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Recites at length Lucretia Borgia's fame, Whom Rome should place, for charms and chastity, Above that wife who whilom bore her name. Strozza and Tebaldeo - Anthony And Hercules - support the honoured dame: (So says the scroll): for tuneful strain, the pair A very Linus and an Orpheus are. Orlando Furioso Canto 42 Ludovico Ariosto  Early in 1505, after the death of her father-in-law, she became really Duchess of Ferrara, and availed herself to the full of her new advantages. She became the very center of the intellectual life of Ferrara, and her court was frequented by all the poets and learned men of her day. Endless sonnets and epigrams were written in her honor, comparing her to every Goddess of antiquity, and praising her beauty and virtue in no measured terms. Ariosto, in the Orlando Furioso, places her in the temple of famous women, above the Lucrezia of old, in beauty and chastity. As time went on, she devoted herself more and more to works of charity, as Paolo Giovo tells us, she renounced the pomp and vanities of the world, to which she had been accustomed from her childhood; she founded hospitals, and was a mother to the sick, the poor and the destitute. But the poor Duchess was unfortunate in that her good deeds were soon forgotten. The study of celebrated characters of former days must always be a most difficult problem. If we are often mistaken about our own contemporaries, how much more likely are we to form a wrong judgment with regards to those who are only shadows from the past? If her latest great biographer, Gregorovius, has succeeded in dethroning Lucrezia Borgia from the pedestal of wickedness where legend has placed her by the side of Phaedra, Medea and Clytemnestra, this unhappy lady still remains a tragic figure. Everything was against her; her birth, her early training, her surroundings, the evil character of her nearest relations, who merely used her as a tool for their ambition. And, even when she had weathered the storm and left Rome forever to live for more than twenty years, not merely blameless, but honored and beloved in her new home - it was the very irony of fate that she should be held up through the centuries, as the type of infamy for novelist, historian, and dramatist. Yet the last word has not been spoken. The character of Lucrezia Borgia still awaits the final verdict of a broader knowledge. ~ Christopher Hare, The Most Illustrious Ladies of the Italian Renaissance, 1907  Lucrezia was nor particularly fair, but she was described in her youth as dolce ciera, sweet face; and amid all the coarseness and looseness of her times and her enviroment, through all the disillusionments of divorce and the horror of seeing her husband murdered almost before her eyes, she kept this "sweet face" to her pious end, for it was a frequent theme in Ferrarese poetry. Pinturicchio's portrait of her, in the Borgia apartment of the Vatican, agrees well with this description of her in her youth. ~ Will Durant, The Renaissance Would that my fire might warm this frigid ice, And turn, with tears, this dust to living flesh, And give to thee anew the joy of life! Then would I boldly, ardently, confront The man who snapped our dearest bond, and cry, "O cruel monster! See what love can do!" Lucrezia Borgia  1474 The first ephemeris ad XXXII Annos Futuros by Regiomontanus (Johann Muller) is printed in Nuremberg, 2nd in Venice. 1475 Lorenzo Medici uses astrologers. 1500 Leonardo da Vinci draws illustrations associating astrological symbols with parts of the body and terrestrial life in Zodiac. Botticelli paints famous Venus and Mars. 1510 Lucrezia Borgia explores astrological philosophies with astrologers and her father Pope Alexander VI. One of Europe's oldest libraries, whose treasures include a Leonardo Codex and a 5th-century copy of the Iliad, reopens in Milan today after a restoration lasting seven years. The Ambrosian Library was founded in 1609, seven years after Sir Thomas Bodley opened the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Its initial 30,000 volumes grew to 400,000 printed books, 15,000 manuscripts and 60,000 letters and documents. "It is a DNA of our history," said La Stampa yesterday. The library reflected the cardinal's often eclectic tastes. It guaranteed users ink, pens and paper, and in cold weather readers were brought warmed slippers. It still possesses Petrarch's own annotated parchment copy of Virgil poems, the illustrated Iliad, brought from Alexandria and known as the Ilias Picta, and a manual on the art of painting, De Prospectiva Pingendi, by Piero della Francesca. The manuscript collection include letters from Boccaccio, the author of the Decameron, Savonarola, Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli,Goethe and Stendhal. Perhaps the oddest exhibit is a lock of Lucrezia Borgia's hair in a crystal casket. Byron wrote ecstatically to John Murray when he saw it in 1816 that the hair was "blonder than you can imagine", and is said to have stolen a strand "as a keepsake". ~ Richard Owen  On 27 July, 1501, Pope Alexander VI left Rome to survey his conquest; at the same time he left his daughter, the widowed Lucrezia Borgia in the Vatican