Lucrezia Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

  Even before he left, Alexander had issued Juan with firm instructions to make sure that he was assiduous in his attentions to the Spanish royal family, and particularly to the Queen, in order to obtain the fine estate which Lopez de Haro had indicated would be given to him.13 Alexander’s instructions to Gandia’s treasurer and secretary, Genis Fira and Jaume de Pertusa, were equally commanding: he hoped for great things for Juan of the Spanish sovereigns – the marquisate of Denia in Valencia and, beyond that, a lordship in the Kingdom of Granada, adding pertinently that he expected both – ‘one favour does not prevent another’.14

  But in his greedy haste and joy Alexander had neglected his usual caution. Gandia received a splendid reception when he reached Barcelona on 24 August, and Alexander prepared the last and most important of the Bulls opening the way for Castile to conquer any lands in the west not yet occupied by other Christian powers. The Bull was promulgated on 25 September but, preoccupied with other matters, neither Ferdinand nor Isabella attended Gandia’s wedding at the end of the month, nor were any favours yet forthcoming. While Isabella the Catholic thought it unseemly to be granting favours to the Pope’s bastard, Ferdinand saw Gandia as a useful hostage to ensure Alexander’s loyalty over Naples should he have to intervene, and his interest lay in prolonging the affair. Alexander was mortified: he was still more so as reports began to come in of Juan’s bad behaviour and neglect of his wife, including an (unfounded) accusation of non-consummation of the marriage, which roused him to fury Even Cesare, newly promoted as Cardinal of Valencia by his father, wrote a reproving elder brotherly letter to Juan, in Valencian Catalan, the family language, at his father’s instigation:

  However great my joy and happiness at being promoted cardinal, and they were certainly considerable, my annoyance was greater still when I heard of the bad reports His Holiness had received of you and your behaviour. Letters . . . have informed His Holiness that you had been going round Barcelona at night, killing cats and dogs, making frequent visits to the brothel, gambling for large sums, speaking disrespectfully and imprudently to important people, showing disobedience to Don Enrich and Dona Maria [Juan’s father and mother-in-law] and finally acting throughout in a way inconsistent with a gentleman of your position.15

  Juan’s bad behaviour and, most of all, the report of his non-consummation of the marriage, frightened and disturbed Alexander who was not comforted by the report he received from his nuncio, Desprats, of a conversation he had had with Queen Isabella, who, he said, ‘had received great annoyance and displeasure from certain things concerning Your Beatitude, principally those which were such that they caused scandal . . ., specifically the festivities at the wedding of Dona Lucrecia, and the creation of the cardinals, that is of Valencia [Cesare Borgia] and the Cardinal Farnese [Giulia’s brother, Alessandro] . . . Desprats’ advice to the Pope was not to pursue the cause of Gandia and his siblings with such fervour.

  Among other family duties expected of Gandia were the execution of certain commissions given him by his father, specifically ‘small tiles’ (rajoletes) for the decoration of the Borgia Apartments in the Vatican, and by ‘his dearest sister’ Lucrezia. An accounts book of 27 January to 29 June 1494 lists money for various presents for Lucrezia, including gold jewellery and shoes: ‘sandals of gold and silk: 168 escudos for the sandals and shoes of the Lady Lucrecia . . . three hand lengths of blue satin to make two pairs of sandals for the Illustrious Lady Lucrecia’.16

  In Rome, with the spotlight on the male members of her family, Lucrezia slipped from the attention of observers, who, however, recorded that Giovanni Sforza, as a result of a case of plague in his household, had gone out of Rome to Civita Castellana on 4 August.17 There was no mention of Lucrezia going with him and at the end of that month Alexander was reported to be considering leaving Rome to get fresh air, because he was in danger of the plague and felt constricted in the Vatican as did ‘our children’ (‘nostri nepoti’).18 Cesare was out of Rome at Caprarola in August and with Alexander in Viterbo in October. The Pope had left Rome after the stormy consistory in which he had finally succeeded in imposing his will on the rebellious cardinals and pushing through the blatantly nepotistic nominations of Cesare and Farnese, and also of the fifteen-year-old Ippolito d’Este. Otherwise, Alexander had been politically evenhanded in his nominations for the cardinalate; only Ferrante of Naples, to his fury, was unrewarded.

