The Marriage Portrait

In 1560 15-year-old Lucretia left Florence to marry Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara. Less than a year later she’d be dead and the rumor is her husband murdered her. For her 2022 historical novel, Maggie O’Farrell took inspiration from Robert Browning’s poem My Last Duchess, widely believed to have been inspired by Alfonso. His Duchess Lucretia di Cosimo de’ Medici d’Este served as the inspiration for this puzzle of a historical novel. As Lucretia sits to have her portrait painted, it’s clear she’s in trouble. She’s unable to give her husband an heir, for reasons that aren’t her fault. People begin telling her she needs to have a plan and that she doesn’t know what her husband is capable of. Brilliantly written, O’Farrell paints gorgeous scenes in this portrait of what happens inside a fraught marriage.