Maggie O’Farrell has done it again! She has quite the knack of taking someone’s story from centuries past and bringing it to light today.
The Marriage Portrait is about Lucrezia de’ Medici, Duchess of Ferrara . While there isn’t a lot known about her very short marriage to Alfonso Il d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio rumors spread after she died that she was poisoned. Whether she was or she wasn’t remains a mystery.
Ms. O’Farrell has crafted a fictionalized retelling of the life and events leading up to her death of the young Duchess by using alternating timelines to depict the past when Lucrezia was young and “the present” when Lucrezia is dying. The way it is weaved together is brilliant. The characters in this are gripping, from Lucrezia’s nurse, to her Lady in Waiting, and the assistants of the artist commissioned to paint her marriage portrait. I found it amazing how much love or hate I felt for certain people and it made me wonder if people such as her parents and siblings truly treated her the way it’s depicted in this novel.
The fact that there is hardly any information on Lucrezia is a huge bonus since it gave Ms. O’Farrell the perfect blank canvas to create a beautiful retelling of her life.
I’d like to think that she was as intelligent, artistic, and creative as Ms. O’Farrell imagined her to be. Between this and Hamnet I’m anxiously awaiting to see what Maggie O’Farrell has in store for us next!