Just over two weeks later Burchard had another ‘incident’ to report, again heavily spiced with sexual connotations and specifically involving Lucrezia. A peasant had brought mares loaded with wood into the city through the Porta Viridaria near the Vatican:
When the mares reached the Piazza San Pietro, some of the palace guard came up, cut through the straps and threw off the saddles and the wood in order to lead the mares into the courtyard immediately inside the palace gate. Four stallions were then freed from their reins and harness and let out of the palace stables. They immediately ran to the mares, over whom they proceeded to fight furiously and noisily among themselves, biting and kicking in their attempts to mount them and seriously wounding them with their hoofs. The Pope and Madonna Lucrezia, laughing and with evident satisfaction, watched all that was happening from a window above the palace gate.
Although Burchard clearly disapproves, most people of the time had an earthy sense of humour and would have found it funny – if, indeed, it did occur. It found an echo with the rabidly anti-Borgia chronicler Matarazzo of Perugia, whose bloodthirsty lords, the Baglioni, had every reason to hate the Borgias. Matarazzo found it necessary to spice it up: ‘And as if this were not enough, [the Pope] returning to the hall, had all the lights put out, and then all the women who were there, and as many men as well, took off all their clothes; and there was much festivity and play.’
At about this time a vitriolic attack on the Borgias, apparently originating in Venice where several of Cesare’s enemies had taken refuge, circulated in the form of a letter to Silvio Savelli, one of the expropriated Roman barons. It accused them of being ‘worse than the Scythians, more perfidious than the Carthaginians, more cruel than Caligula and Nero’. It included every charge hitherto levelled against them including murder – of Bisceglie and Perotto – and incest. Burchard’s chestnut supper and rutting stallions were included (whether the anonymous author got these from Burchard or Burchard appropriated them to liven up his text one can only speculate). The terms used to describe Alexander and Cesare were particularly bitter:
His father favours him [Cesare] because he has his own perversity, his own cruelty: it is difficult to say which of these two is the most execrable. The cardinals see all and keep quiet and flatter and admire the Pope. But all fear him and above all fear his fratricide son, who from being a cardinal has made himself into an assassin. He lives like the Turks, surrounded by a flock of prostitutes, guarded by armed soldiers. At his order or decree men are killed, wounded, thrown into the Tiber, poisoned, despoiled of all their possessions.
It was typical of Alexander that this vicious diatribe made him laugh, and when Silvio Savelli came to Rome a year later he received him with the utmost amiability. Cesare, however, was far less relaxed than his father when it came to insult. In the first week of December, shortly after the publication of the letter, a man who had been going masked about the Borgo uttering scurrilous rumours about him was arrested on his orders and thrown into the Savelli prison where his right hand and part of his tongue were cut off and exposed at the window with the tongue hanging from the little finger. Alexander liked to contrast his own tolerance with his son’s vengefulness: ‘The Duke,’ he told Beltrando Costabili, ‘is a good-hearted man, but he cannot tolerate insults . . . I could easily have had the Vice-Chancellor [Ascanio Sforza] and Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere killed: but I did not wish to harm anyone . . .’ It was a curious remark for a pope to make.
In the wake of all this, the Ferrarese envoy Gian Luca Pozzi felt obliged to reassure Ercole d’Este as to the virtuous character of his future daughter-in-law: 17‘Madonna Lucrezia is a most intelligent and lovely, also exceedingly gracious lady. Besides being extremely graceful in every way, she is modest and lovable and decorous. Moreover she is a devout and god-fearing Christian. Tomorrow she is going to confession, and during Christmas week she will receive communion. 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 . . .’
Finally, after endless delays instigated by Ercole who had originally sent the list of personnel to be included to the Pope for approval in October, the wedding escort left Ferrara on 9 December. It was headed by Ercole’s fourth son, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, who with the ducal chancellor Giovanni (‘Zoanne’ in Ferrarese dialect) Ziliolo, took with him caskets of jewels for the bride, and an inventory signed on each page by Ercole the previous day. The remaining Este jewels were not to be given to Lucrezia until she actually reached Ferrara, and even the handing over of those to be delivered to her by Ippolito in Rome was to be governed by strict instructions based on Ercole’s mistrust of the Borgias.