with authority to open his correspondence and conduct the routine business of the Holy See. He also erected the confiscated Possessions of the aforesaid families into two duchies, bestowing one on Rodrigo, the infant son of Lucrezia, the other on Juan Borgia, born to him a short while after the murder of Gandia, and to whom was given the latter's baptismal name (Pastor, op. cit., III 449). Lucrezia, now in her twenty-third year, did not long remain a widow; her father destined her to be the bride of another Alfonso, son and heir of Duke Ercole of Ferrara. Although both father and son at first spurned the notion of a matrimonial alliance between the proud house of Este and the Pope's illegitimate daughter, they were favourably influenced by the King of France. The third marriage of Lucrezia, celebrated by proxy in the Vatican (December 30, 1501), far exceeded the first in splendour and extravagance. If her father meant her as an instrument in her new position for the advancement of his political combinations, he was mistaken. She is known henceforth, and till her death in 1519, as a model wife and princess, lauded by all for her amiability, her virtue, and her charity. Nothing could well be more different from the fiendish Lucrezia Borgia of the drama and the opera than the historical Duchess of Ferrara. James F. Loughlin ~ Alexander VI Illustrious Master: Today after supper Don Gerardo Saraceni and I betook ourselves to the Illustrious Madonna Lucrezia to pay our respects in the name of Your Excellency and His Majesty Don Alfonso. We had a long conversation regarding various matters. She is a most intelligent and lovely, and also an exceedingly gracious, lady. Your Excellency and Don Alfonso - so we were led to conclude - will be highly pleased with her. Besides being extremely graceful in every way, she is modest, lovable and decorous. She is very beautiful, but her charm of manner is still more striking. In short, her character is such that it is impossible to suspect anything "sinister" of her; but on the contrary we look for only the best...Rome, December 23, 1501... Your Excellency's servant, Joannes Lucas Ferdinand Gregorovius, Lucretia Borgia  Except again, Lucrezia. What a contrast she offered to her fallen brother (Caesar) in the modesty and prosperity of her final years! She who in Rome had been the subject and victim of every scandalmonger was loved by the people of Ferrara as a model of feminine virtue. She tried there to forget all the horrors and tribulations of her past; she recaptured, with due restraint, the joyousness of her youth, and added to it a generous interest in the needs of others. Ariosto, Tebaldeo, Bembo, Tito and Ercole Strozzi praised her profitably in their verse; the called her pulcherrima virgo, "most beautiful maiden," and no one blinked an eye. Perhaps Bembo tried to play Abélard to her Héloïse, and Lucrezia now became something of a linguist, speaking Spanish, Italian, French, and reading a "little Latin and less Greek." We are told that she wrote poetry in all these tongues. Aldus Manutius dedicated to her his edition of the Strozzi poems, and implied, in the preface, that she had offered to underwrite his great printing enterprise. Amid all these learned concerns she found time to bear her third husband four sons and a daughter. Alfonso was well pleased with her in his uneffusive way. In 1506, having occasion to leave Ferrara, he appointed her his regent; and she fulfilled her duties with such good judgment that the Ferrarese were inclined to pardon Alexander VI for having once left her in charge of the Vatican. In the last years of her brief life she devoted herself to the education of her children, and to works of charity and mercy. ... On June 14, 1519, she was delivered of her seventh child, but it was stillborn. She never rose from that bed of pain. On June 24, aged thirty-nine, Lucrezia Borgia, more sinned against than sinning, passed away. Will Durant, The Renaissance   Lucrezia Borgia's
reputation for scandal embodies a classic example of an infamous personage of
history who, like so many strong women of independent means before her, has been
typecast as the villainess. Seshat, the forgotten wife and teacher of the
Egyptian God Hermes; Miriam, High Priestess and maligned sister of Moses;
Cleopatra the seductress; Mary Magdalene, the penultimate Scarlet Woman; Hypatia, the
intellectual harlot; Sappho of Lesbos, whom Plato elevated to the Tenth Muse; Catherine de Medici, Machiavellian mother par excellence; these
and many other unnamed, brilliant ladies represent a class of feminine ostracism
rarely acknowledged for what society dare not label: the genius of womanhood -
often ignored, frequently despised and seldom not decried.Writers and friends of Lovestarz are committed to presenting these worthy women in a new light - a more equitable historical setting and milieu - and shall strive to highlight the remarkable lives of those rebel priestesses of Wisdom who sacrificed honor, name and personal ambition for the cause of free souls everywhere - the right to education and the expression of personal beliefs, no matter the century or the tenor of the times. © 1999-2004 Lovestarz.com All rights reserved.  |