By the end of March there were rumours that Lucrezia was pregnant, evidenced by her poor appetite: ‘She eats almost nothing and for this reason she rarely eats in public and rarely goes out, although the members of the family and the men and women of good family visit her,’ di Prosperi reported to Isabella on 2 April. She found the antics of the clown La Fertella, who ate at her table, extremely diverting and went out on occasion to dine with the rich Rizo del Tartufo and with Ferrante d’Este, one of her favourite brothers-in-law. She also gave a dinner for Ercole at which she exhibited the splendours of her credenza, a dresser displaying silver, and was well enough to watch the Corpus Christi procession, which was diverted to pass by her windows, and later the traditional races for St George’s Day. She continued, however, to be unwell, and the cautious Ercole did not inform the Pope of her pregnancy until 21 April.
On 3 May, Alfonso, accompanied by Sigismondo, was ordered by Ercole to go to meet the King of France and receive his prize, the county of Cotignola, donated by Louis as a sop to the Este for swallowing the Borgia marriage. On his departure Lucrezia also left Ferrara for Belriguardo, the magnificent Este villa which was to become one of her favourite retreats. As she told Ercole on 4 May, the day after her arrival, she had found it ‘much more beautiful than I could have imagined . . .’ Eight miles south-east of Ferrara, Belriguardo, of which little remains today, was one of the most celebrated palaces in Italy. It was huge, and had cost Ercole, according to Sabadino, ‘a mountain of gold’. It featured stabling for five hundred horses, secret passages, stately halls, marble loggias, box-lined gardens and a chapel painted by the celebrated Cosimo Tura within its battlemented walls. It contained a succession of vast frescoed halls, one lined with portraits of wise men, another with a painting of Ercole and his courtiers with their names and arms, and another room showing Ercole in Triumph, with what could be described as a veritable Who’s Who of the Herculean circle in the early 1490s. In one adjoining room he was depicted as a member of the Order of the Garter, again surrounded by his principal courtiers; the most famous room was the Sala di Psiche with its series of huge murals of the Roman myths. ‘And seeing the broilo [box garden] with its fruiting plants all in order and the huge garden, each enclosed by high and fine walls with their white battlements and red crenellations by this enormous and beautiful palace with its glazed and iron-grilled windows, I should think that a circuit of the place . . . would be more than a mile,’ Sabadino marvelled.25
Lucrezia was accompanied to Belriguardo by Ferrante, the idle but amusing brother of whom she was extremely fond – ‘ow much we laughed over your letters’, she was later to write to him. She also received regular reports from Sigismondo on his and Alfonso’s progress to France (Alfonso himself was a poor correspondent). Replying to thank him, she apologized for only being able to write him a postscript in her own hand – ‘the cause being my pregnancy . . .’26
Despite her friendly letters, Lucrezia was not only feeling increasingly unwell but also relieved to be out of Ferrara and away from the constant observation of courtiers like di Prosperi who criticized her for remaining away. ‘She has not moved from Belriguardo,’ he reported on 9 May, ‘and stays there very willingly.’ Worse, she only seemed to enjoy herself with such intimates as Angela Borgia who had been ill and stayed behind, but had joined Lucrezia, her ‘patrona’, ‘who only lets herself enjoy herself much unless with her and her other Spanish ladies as she has always done since she came here. And also I understand that in these days Messer Nicolo da Correzo [Niccolò da Correggio] was there wishing to visit her and was told that she was sleeping and he could not see her then. If these things are reported in such a way, I leave it to your ladyship what to think.’ Di Prosperi’s comments on ‘la patrona’ became increasingly critical:
So that Your Ladyship can understand what is happening here and the difference it makes between one patrona [the Duchess Eleonora] and another [Lucrezia] you must know that on Tuesday around the twenty-second hour, His Lordship your father mounted his horse and with a great part of the court and crossbowmen rode to the bridge of San Giorgio to meet Madonna who, returning from Belriguardo had dismounted at Cogomaro to eat at the house of Antonio Guarnero so that . . . it was the twenty-fourth hour before she arrived and then he accompanied her to the Zardino del Castello to the apartments of Don Alfonso where she now lodges. Yesterday after vespers he came to take her from her apartment and accompanied her to Sor [Sister] Lucia. I let Your Ladyship imagine in what a state we now are . . .