The Borgias’ riposte to the Este was a display of astonishing richness. Lucrezia’s trousseau of dresses and jewels surpassed in splendour the most lavish of recent years, that of Bianca Maria Sforza to the Emperor Maximilian I in 1495. Recently, a papal chamberlain had died, leaving 13,000 ducats in money and goods; Lucrezia had asked for and obtained it as an addition to her funds. It was obvious from the Inventory of her Wardrobe made in Ferrara in 1502—3 that she had kept her wedding presents as well as her dowries from her previous marriages. Among the goods mentioned which she took with her to Ferrara was the magnificent silver service presented to her by Ascanio Sforza on her marriage to Giovanni in 1493, when her dowry of 30,000 ducats was supplemented by 10,000 ducats’ worth of dresses, jewels, plate, ornaments and ‘things for the use of illustrious women’. Her dowry at her marriage to Alfonso Bisceglie had been 40,000 ducats, half of which Alexander had given in kind – jewels, dresses etc.18 Lucrezia was a woman of her time in her awareness of the power of display, and her clothes, jewels and possessions were designed to impress the Este with her family’s wealth and prestige.
She had ordered more than fifty underdresses of the richest materials: gold brocade lined with turquoise taffeta, and sleeves in the French style lined with crimson satin; one of cloth of gold striped with violet satin and lined with half-turquoise and half-green taffeta, the wide French-style sleeves again lined with violet (satin); another was made of black velvet sewn with golden toggles linked by gold cords with lining and sleeves of turquoise damask; others were made of ‘tabi’ – watered silk – of black velvet striped with grey satin. Then there were basques, underskirts, robes, tabards, capes, among which two were particularly notable for their magnificence – one of violet satin, lined with ermine and adorned with 84 balas rubies, 29 diamonds and 115 pearls, the other of crimson satin, also lined with ermine and embroidered with 61 rubies, 55 diamonds, 5 large pearls, 412 medium-sized pearls and 114 small ones. There were trunks of enamelled gold ornaments, elaborate bed hangings, valances and canopies, richly embroidered tablecloths, bedcovers of crimson satin, cloth of gold, azure velvet, embroidered with gold and silver thread, dozieri (cushioned backrests), wall hangings, tapestries and door curtains depicting biblical scenes, great cushions in valuable materials for seating, and tapestries of flowers and trees. Harness for horses and mules included elaborate cloths of velvet and caparisons of silver and gold, including one with twenty-two little hanging bells, fans – one of which contained one hundred ostrich feathers – elaborate coffers and chests, shoes in velvet and satin, including twenty-seven pairs imported from Valencia in gilded leather, emblazoned crystal cups with gold feet and covers, huge quantities of silver and silver gilt (some of it bearing Ascanio Sforza’s arms), flasks, dishes, candlesticks and candelabra, sweetmeat dishes, a salt with the arms of Aragon (presumably from her marriage to Alfonso Bisceglie). There were lavish furnishings for her private chapel, including a great crucifix in crystal with the figures of the Virgin and St John, mounted on silver, porphyry reliquaries, golden chalices, pyxes, ampoules and bowls; altar cloths, cushions, two missals on vellum in velvet covers with silver and gold clasps and holy paintings.
