youngest daughter of Grand Duke Cosimo and his wife, Eleanora. Lucrezia is a willful child who will not be tamed. She is, in turn, ignored and teased by her siblings who perceive her to be different; it’s true, she not only looks different from them, she is different also in nature, absorbing all that goes on around her, silently guarding precious knowledge. She has an affinity with animals and O’Farrell offers a magnificent description of the tiger who appears to a mesmerised Lucrezia as an ‘incandescent forbidden deity’. Likewise, the child sees details in nature and the world around her, to which others are blind and which she reflects in her artwork which is her passion and her escape.

Time continues to shift backwards and forwards as we learn of the events leading to the marriage of Lucrezia and Alfonso who was originally betrothed to Lucrezia’s older sister, Maria, before her untimely death. No doubt there are some who would say this novel needs trigger warnings, given Lucrezia is only thirteen at the time of her betrothal to a man ten years her senior, but such was the way of things at that time when marriage among the ruling classes was seen as a means of uniting powerful families and protecting wealth; not romantic, merely business. The average age of mortality was so much younger that life had a more urgent pace.

An unusual child, Lucrezia has a heightened imagination and is often prone to strange maladies and fits of fainting. She is tortured by the idea of marriage, linking it with death; prescience most extraordinary.

The narrative continues to alternate between the child, the young bride and the frightened woman who believes her powerful husband wants her dead. He needs an heir and she has not obliged despite his most ardent efforts. Alfonso, in fact, never fathered a child but he was not a man to accept blame or have his virility questioned.

Mercurial, he is Janus-faced; at times thoughtful, kind, calm and attentive but with an ‘underground stream of black corrosive intent’. He is a man ‘of many incarnations’...
O’Farrell weaves in subtle details from the poem, expanding and developing them with such imagination that the whole thing feels real and, as someone who knows Browning’s poem well, it is fascinating to see how O’Farrell uses it. She fleshes out the bones to enthrall the reader: the white mule, the portrait and the relationship between the subject and the mute artist. Lucrezia is seen as part ingenue, part wise and perceptive beyond her years. Jacopo, ‘the tongueless boy’ sees not a person but ‘an arrangement of shapes, an intersection of planes and angles, a meshing of light and shade’. The connection between Lucrezia and Jacopo is tacit and inexplicable but strong. The portrait itself is described by Alfonso as ‘a wonder’, both in the poem and the novel.

Based as it is on documented reality, O’Farrell fabricates some detail for dramatic effect, alters facts for greater clarity and her reimagining of the story fills in some of the blanks which have been lost in time, while never losing sight of the major players.

... in truth she will ‘not bend, will never yield’ and thus, it seems, her fate is inevitable. Or is it?
Alfonso is a complicated man. Mercurial, he is Janus-faced; at times thoughtful, kind, calm and attentive but with an ‘underground stream of black corrosive intent’. He is a man ‘of many incarnations’, capable of anything and not to be crossed. He demands total obedience but realises that Lucrezia cannot be tamed. The storm clouds gather for Lucrezia who learns how to hide her feelings, to appear submissive and penitent when necessary but who has a fire burning in her; in truth she will ‘not bend, will never yield’ and thus, it seems, her fate is inevitable. Or is it?

O’Farrell excels in her descriptions. The storm in all its glory comes to life on the page, lightning splitting the sky and thunder raging. The reader is at home in all the locations: the delizia with its gardens and surrounding estate, the many layered palazzo with its grand rooms and hidden passages. The relationships between Lucrezia and other characters are equally layered, not simply mistress and servant, daughter and parent, wife and husband but so much more. O’Farrell also makes clear the divide between sons and daughters; the former trained to fight and rule and the latter whose destinies are ‘to be used as a link in chains of power and to produce heirs’. Women must bend to the will of a man; servants are invisible; neither are seen ‘as vessels of judgement or emotion’.

There is intrigue, mystery and foreboding all set against a backdrop of period drama, capturing the essence of Renaissance Italy as well as the human qualities of those involved. It is a brilliantly crafted, very satisfying read.


The Marriage Portrait is published by Tinder Press