The Borgias, page 26
Lucrezia now had to find a new messenger for her letters to Gonzaga; and she found one in Ercole Strozzi’s brother. ‘Lorenzo Strozzi is coming to Mantua,’ she wrote to Gonzaga. ‘He is as devoted a servant as was Ercole, his brother.’
But Gonzaga had no intention of going to see Lucrezia. He wrote to say that he was ill, too ill to travel. She pleaded with him; he was still too ill. In that case, she said, she would come to look after him; and she was on the point of joining him when her husband and Cardinal Ippolito heard of her intentions and took her back to Ferrara.
As had been the case with Pietro Bembo, their ardour cooled to affection and the two remained on friendly terms, corresponding regularly for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, Lucrezia mournfully resumed her life in Ferrara, once again the dutiful wife and consort, and now, with age, less the happy, lively, young woman she had once been, who had rejoiced in wearing those extravagant hats she had designed for herself and her ladies to attend Mass in the cathedral.
On April 26, 1509, news arrived in Ferrara that Duke Alfonso had been given the post of captain-general of the church by Julius II, much to the fury of his brother-in-law Francesco Gonzaga, but to the joy of his subjects, who greeted the announcement with the customary peals of bells, thunder of artillery, and flashing fireworks. This appointment was particularly important in the light of the fact that the pope had recently arranged an alliance to curb the growing power of Venice, declaring that he would join forces with anyone in order to reduce the city once more ‘to a little fishing village’ – and, indeed, he had been joined by most of the ruling heads of Europe: Emperor Maximilian, Louis XII of France, Ferdinand of Spain, and most of the Italian powers, including both Mantua and Ferrara.
Duke Alfonso was to be absent from Ferrara for a considerable part of the next three years, first leading Julius II’s armies against Venice, which was resoundingly defeated in May 1509 at the Battle of Agnadello; when Julius II abruptly changed sides the following year, to ally himself with Venice and to launch an attack on the French forces in Italy, in order to drive the ‘barbarians’ back beyond the Alps, Alfonso remained loyal to Louis XII, and the pope used this as the excuse he needed to excommunicate the duke and deprive him of his fief before moving north, leading his armies in person, to attack the duchy of Ferrara.
‘Having been unable to separate the Duke of Ferrara from his loyalty to the French King,’ wrote Guicciardini, ‘the Pope had made every effort to occupy the duchy, pretending that he had done so on account of a dispute over the taxes and tolls on salt.’ For Alfonso, the autumn of 1510 was exceptionally busy as he strengthened his fortifications, something about which he knew a great deal. Nevertheless, Modena soon fell to the papal forces, and they now marched on to lay siege to Alfonso’s strategic fortress of Mirandola, which had been garrisoned with the help of French soldiers.
Julius II had already proved himself a formidable opponent on the battlefield when, in 1506, having dismembered Cesare’s empire, he had turned his attention to Bologna, conquering the city and removing Giovanni Bentivoglio from power. He returned to Rome in triumph. The Venetian envoy thought that never had any emperor or victorious general received so remarkable a welcome. A few thoughtful men, however, regretted that the Vicar of Christ should resemble more the Lion of Judah than the Lamb of God. The Dutch scholar Erasmus, himself ordained a priest, wrote ironically of Julius II’s entry into Bologna as though in the pope’s own words: ‘Ah, would to God you had seen me borne aloft into Bologna! The horses and chariots, the marching battalions, the galloping commanders, the flaming torches, the pretty page boys, the pomp of bishops and glory of cardinals . . . and I borne aloft, head and author of all!’ His satirical attack on Julius II was vicious: ‘Your name suits you perfectly,’ he wrote, likening the pope to Julius Caesar. ‘You unjustly seized tyrannical power, despising and ignoring the gods, and plunging your country into war’; the only difference Erasmus could see was that Julius II was of common stock.
In January 1511 Julius II arrived at Mirandola to oversee in person the siege of the castle; he took up lodgings, according to Guicciardini, ‘in a farmer’s hovel where he was within range of the enemy artillery.’ He went about the camp in the bitter cold and driving snow, his armour concealed by a white cloak, his head in a sheepskin hood, cursing his enemies, moving his quarters when they were hit by cannonballs, and shouting orders to his captains, his energy and enthusiasm ‘not chilled in the slightest degree,’ added the historian, ‘by the bitter cold which his troops were scarcely able to endure.’