  Lucrezia was certainly in Rome at the beginning of November when Cattaneo reported that Giovanni Sforza was expected there ‘to do reverence to His Holiness Our Lord and to keep company in all respects [‘accompagnarsi in tuto’] with his wife’. The clear inference was that Sforza had been given permission to consummate his marriage, although this is the only contemporary evidence we have that he did so. Lucrezia, still only thirteen, was clearly of adult intelligence, since Cattaneo spoke of her as ‘a most worthy lady and very favourable to the cause of our Monsignore’ (Sigismondo Gonzaga, Francesco’s brother, for whom the Gonzaga were urgently pressing elevation to the cardinalate). Gonzaga’s friends, he said, strongly recommended that the Marquis treat Lucrezia as a ‘sister and sister-in-law’ (sorella e cugnata) and pay more attention to her than he had in the past, ‘especially her being the daughter of [the Pope]’ and ‘full of goodwill’ towards Gonzaga.19

  The direct route to papal favour led through the Palazzo Santa Maria in Portico, as the astute princes of Italy and their envoys were well aware. Adriana de Mila marshalled the suitors, while Lucrezia and Giulia, the women Alexander loved most, obtained the results. As Girolama Farnese, Giulia’s sister, wrote to her husband, the Florentine Puccio Pucci, on 21 October 1493, ‘You will have received letters . . . and have learned . . . all that Giulia has secured . . . and you will be greatly pleased.’20 Pucci’s brother, Lorenzo, who was in Rome that winter, left a vivid description of the domestic scene at Santa Maria in Portico on Christmas Eve, when he visited Giulia and found her drying her hair by the fire with Lucrezia and Adriana. After Lorenzo had thanked her for her favours to his family, Giulia replied, ‘that such a trifle deserved no thanks. She hopes to be of still greater help to me, and says I shall find her so at the right time. Madonna Adriana joined in saying I might be certain that . . . it was owing to the favour of Madonna Giulia herself that I had obtained the benefices . . . Madonna Giulia asked with much interest after Messer Puccio and said, “We will see to it that some day he will come here as ambassador: and although, when he was here, we, in spite of our endeavours, were unable to effect it, we could now accomplish it without any difficulty.’” Also present was Giulia’s daughter, Laura, born the previous year and generally reputed, although almost certainly without foundation, to be the Pope’s child. Alexander, devoted as he was to his children, never showed the slightest interest in her, and the evidence of a jealous letter he was to write to Giulia suggests that he was convinced Laura was Orsino’s child. Pucci described Giulia as ‘a most beautiful creature. She let her hair down before me and had it dressed; it reached down to her feet; never have I seen anything like it; she has the most beautiful hair. She wore a headdress of fine linen, and over it a sort of net, light as air, with gold threads woven in it. In truth it shone like the sun!’ Lucrezia, perhaps irritated by Pucci’s obvious admiration for Giulia’s beauty, left the room to change from a ‘robe lined in the Neapolitan fashion’ similar to the one Giulia was wearing, and returned soon afterwards wearing ‘a gown almost entirely of violet velvet’.

  Giovanni Sforza himself boasted to the Mantuan envoy Brognolo that ‘all these ladies who have access to the pontiff’ were worth cultivating, but ‘principally his wife’. ‘I hear from all quarters,’ Brognolo informed Francesco Gonzaga, ‘that she [Lucrezia] has great access and could not be better, and certainly I understand that for her age she has great intelligence . . . I wished to inform Your Lordship of this in order that you should understand that the majority of those who want favours [of the Pope] pass through this door and it has already been signalled to me that it
would be good to show some gratitude . . .’21 The Gonzaga sent presents of prized fish (carpioni) from Lake Garda and cheese to the Pope, food appropriate for the Lenten season. Alexander turned to one of his Spanish intimates and told him to see that these were distributed to Cesare ‘and to the ladies’.22 But hard currency, a commodity always in short supply at Mantua, was necessary, Brognolo bluntly told Isabella d’Este, wife of Francesco, a few days later. Money was offered but, for reasons of his own, Alexander told the envoy not to send it at present but to defer it for a week. Jewels, however, were acceptable – for Lucrezia, as the envoy sent to present them informed Francesco Gonzaga, but Giovanni Sforza advised him that he had better keep the jewels intended for Giulia ‘since the Pope would take it badly’.23