Lucrezia took with her a small private library. This included a Spanish manuscript with gilded min
iatures, covered in crimson velvet, with silver corners and clasps, in a case of red chamois leather; a printed volume of the letters of St Catherine of Siena bound in azure leather with brass corners and clasps; a printed book of letters and gospels in Italian; a book in the Valencian language entitled ‘the twelve [principles] of the Christian’; a manuscript volume of Spanish songs by various authors, beginning with the proverbs by Diondigi Lopes, bound in red leather with brass trimmings; a printed romance of chivalry entitled L’Aquila Volante, by Leonardo Bruni; a world history, the Supplementum Chronicarum, by Jacobus Philippus de Bergamo; a book in Italian entitled The Mirror of Faith; a volume of Dante with commentary bound in violet leather; a book of philosophy in Italian; a book of the legends of the saints in Italian; a copy of St Bonaventure; a Latin school book, the Donatus; a Life of Christ in Spanish by Ludolphus de Saxonia; and a small manuscript Petrarch on vellum, bound in red leather. These were her own treasured books: at the Vatican and at Ferrara, where the Este library was celebrated for its size, range and magnificence, she would never be short of reading matter. And, as we know, she took with her significant family documents, including the Giordano letters.
The Florentine envoy Pepi was, or pretended to be, shocked by the Borgias’ extravagance: ‘The things that are ordered here for these festivities are unheard of: and for a minor feast the shoes of the Duke’s staff-bearers are made of gold brocade, and the same for the Pope’s grooms: and he and the Duke vie with each other in producing the most magnificent, the latest, and the most expensive things . . .’ When Cesare rode out to meet the Ferrarese procession headed by Alfonso’s brothers Ippolito, Ferrante and Sigismondo, he put on a show of armed power with four thousand immaculately equipped men, horse and foot. He rode a ‘most beautiful strong horse, which seemed as if it had wings . . . and [its] trappings were estimated at 10,000 ducats because one could see nothing but gold, pearls and other jewels’.19 The Ferrarese noted that Cesare’s horsemen indulged in a good deal of showing off, caracoling and sidling sideways and backwards. Cesare greeted Ippolito, whom he knew as a fellow cardinal, then the other two Este brothers; after a two-hour ceremony of welcome with the orations considered necessary for Renaissance ceremony (which must have been exceedingly tedious in the cold), the procession, swollen by the retinues of nineteen cardinals and the ambassadors of France, Spain and Venice, marched across Rome to the deafening sound of oboes, drums and trumpets. At the bridge of Sant’Angelo leading to the Vatican the noise of bombards from the castle was such that it frightened the horses. After being welcomed by Alexander in the Vatican, Cesare led the Este brothers across the piazza to Lucrezia’s house.
From the moment the Ferrarese delegation met Lucrezia we have minute descriptions of her dress and behaviour, demanded by Isabella d’Este of her brothers and of her particular spy, known as El Prete, a gentleman in the retinue of the poet and courtier Niccolò da Correggio who was part of the Este contingent. According to Ferrante, whose descriptions tended to be shorter and sketchier than those of El Prete (who had promised Isabella that he would follow Lucrezia ‘like the shadow does the body’), Lucrezia came to meet them at the foot of the stairs leading to her apartments. She was wearing a dress in her favourite colour, mulberry (morello), with tight sleeves slashed in the Spanish mode – in the fashion of ten years ago,’ sneered El Prete—with a mantle of gold brocade lined with sable over her shoulders, her blonde hair covered with a little cap of green netting bound with a fillet of gold and two strings of pearls, and others decorating her cap.20 Round her neck she wore a string of large pearls with a pendant balas ruby (‘not very big and not a very fine colour’, commented El Prete). For greater effect and to set off her dress and jewels, she leaned on the arm of an elderly gentleman dressed in black velvet lined with sable and wearing a gold chain. ‘She is a sweet and graceful lady,’ El Prete admitted. Lucrezia then offered them what Burchard described as a ‘beautiful collation and many presents’.21 Wearing a long Turkish-style robe of gold brocade she attended Christmas mass in St Peter’s with the Este brothers, at which time the sword and biretta destined for Alfonso were blessed by the Pope.