Inspired by his restless energy, his men breached the walls of Mirandola, their task much eased by the icy cold that had caused the water in the moat to freeze deep enough to bear the weight of the papal troops. With no chance of relief, the castle surrendered. This fresh victory encouraged other cities to join the pope. Spain came to his aid against the French, who were Duke Alfonso’s principal allies, while both Parma and Piacenza, abandoned by the French, declared themselves willing to join the Papal States. Julius II annexed them immediately, announcing that he hated the Spanish quite as much as the French, and that he would not rest until they had been driven out of the peninsula too.
Ferrara, however, was to prove a harder proposition for the bellicose pope. On November 28, 1510, the French army arrived at Ferrara to help the defence of the city. Two days later, the duke, in the presence of the French captains, had addressed the ‘courtiers, citizens and artisans’ who had gathered early in the evening in the town hall to hear their duke speak. The chronicler Zerbinati takes up the story:
He told the people how he was expecting the Pope’s army to arrive soon and asked the people to remain as faithful to him as they always had been to the house of Este, and he promised the people that he would not abandon them, as he had been abandoned by everyone except by the French, and that if they stayed faithful to him he was sure of victory because the city was strong, that they would fortify it and that we were well supplied with artillery and with food and with a large population; then he repeated that if the people kept their trust in him then he had no doubts at all . . . Messer Antonio Costabili replied wisely that his people had always been most faithful to the house of Este, and for the future and for the present they would always be so, and that he was not to worry about this because the people were ready and prepared to fight against his enemies and everyone started to shout: Duke Alfonso! Duke Alfonso! And so His Lordship and the French captains left the room well satisfied with the populace who now prepared for the arrival of the enemy army in Ferrara.
The following day Duke Alfonso had published a decree ordering all warehouses and shops to close for the week and for everyone to work instead on fortifying the city. And then they waited for the enemy to arrive, going about their business as normally as possible while the winter months passed and Julius II’s forces fought relentlessly for the possession of Mirandola, knowing that once that fortress had fallen, it would be their turn next.
On Maundy Thursday, April 17, the chaplains of the cathedral held the customary confirmation service behind closed doors, ‘which they did, not having permission from the Pope to do because of the excommunication,’ reported the chronicler Zerbinati, who added in the margin of his notebook that ‘I was told about this, because I was not there.’
The winter of 1511 had been unusually long and hard, ‘the greatest cold, the thickest ice and the heaviest snow that I have ever seen,’ commented Zerbinati, adding that ‘the winter has lasted for so long that today, the last day of April, we are still lighting our fires and we are still wearing our fur-lined coats.’ Three weeks later, however, came news that warmed the hearts of the brave populace: the Bolognese had rebelled against Julius II, and the Bentivoglio were once again in power. The celebrations that night were exceptionally loud – bells, fireworks, cannonades, shouting, songs, youths roistering on the streets brandishing branches of trees on which blossoms had begun to bloom – to rejoice at the defeat of the mighty papal army ‘which has threatened us all the past winter.’ The next day ‘all the shops were closed, as if it were a Sunday.’
Throughout these difficult years while Alfonso had been frequently absent, fighting first for Julius II and then against him, it was Lucrezia, his duchess, who took his place as ruler of the city, writing regular letters to him, sometimes as many as three a day, reporting the news from the marketplace, the gossip at court, planning policy, and asking his advice. She had pawned her jewels to raise money for her husband and also managed, in what must have been exceptionally difficult circumstances, to preside over their court, acting as a gracious hostess to the many French nobles who had come to Ferrara with the French army and were quartered in the ducal palace or in the residences of the courtiers. ‘She is a pearl,’ one Frenchman remarked; ‘there has never been such a wonderful duchess,’ he extolled, praising Lucrezia’s beauty and benevolence, her kindness and charm, and, he added, ‘a great service to her husband.’