  Giovanni Sforza was clinging to his marriage and to Lucrezia, his all-important link with the Pope in what was, from his point of view, an increasingly dangerous political situation. King Ferrante of Naples had died in January and on 22 March 1494 Alexander announced that the investiture of the Crown of Naples should go, not to Charles VIII of France, as the French King had demanded, but to the late King Ferrante’s son, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, who would be crowned by Cardinal Juan Borgia. The French invasion of Italy with the conquest of Naples as its object was now a virtual certainty. Sforza’s position that spring of 1494 was an uncomfortable one: a plaintive letter to his patron Ludovico retailed an awkward conversation with the Pope:

  Yesterday His Holiness said to me in the presence of Monsignor [Ascanio] ‘Well, Giovanni Sforza! What have you to say to me?’ I answered, ‘Holy Father, every one in Rome believes that Your Holiness has entered into an agreement with the King of Naples, who is an enemy of the State of Milan. If this is so, I am in an awkward position, as I am in the pay of Your Holiness and also in that of the State I have named [Milan]. If things continue as they are, I do not know how I can serve one party without falling out with the other . . . I ask that Your Holiness may be pleased to define my position so that I may not act contrary to the obligations into which I have entered by virtue of my agreement with Your Holiness and the illustrious State of Milan . . .

  Alexander replied coldly that he should choose in whose pay he should remain according to his contract.24 Both the Pope and the Duke of Milan wanted to dominate the unfortunate lord of Pesaro ‘and make use of his state’, as Ascanio had written to his brother in cipher earlier that month,25 but the Pope was determined that Milan should pay the cost of his condotta. Ascanio advised his brother that in the Sforza interest it would be better if Giovanni were in Pesaro, out of the Pope’s clutches.

  Giovanni, wishing to keep in with both sides, put a brave face on the situation, for in a letter of 18 April 1494, addressed to Juan Gandia, with whom he appeared to be on the most friendly terms, he thanked him for a letter in which Gandia had expressed his joy at the kindness with which the Pope had received Sforza on his return and informed him that he would be leaving shortly for Pesaro to put his affairs in order, to reform his troops and pay them, and that Lucrezia would be accompanying him.26 As a postscript and additional sweetener he offered to obtain the Sicilian horses Juan wanted from the King of Naples. But Alexander’s switch in allegiances was underscored the following month by a Borgia marriage in Naples and lavish grants of money and titles to Alexander’s children. On the day of his coronation, 8 May, the new King Alfonso granted Juan Borgia the principate of Tricario, the counties of Carinola, Claramonte and Luria and other lands, each worth 12,000 ducats a year. Jofre was made prince of Squillace, count of Cariaci and protonotary of the Realm with an income of 12,000 golden ducats. Three days later the marriage was celebrated of Jofre to Alfonso’s illegitimate daughter, the princess Sancia, who was at least three years older than him. ‘He consummated his marriage to the illustrious Dona Sancha, his wife, and performed very well, notwithstanding he is not more than thirteen years old,’ Alexander wrote to Gandia.27

  Although Juan was now known to have consummated his marriage and his wife was pregnant, his extravagance continued to disgust Alexander who had showered him with money and obtained new titles and rich revenues for him.28 Alexander’s unholy love of money and property is revealed in this letter: ‘. . . your procurators have taken peaceful and expeditious possession in your name of the principate of Tricario, the County of Carinola, Claramonte and Luria and of all your other lands, which, according to their descriptions are lands of greater income even than the King offered, easily more than 12,000 ducats, fine, large and full’, he told Gandia gleefully before he burst out into the rage of a self-made man well aware of the value of money, over his son’s wasteful dissipation of his funds.