Lucrezia’s last Roman carnival began the day after Christmas, on Alexander’s orders. Cesare and the Este rode about the streets masked where, according to El Prete, ‘one sees nothing but courtesans wearing masks’. Rome was known politely as ‘la terra da donne’, ‘the City of Women’, although in I Ragionamenti Pietro Aretino put it more bluntly: ‘Rome always has been and ever will be . . . the town of whores’. The rich courtesans, splendidly equipped at their lovers’ expense, often dressed as boys and rode through the streets throwing gilded eggs filled with rose water at the passers-by and indulging in every kind of prank until the twenty-fourth hour when, by law, they were forced to retire. Courtesans’ lives were precarious: they risked revenge mutilation by the sfregia, or face slashing, which destroyed their beauty and their livelihood. Equally horrible, if not more so, was revenge by multiple rape—the Trentuno— carried out by thirty-one men, and the Trentuno reale, involving seventy-nine.
On the 26th, Lucrezia gave an informal ball at her palace, closely observed by the dutiful El Prete:
A nobleman from Valencia and a lady of the court, Niccola, led the dance. They were followed by Don Ferrante and Madonna [Lucrezia], who danced with extreme grace and animation. She wore a camorra [robe] of black velvet with gold borders . . . Her breast was covered up to the neck with a veil of gold thread. About her neck she wore a string of pearls, and on her head a green net and a chain of rubies . . . Two or three of her women are very pretty . . . one, Angela [Borgia, an illegitimate cousin of Lucrezia] . . . I picked out as my favourite.
Over the following days there were the traditional races in various categories – for wild boar, buffalo, prostitutes, Jews, young men, old men and boys. Then there were races for three different breeds of horses – Barbary horses imported from Morocco via Naples, much prized for their speed, light ‘Spanish’ horses and the heavy corsieri, cavalry chargers. As usual there was a good deal of violence and cheating, notably by Cesare’s stable.
On 30 December, to the sound of trumpets and other musical instruments, Lucrezia, dressed in a long robe of golden brocade with a train carried by her damsels, and accompanied by Ferrante and Sigismondo, walked across to the Vatican for the ceremony of the giving of the ring, performed by Ferrante, ‘with the greatest reverence and elegance’, followed by a tedious oration by the Bishop of Adria which Alexander ordered to be cut short. Then Ippolito ordered a table to be brought forward for presentation of the jewels to Lucrezia: ‘Our Reverend Cardinal,’ wrote Pozzi and Saraceni, reporting the ceremony to Ercole, made the presentation of the jewels with the greatest grace so that the aforesaid Holiness said the present was fine, but that His Reverend Lordship had made it most beautiful, and in that presentation His Lordship was very well assisted by Zoanne Ziliolo, treasurer, who in all that was necessary used singular expertise and diligence and it was done very well [in order to] enjoy the preciousness and greatness of the gift. Thus by His Holiness Our Lord and the Most Reverend Cardinals and also by the Most Illustrious Madonna Lucrezia it was praised, and was estimated at some 70,000 ducats according to the Most Reverend Cardinal of Santa Praxede, and also the Most Illustrious Don Ferrante took the utmost trouble to demonstrate the presentation and goodness of the Jewels, and above all the Most Illustrious Madonna Lucretia commended the ornaments and the work surrounding the Jewels, there not being such good masters of the art here . . .
According to Burchard, Ippolito presented Lucrezia with ‘four rings of great value, a diamond, a ruby, an emerald and a turquoise’. He then took out of a box a cap or head ornament studded with fourteen diamonds, as many rubies and about a hundred and fifty large pearls, four collars similarly decorated with jewels and pearls, many bracelets, four of which were of very great value, a pendant for the breast or head made of larger jewels, four long strings of large pearls, four beautiful crosses made of diamonds a
nd other jewels, and finally another cap similar to the first.
All was not as it seemed, however. Ippolito had received previous instructions from his father to the effect that he should use a certain form of words which Gian Luca Pozzi would provide for him, so that in case Lucrezia was unfaithful to Alfonso the jewels would remain with the Este. In the envoy’s long report of the ceremony on the 30th it was stressed ‘concerning the said deponatione [handing over] there has been made an instrument in which it is said that the wedding ring is given and no mention is made of anything else which may be given: and for this the affair has passed off . . . according to the intention of Your Excellency that it should not be written nor that there should be any idea of a donation, and there is no need for Your Excellency to be suspicious of it’ .22
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