— CHAPTER 28 —
The Death of the Duchess
‘OTHER WOMEN ARE TO LUCREZIA AS TIN IS TO SILVER, COPPER TO GOLD’
NOW THAT THE ANXIETY and worry of the much-feared papal invasion was over, Lucrezia, as so often happens on such occasions, fell ill and retired to the convent of San Bernardino to recover, which she did, after some months of convalescence, and of mourning for the death of the twelve-year-old Rodrigo Bisceglie, her first son, whom she had not seen since he was a toddler when she left Rome for the last time. She did, however, have the comfort of knowing that her other son Juan, the result of her affair with the papal valet Pedro Calderon, was safe and well. Since 1505 he had been living in nearby Carpi and was frequently a visitor in Ferrara, where, thanks to her father’s bull ‘explaining’ the parentage of the boy, he was always assumed to be her half-brother.
In August 1509, at the start of the conflict with Julius II and just sixteen months after the birth of Ercole, Lucrezia had given birth to another healthy son, named Ippolito in honour of Alfonso’s brother, the cardinal. During the troubled years that followed, she had taken refuge with her young sons, spending long hours playing games with them, taking part in masquerades, telling them fairy stories, listening with them to strange surreal tales told by her dwarf, Santino, who sat perched upon a chair placed upon a table like a miniature stylite. On occasions the children’s father would look in on the scene with an indulgent eye, no longer jealous of such threats to the composure of his marriage as Francesco Gonzaga and Pietro Bembo.
Julius II’s threat to Ferrara finally ended on April 11, 1512, when his armies were decisively defeated by the French at the Battle of Ravenna. Duke Alfonso’s knowledge of artillery had played an important part in the victory, which had been fought at the cost of ten thousand lives, including that of Cesare’s erstwhile captain, Yves d’Alègre. And a year later, toward the end of January 1513, Julius II, complaining of being suddenly taken ill, took, uncharacteristically, to his bed. By the end of the week, feeling that the end was near, he summoned his master of ceremonies to dictate detailed instructions for his funeral; and on February 21 he died.
Age never mellowed Julius; to the end he was a papa terribile. As a sick old man, he still spoke of waging a war to drive the Spanish out of Italy. He was, indeed, a great patriot and, unlike so many of his contemporaries, he thought of Italy not as a mere collection of rival states but as an entity of its own. Yet, however much the warrior pope he may have been, Julius II was also one of the most enlightened and discriminating patrons of art that the Western world had ever known. He had much of the Vatican Palace reconstructed and rebuilt the main courtyard as well as the immense courtyard that stretches from the palace toward the Belvedere. Beneath its walls he laid out an extensive and lovely garden, the first great Roman pleasure garden since the days of the Caesars.
Julius II hired artists as if recruiting an army – including most of the great living masters of the Italian Renaissance. One of these was Raphael, who worked for the pope on the decoration of the new official quarters of the palace, the Vatican Stanze; another was Bramante, who undertook to rebuild the ancient and venerated Basilica of St Peter’s, clearing the site of the decaying medieval structure with such eagerness that he became known as ‘maestro Ruinante,’ master Ruiner. He also hired the Florentine artist Michelangelo to paint the memorable frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and to cast an enormous statue of the pope – fourteen feet high and weighing six tons – which was set up on the facade of the cathedral in Bologna and then torn down by the mob after the city rebelled against Julius II’s rule. The ruined statue was given to Duke Alfonso, who melted it down and made it into a cannon, which he wittily named La Giulia.
He had been a great champion of the Church and of its capital city. The Romans, recognizing this, were deeply grateful. When he died in 1513, people wept in the streets and, according to Francesco Guicciardini, they ‘thronged to kiss his feet and gaze upon his dead face, for all knew him to be a true Roman pontiff.’ Although ‘full of fury and extravagant conceptions,’ Guicciardini concluded, ‘he was lamented above all his predecessors and . . . is held in illustrious remembrance.’
A few days later, twenty-five cardinals assembled in Rome for the conclave that was to elect his successor. Less than a week later, Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, the son of Lorenzo il Magnifico and Alfonso’s prisoner after the Battle of Ravenna, was elected pope as Leo X, and Pietro Bembo, once Lucrezia’s lover, was appointed papal secretary.
It was not until the summer of 1513, four years after the birth of her last child, Ippolito, that Lucrezia found herself pregnant once more; but upon this occasion, the baby boy to whom she gave birth was far from being as handsome as Ippolito and Ercole. Despite being named Alessandro after her beloved father, it clearly pained Lucrezia to look upon the child with its strangely large and misshapen head, and she was relieved rather than distressed when he gave up the struggle to live, aged just two years old.