Ercole and the male members of the Este family were as charmed by Lucrezia as clearly as Isabella d’Este was not. Lucrezia’s early attempts to establish a relationship with her formidable sister-in-law, whom she knew to have considerable influence with her brothers, fell on stony ground. Writing to Lucrezia, whom she addressed as ‘Lady Lucretia Borgia’, as if unwilling to grant her the Este name, Isabella reported her safe arrival back in Mantua and the ‘convalescence’ of Francesco Gonzaga (who had clearly used illness as an excuse for his absence from the wedding). It was a polite, even gracious, but distant letter, unlike the one of the same date she wrote to Lucrezia’s cousin, Geronima Borgia, in which she gushed about ‘the love and friendship they had contracted’ and expressed the hope that Geronima would write to her ‘so that our mutual benevolence should not pass into oblivion’. 27 Lucrezia replied to Isabella with a graceful, ingratiating letter, signing herself, significantly, ‘Lucretia esten de borgia’. In May, still at Belriguardo, she wrote to Isabella recommending a certain ‘Jo. Jacomo Sculptore’, recently arrived from Rome, and asking her if she would let him make a portrait bust of her for Lucrezia’s pleasure.
But on her return to Ferrara, Lucrezia, possibly encouraged by Alexander, appeared to be digging her toes in. Ill and pregnant, conscious that she might be carrying the longed-for Este heir, she was proving rebellious, as her late arrival and keeping Ercole waiting reported above by di Prosperi showed. Accustomed to the Borgia courts, she well knew how to play her game and, as far as the core friends of her household were concerned, she succeeded. On 26 May, di Prosperi followed up his account of her arrival in Ferrara with the news that four people – ‘the first and the best’ – assigned to Lucrezia’s service had begged Ercole to let them leave her. He replied that they should await the return of Alfonso. ‘This,’ di Prosperi wrote, ‘proceeds from their being badly looked on and worse treated. Only the Spaniards find favour with her so that I suspect few of our people [i.e. Ferrarese] will stay with her, remembering as they do a greater Lady than her [Duchess Eleonora] and having been kindly received . . .’
Lucrezia was longing to leave Ferrara again, this time for the Este villa at Medelana, but her departure was delayed by the dangerous illness of her beloved Angela Borgia. So she remained, staying in the beautiful Palazzo Belfiore on the north-eastern confines of Ferrara, probably because of redecorations to her apartments in the Giardino del Castello. Belfiore was mostly used as a summer residence away from the unhealthy heat and, no doubt, smells, of central Ferrara. Only four displaced marble columns remain of this building, which once stood on an island in the Barco. It was described by the Bolognese writer Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti as ‘a habitation of the most splendid and marvellous beauty, and of the most beautiful architecture that ever could be built by the engineer’s art’. There are now no traces of the loggiaed central courtyard with its cycle of enchanting frescoes showing Alberto d’Este and his court hunting and feasting in the meadows then surrounding what was his hunting retreat but now enclosed within Ercole’s new quarter. Other rooms showed more hunting motifs with stags, lions and boar; there were scenes from Ercole’s life, even a representation of an elephant which had apparently visited Ferrara; but the most notable series glorified the life of the Duchess Eleonora and her court, playing chess, dancing to the sounds of drums and pipes and feasting. Eleonora’s formal entry into Ferrara as a bride and her marriage ceremony were depicted there, all reminders to Lucrezia of Este expectations.28
Lucrezia was still there in June when Cesare made another violent demonstration of his Borgia nature in a lightning strike on Urbino, surprising Guidobaldo who was expecting him to attack Camerino more than one hundred miles to the south, and who just had time to flee without any possessions before Cesare marched into Urbino on the morning of 21 June. News of Cesare’s ’s taking of Urbino sent a shock wave through the courts of Italy, not least in Mantua and Ferrara. With only four horsemen as companions, Guidobaldo had a nightmare journey to Mantua where Elisabetta was still staying, stopping only to consult Ercole who was at his villa of Monastirolo. As di Prosperi wrote to Isabella, ‘the sad news of the Illustrious Lord Duke of Urbino has caused such wonder among all the people [here] that it was two days before anyone believed it, but confirmation from all sides has left the populace in the greatest sadness and displeasure that you can imagine’. Lucrezia, he said, was most distressed, bearing in mind the honour and welcome she had received in Urbino from Guidobaldo and pitying the Duchess. ‘I do not believe her reaction is simulated,’ he added, ‘because the case merits condemnation unto the gates of hell: and these Spaniards of hers do not disagree.’29 Writing on the same day to her sister-in law Chiara Gonzaga, Isabella reported the arrival there of Guidobaldo ‘in his doublet’ having only just succeeded in escaping with his life. Calling Cesare’s attack ‘unthought of and cursed’, she said they had all been ‘so shocked, confused and grieved [by it] that we ourselves hardly know where we are’.
