A Pawn of Intrigue

...Her first betrothal, at the age of 11, was broken when political expediency demanded the forging of an alliance between the powerful Sforzas and the Papacy...

...It comes to us in a sound, workmanlike translation by Bernard and Barbara Wall...

...She surrounded herself with artists and men of letters, affectionately supervised the rearing of her numerous children, and maintained the appearances of domestic harmony, although she managed to have two apparently platonic love affairs--first with the humanist Pietro Bembo, and later with Francesco Gonzaga, husband of her brilliant sister-in-law, Isabella d'Este...

...Nevertheless, the impressive basic virtues remain unimpaired...

...When she died in her thirty-ninth year, she had attained a measure of spiritual quietude...

...She turned finally to religion "for the sweets of love and the strength of hope...

...Descended from an ancient family of Spanish grandees, this "most carnal of men" combined a mastery of ecclesiastical and juridical affairs with a political intuition which permitted him to move confidently amid the dissensions and intrigues of Renaissance Italy...

...Reviewed by Helene Cantarella Lucrezia Borgia was barely 12 years old when her father, the gifted, restless and acquisitive Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, mounted the Papal throne as Alexander VI and ushered in an era unparalleled for extravagance, corruption and naked terror...

...and the graceful, green-eyed Lucrezia, who was expected to play her part in the struggle for power by neutralizing, through one dynastic marriage after another, the most powerful rival families of Italy...

...Published in Italy in 1939, where it won the coveted Viareggio Literary Award, this admirable work has since been translated into seven other languages...

...In trying to assess the degree of Lucrezia's guilt in the sinister events which marked her youth, one must bear in mind that the worst of them occurred in her adolescence...

...This is a book that deserves a wide public...

...She has, moreover, provided us with a prodigious mine of information on the daily life of the princes of the Renaissance, on their sumptuous houses, their magnificent costumes and jewels, and the lavish entertainments which filled their lives...

...This she achieved through her marriage to the ponderous Alfonso d'Este, who was virtually blackmailed into accepting her as his second wife...

...At hand were two perfect instruments: his second son, the murderous and power-hungry Cesare, who, with fire, sword and poison, began the consolidation of Central Italy under Borgia domination...

...These are the questions which Maria Bellonci seeks to answer in her scholarly, illuminating and psychologically expert biography of the woman who has come down to us in legend and literature as a living symbol of villainy and betrayal...

...How did Lucrezia fit into the family pattern of crime, intrigue and perfidy...

...His affection for his children, whom he had legitimized, aroused in him dynastic ambitions which he set out at once to realize...

...It was not until she was 20 that Lucrezia had a voice in her own affairs and was able to satisfy her yearning for an orderly life...

...Was her interior life in harmony with the role she was made to play in public...

...Unfortunately, in abridging the original 600 pages into the present volume, some of the brilliance and subtlety of Signora Bellonci's style has been lost...

...Basing herself on contemporary accounts, diplomatic reports, Lucre-zia's own letters and newly discovered material in the Vatican archives, where she spent seven years in painstaking research, Signora Bellonci comes to the conclusion that Lucrezia was no more than a passive tool in the game of power politics and that "her real drama lay not in weakness but in the fatality of her acts of consent, each of which amounted to capitulation...

...What did she think of herself...

...She was therefore given in marriage at 13 to Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, a weakling whom Alexander VI subsequently forced to acquiesce in the dissolution of the marriage on the ground of impotence...

...Cesare then used the again nubile Lucrezia to gain a hold on the Kingdom of Naples, and she was wed to the ill-fated Duke of Bisceglie, who was foully murdered by Cesare's henchmen once he had outlived his usefulness...

...Chroniclers of the period are agreed that Lucrezia was innocent in the plots against her first husband, and there is no conclusive proof that she was guilty of complicity in the murder of the Duke of Bisceglie, whom she loved...

...Signora Bellonci has drawn a convincing and compassionate full-length portrait of Lucrezia as she moved through the infinitely complex and dangerous society into which she was born, and as she sought to reconcile the terrifying contradictions of her heritage with her deep-seated craving for security and peace...

...At the court of Ferrara, she led with dignity the life of the great ladies of her era...