Meanwhile, in July 1515, when Alessandro was just fifteen months old, Lucrezia had given birth yet again, this time to a daughter, named Eleonora after Alfonso’s mother. By the time Alessandro died, she was pregnant again with Francesco, who was born in November 1516 and, perhaps, as the name chosen had featured in neither her own family nor that of Alfonso’s, the baby was named after its uncle Francesco Gonzaga; but, anyway, it was a pretty baby whom she clearly adored.
So, with no little pleasure, Alfonso found himself the father of a number of children – all his legitimate heirs. He was engrossed in his own affairs; but, nevertheless, he was highly satisfied with the esteem and admiration now bestowed on his wife. The admiration she excited in former years was due to her youthful beauty; it was not owing to her virtues. She, who as a young girl had been the most vilified woman of her times, had, in middle age, won a place of the highest honour.
The ducal couple, now clearly at ease in each other’s company, shared an interest in all the arts, not solely music, and as the patron of artists and poets that all Renaissance princes were expected to be, Alfonso relied upon the taste and discernment of his wife to guide him. It was she who persuaded him to take into his service the poet Ludovico Ariosto, who, in return, praised Lucrezia with wild hyperbole in his Orlando Furioso: ‘Other women are to Lucrezia as tin is to silver, copper to gold . . . coloured glass to precious stones.’
It was evidently Ariosto who introduced Titian to the court at Ferrara. At this time Titian was about twenty-five years old. The son of a minor official, he was born in the village of Pieve di Cadore north of Venice, and at the age of nine, he had gone with his brother to live with an uncle in Venice, where he became an apprentice to a mosaicist before moving to the workshop of the elderly Giovanni Bellini, the most celebrated Venetian painter of his day. Also working in Bellini’s studio at that time was Giorgione, an artist some ten years older than himself, with whom he worked on the frescoes of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the great storehouse of the German merchants close to the Rialto Bridge in Venice.
Having moved to Ferrara to work for Alfonso d’Este, apparently at Lucrezia’s instigation, Titian worked on a cycle of mythological compositions for the Camerino d’Alabastro, a room that had recently been rebuilt in the castle at Ferrara and where Alfonso proposed to display his collection. He had bought Giovanni Bellini’s canvas of the Feast of the Gods in 1514 and, four years later, commissioned Titian to paint two companion pieces, the Worship of Venus (now in the Prado at Madrid) and Bacchus and Ariadne (now in the National Gallery in London).
These masterpieces were but three of the magnificent works of art to be seen in Ferrara. The tapestries hanging on the walls of the ducal palace were renowned; so was the cycle of frescoes, mostly by Cosmè Tura, in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara and the Annunciation on the organ doors in the cathedral; so, too, was the magnificent gold and silver dolphin service designed by Cosmè Tura. Both the works and the company of these artists clearly delighted Lucrezia, as did the company of her lively ladies, who accompanied her on her expeditions to other ducal villas in the countryside outside Ferrara.
She was accustomed to leaving Ferrara each spring, with her ladies and her musicians, to spend weeks on end in the country, choosing to stay in a villa near a convent where she could be a regular worshipper at the services held there. At the villa there would be games of charades, songs, and stories, or, on occasion, the company would be entertained by tales related by Santino, the dwarf, or the wild fantasies and strange behaviour of the mad girl Catarina, whom Lucrezia had done her best to educate. And on warm sunny days, Lucrezia would bathe in the clear waters of some secluded reach of the Po.
Yet in quieter moments, an aura of sadness surrounded Lucrezia, who had taken to wearing sackcloth beneath her silk dresses and had joined a lay order of the Franciscans. Her only surviving brother, Jofrè, died in 1517, having remarried after the death of the childless Sancia in 1506, and was able to pass the title of Prince of Squillace on to his eldest son. She took to making regular confessions to her priest and was just as assiduous in attendance at services in the cathedral. She put aside the ‘pomp and vanities of the world to which she had been accustomed since childhood,’ in the words of Paolo Giovio, ‘and gave herself up to pious works, founding convents and hospitals. She did what she could to help the poor in times of distress, going so far as to pawn some of her jewels to help pay for their relief.’