Isabella was panic-stricken that she too might share her sister-in-law’s fate. The fact that she had provided shelter, even briefly, for the family of the Duke of Urbino, was bound to arouse Cesare’s ever-alert suspicions. The arrival of an envoy sent by Cesare, named only by Isabella as ‘Francesc’ but probably Francesco Troche, who was intimately concerned in Cesare’s plans, frightened her further. Convinced he was a spy, she wrote immediately to Francesco Gonzaga who had left to join the French court, asking him to send a letter favourable to Cesare which she could show to this man. Gonzaga as usual had dawdled and then produced what Isabella considered to be an inadequate epistle. She therefore drew up another one and forwarded it to him, entreating him to keep the fact that she had done so a secret. This time she included Lucrezia as well as Cesare in her suspicions: ‘so that knowledge of it should not come to the ears of either the Duchess or the Duke, so that they should mistrust those words which I artfully inserted in the letter to give greater hope [of our loyalty] to il Valentino’.30
Only Machiavelli, in Urbino with a Florentine delegation for his first interview with Cesare on 24 June, was impressed, taking away an idea of the twenty-five-year-old leader which he later transmuted into his famous Chapter VII of The Prince: ‘This Lord is truly splendid and magnificent, and in war there is no enterprise so great that it does not appear small to him; in the pursuit of glory and lands he never rests nor recognizes fatigue or danger. He arrives in one place before it is known that he has left another; he is popular with his soldiers and he has collected the best men in Italy; these things make him victorious and formidable, particularly when added to permanent good fortune.’31
For Lucrezia, Cesare’s coup was profoundly embarrassing, adding to the suspicion with which she was regarded by the Ferrarese and, indeed, the Gonzaga. Yet no doubt she was secretly proud of her brother’s daring successes which, far from undermining her own position, actually enhanced it. Her existence guaranteed the safety of Ferrara, but it must also have increased her sense of isolation and her dependence on the Spanish core of her household. Alfonso was with the King of France, Ercole was making his way there and she was having a difficult pregnancy. As the summer wore on, her health grew worse; in mid July an epidemic of fever reached Ferrara, and in her weakened state Lucrezia became seriously ill. On 11 July, di Prosperi reported that the previous Saturday after eating a little she had vomited and had a fever and that ‘this evening there was great disquiet about her’. Ercole and Alfonso were informed. ‘God preserve her because it would not be to anyone’s purpose that she should die for now,’ he added cynically. From Belfiore on 13 July she wrote to Ercole, thanking him for his letter written from Piacenza en route to join Louis XII in Milan. ‘If anything could give me swift relief from this my present indisposition,’ she wrote, ‘it has been your most welcome letter.’ Since the previous Saturday she had been overtaken by fever and had felt too ill to write to inform him of her illness, certain that Gian Luca Pozzi (who was always with her, hoping for her help in obtaining a cardinal’s hat from her father) would inform him.32 She suffered a severe paroxysm, then another, this time less severe. Alfonso arrived to console her, closely followed by Sigismondo.33 By 24 July she was still suffering paroxysms accompanied by fever and the doctors were doing everything they could both to cure her and to save the baby. Alfonso slept every night in a room next to hers and was always there when she took food.34 Francesco Troche paid her a call en route from the King of France to the Pope. The Pope sent his favourite doctor, the Bishop of Venosa, from Rome, while Francesc Remolins, known to the Italians as Remolino, came from Cesare’s camp for the latest news.35
Doctors were ordered to her side by Ercole, the Pope and Cesare, and with their help she would try to get well, she told Ercole on 28 July. In Rome Alexander characteristically made use of her illness in his negotiations with Ercole over her allowance, telling Costabili that it had been caused by the deficit in her allowance which should be made up from 10,000 to 12,000 ducats so that she could pay her debts.36 Cesare’s contribution to his sister’s health was to write her a letter from Urbino on 20 July announcing the imminent surrender of Camerino and its lords, the Varani, yet another family connection of the Este. The fact that he could do this is an indication that Lucrezia was far from being as shocked by his aggressive coups as she pretended to be:
‘Illustrious Lady and dearest Sister,’ he wrote:
I know nothing could be better medicine for Your Excellency in your present illness than the good news which I have to impart. I must tell you that I have just had information that Camerino will yield. We trust that on receiving this news your condition will rapidly improve, and that you will inform us at once of it. For your indisposition prevents us from deriving any pleasure from this and other news. We ask you to tell the illustrious Duke Don Alfonso, your husband, our brother-in-law, at once, as, owing to want of time, we have not been able to write to him direct.