  Gandia was by now homesick for his family and longing to return to Rome, as a letter to Lucrezia in the Valencia archives (written but apparently never sent) shows:

  I feel a great desire to have news of you for it has been a great while since I received a letter from you and you can imagine, my lady sister, what a great joy your letters are to me for the love I bear you. So do me the favour of writing for my consolation, because already the Duchess my wife complains a great deal of you, that you have never written despite all the letters sent to you from here. She commands us to ask you to write, she is pregnant and in the seventh month. It seems two years since I left. I have written to His Beatitude to order my departure and from day to day I hope for this order . . . I commend myself to the lord of Pesaro, my dear brother, and similarly to Madama Adriana and Madama Julia . . .29

  Probably around the same time (September 1494) he sent a similar letter to Cesare, imploring him to intercede with the Pope to send galleys to take him to Italy: ‘Each day seems like a year to me in the delay of those ships which His Holiness has written in recent days he will send soon . . .’

  Despite the political situation, Giovanni Sforza was still in favour with the Borgias: in May, Alexander gave permission for Lucrezia, Adriana and Giulia to visit Pesaro for the first time. A collection of his private papers which remained hidden in the archives of the Castel Sant’ Angelo for over a hundred years reveals the Pope’s extraordinary dependence on ‘his women’, his love for Lucrezia and obsession with his beautiful young mistress. The party arrived in Pesaro on 8 June in heavy rain to a tumultuous welcome, as Lucrezia reported to her father, finding themselves provided with a ‘beautiful and comfortable house with all the furnishings and gaieties which could be required’.30 Adriana wrote the same day, praising Pesaro and the care with which its tactful lord attended to her every desire. Both women were, however, alarmed by the report brought by Messer Francesco (Francesc, in his native language) Gacet, a Catalan confidant of the dangerous position in which Alexander found himself in Rome, not merely from the plague but from the pro-French enemies (the Colonna, in particular) who were encircling him. ‘Messer Francesco will have informed you,’ Lucrezia wrote, ‘how we have all understood that at the present time [things] are going very badly [at] Rome, and that we are upset and sorrowful that Your Sanctity should be there. I implore Your Beatitude as much as I can to leave and if you do not wish to, take great care and diligence to guard yourself. And Your Beatitude must not take this as presumption but due to the great and cordial love I bear you and be certain that I will never be content until I hear frequent news of Your Beatitude.’ Adriana backed her up with expressions of concern that Alexander remained in Rome in the face of such danger, assuring him that he had nothing to worry about in Pesaro because ‘these ladies’ (Lucrezia and Giulia) were following his orders and were continually together. Orsino, who must have accompanied his errant wife to Pesaro, also recommended himself, she said, to His Lordship. One Giulia d’Aragona, a member of the numerous royal house of Naples, who accompanied the party, enlarged on the welcome and festivities at Pesaro where she, Giovanni, Lucrezia and Giulia Farnese, in robes of ‘pontifical splendour’, had danced among the crowds who were astounded by their magnificence. But she assured him that rumours of their total enjoyment were wrong, that both she and Lucrezia were counti
ng the days until they could be with him again. She mentioned her brother, Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona, who was so pleased with the negotiations between the Pope and the new King of Naples that he felt ‘as if the Pope had once again made him Cardinal’.31 No woman, it seems, could ever write to Alexander without attempting to wheedle some favour out of him: four days later, she appealed to him to grant the benefice of the recently murdered Bishop of Rimini to her brother. In a postscript she hinted at some watching brief entrusted to her by the Pope, no doubt concerning the movements of Giulia Farnese, whom the besotted Pope was anxious should return to him as soon as possible. He addressed a long letter to Adriana asking her when the party intended to return and whether Giovanni Sforza would accompany them or remain in Pesaro. He was expecting them at the end of June or beginning of July and would himself return to Rome to meet them. He would expect Giovanni Sforza to remain in Pesaro to raise troops and defend his state, but did not think it advisable that the women should stay there in view of the number of troops wandering the country ahead of the French invasion.