Your Excellency’s brother, who loves you better than himself . . .
But this cheering news did not cure Lucrezia whose condition over the following days deteriorated. On 31 July, di Prosperi reported that she was very weak and the general opinion was that both she and her child would die. She suffered a severe nosebleed but seemed better to the extent that she expressed a wish to go to Belriguardo but this the doctors would not consider. Many of her ladies, di Prosperi reported, were also ill, and Madonna Cecharella mortally so. But by the time both Cesare and Alfonso rushed to her bedside on 3 August, she was well enough to lie dressed upon her bed where she received them, as she reported to Ercole three days later. Disguised as a knight of St John, Cesare was on his way with three other horsemen (including Troche and Remolins) to see Louis XII, with whom he had a secret and vital agreement, in Milan where the King was surrounded by Cesare’s enemies. Alfonso arrived shortly afterwards and, according to Lucrezia, the three of them enjoyed ‘pleasant conversation’ for two hours. The next day the two men left in the direction of Reggio.
Lucrezia, however, recovered only briefly at the sight of her brother and husband. She suffered a relapse and the fever and the ‘flux’ continued, although her brave letters to Ercole gave no indication of the danger she was in. Many of her doctors too were sick, Francesco Castello grievously so, while another, Francesco Carri, later died. By the beginning of September she was seriously ill, suffering fits of sweating interspersed with chills every day. Francesco Castello told Ercole that only giving birth would relieve her; the Bishop of V
enosa wrote unsympathetically to Rome of ‘accidenti di animo’(fits of the spirit) and hysterical phenomena. On 3 and 4 September her fits were so severe that Castello could only recommend her to God’s grace; then, on the evening of the 5th, she was seized with a convulsion which caused her to arch her back, as screaming, she gave birth to a stillborn, seven-month-old daughter. Puerperal fever consumed her and the doctors despaired; two days later, at dawn on September, Cesare made a sudden appearance, having ridden furiously from the French court at Milan, accompanied by his brother-in-law the Cardinal d’Albret and thirteen gentlemen. Later that morning the doctors took the decision to bleed Lucrezia; to distract her Cesare held her foot and told jokes, even succeeding in making her laugh, but that night her condition deteriorated. Castello did not sleep, not daring to leave her, and in the morning she was given communion. However, as the morning went on she seemed better and an exhausted Castello told the inquiring di Prosperi that if things went on in this way until the next day he believed she would survive.37 Cesare, hoping for the best for his adored sister, left as swiftly and as secretly as he had arrived. Couriers rode furiously between Ferrara and Rome bearing the latest news of Lucrezia. In Rome on 8 September, Costabili reported that Alexander had heard ‘with great grief of the stillbirth of his daughter Duchess Lucrezia, but concluded that the grief would have been considerably greater if the child had been a boy’.38 Saraceni, who had also seen the Pope, added that ‘he much praised the prince Alfonso for his great tenderness towards her’.39 Ercole, however, as a letter dictated by Lucrezia of 4 September reveals, had not ceased to press her over his hopes for a cardinal’s hat for his favourite, Gian Luca Pozzi. Yet on the news of her stillbirth he had rushed to her side from Reggio where he had been conferring with il Valentino.
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