For Lucrezia, too, the romance was in the past. Ten days after her baby’s death, as soon as she had received a letter from Alfonso saying how much he would like to see her at Belriguardo, she was making plans to meet Francesco en route at Borgoforte.12 According to Isabella’s biographer, Luzio, who was not exactly prejudiced in favour of either Francesco or Lucrezia, Francesco was ‘beside himself with joy at the news’, writing on 25 October in a letter which has since disappeared, ‘we would not wish to have acquired a great treasure . . .’ than the news he had just received of her projected arrival.13 Luzio dates Lucrezia’s stay with Francesco at Borgoforte as the beginning of a declared love affair between the two, facilitated once again by Ercole Strozzi, an old friend of Gonzaga, who had just happened to issue on 27 October 1505 a humorous invitation to an eight-day wildfowling contest based at his villa at Ostellato. Luzio seems to have believed that the affair was platonic, given the difficulties the two of them had in meeting, but it is hard to credit that two people with the sexual records of Francesco and Lucrezia would not have taken advantage of any opportunity of having a physical relationship when it was offered. Despite all the difficulties it was to be a mutual and long-lasting passion. After spending the night at Borgoforte, where he offered a dinner for Lucrezia and her party, Francesco insisted on escorting her to Mantua despite her ‘resistance’, as she disingenuously informed Alfonso in a letter written from Borgoforte:
Your Excellency will see from this letter how the Most Illustrious Lord Marquis truly battled with me and forced me with such a vehemence and desire that I should go tomorrow to visit the Most Illustrious Marchioness: and how much resistance I put up. Nonetheless I was forced to obey and thus must go there tomorrow by all means. And he has sent for many court carriages and horses. And he says that he will secretly lead me into the castle and I will be there tomorrow in the company of the Marchioness and will lodge there with my ladies and in the morning he will send me in his bucentaur wherever I planned to go . . . that is via La Stellata and Bondeno, then to Monastirolo and Belriguardo . . . Here the Marchese has done me much honour and festivity and has lodged me very well in the house which belonged to Hieronymo Stanga . . .14
But as soon as she had arrived back at Belriguardo, where Alfonso joined her, she wrote formally to Francesco expressing her great gratitude for all the kindness he had shown her not only at Borgoforte but also at Sermide (on the border between Mantuan and Ferrarese territory) and on board the ship.15
Five days later she wrote to him again, thanking him for his kind letter as another example of the love and affection which existed between them. Among the subjects which they had discussed together had been, obviously, Cesare. Francesco told her that he would send an envoy to Spain; Lucrezia was delighted because the man would be able to take with him two letters which she enclosed, one to the King of Spain, the other to Cesare. She was trying all means to have her brother released, suggesting that Francesco should also write to the King and to any people he might know ‘with authority in that Kingdom’. Soon she hoped to return to Ferrara because for some days past ‘things have been going well there’.
But things were not going well in Ferrara, at least as far as the Este family was concerned. After a miserable summer of heat, plague and famine, sibling rivalries had already surfaced and were about to plunge the princely family into one of the darkest episodes of its history, known as the ‘Congiura’, the Conspiracy. The roots of the trouble lay in the proud, competitive temperament of the Este which extended to rivalry over musicians. Ercole’s cherished stable of musicians, some of whom enjoyed the status of cappellani (chaplains) had included one Don Rainaldo who, at the end of 1504, was working for Giulio, the most musical of the Este, but who was coveted by Ippolito for his own ‘cappella’. Towards the end of 1504, as Ercole lay dying, Ippolito had approached Don Rainaldo, who agreed to join his household. Don Rainaldo subsequently disappeared and it was thought he was dead; in fact, he had been spirited away by Ippolito and secluded in the Rocca del Gesso, a stronghold which belonged to Giovanni Boiardo, Count of Scandiano and nephew of the famous poet Matteo Maria Boiardo, the author of Orlando Innamorato.
Some time towards the end of May 1505, Giulio, burning with resentment against his half-brother, the cardinal, had discovered the whereabouts of Don Rainaldo. Having asked both Alberto Pio da Carpi and Enea Furlano, nicknamed ‘il Cavaliero’, both members of Gonzaga’s circle, for armed men and crossbowmen, without telling them the reason (or so Pio later testified), he went to stay with Ferrante at a place called Le Lame, near Carpi. From there he went to the Rocca del Gesso, took away Don Rainaldo and returned with him to Ferrante. Furious, Ippolito discovered what had happened and complained to Alfonso, whose right-hand man he now was. Alfonso then ordered Giulio to appear before him at Modena and exiled him from the Ferrarese state on the grounds that he had caused grave offence to Boiardo. Ferrante had also been summoned to Modena and ordered to stay there although not under arrest. According to the historian of the Congiura, Riccardo Bacchelli, it was at this point in August 1505 that Lucrezia had attempted to mediate, calling upon Giulio and Ferrante to hand over Don Rainaldo, and persuading the priest to take refuge in the fortress of Casalgrande. Alfonso then wrote Lucrezia a firm letter intimating that she should not meddle in this affair: Giulio had offended him deeply and as punishment Alfonso ordered that he should be exiled to Brescello, present himself each day to the ducal commissary there, and go no further than two miles outside the town. ‘We wish that this our decision you will make known by Niccolò Bendideo, our secretary, warning Don Giulio to obey us, because, if he fails to do so, Your Ladyship may know that we will proceed to other means.’ There was nothing more Lucrezia could do; the wretched Giulio was forced to comply. The loyal di Prosperi, as an old follower of the Este, was anguished by the situation, as he told Isabella; he was sure that Don Giulio would never think of doing anything to harm his brother the Duke. But Alfonso and Ippolito were very close at this time, the one at Belriguardo, the other at nearby Vigoenza, and seeing each other every day, a situation which could not bode well for Giulio.
Isabella had done her best to mend the rift, taking the occasion of the birth of Alexandro to write to Alfonso asking him to pardon Giulio in honour of the occasion and that he should not exclude from public amnesty ‘a brother who not from malice but from lack of thought has fallen into error. This is no time,’ she continued, ‘to remember affronts and hatreds and if the Most Reverend Cardinal is of this way of thinking, I would remind him of the same.’16 Francesco Gonzaga also intervened on Giulio’s behalf, as Ferrante wrote gratefully to him on 24 September from Reggio. Del Forno (a member of the Modenese family who were very close to Alfonso and Ippolito) and il Barone had told him of the kind efforts he had made with Alfonso for Don Giulio for which he was most grateful. Now that Ippolito had arrived at Reggio, he begged Francesco to send a trusted emissary to bring a formal end to the feud between him and Giulio.17 As a result of these efforts by the Gonzaga, di Prosperi wrote on 12 October that Giulio had been allowed to return to Ferrara and had been to Belriguardo, adding with an optimism which was no more than wishful thinking: ‘I judge his case to be settled, thanks to the good offices of Your Ladyship.’
But matters were far from settled: the hatred and rivalry between the powerful cardinal and his reckless younger brother found a new cause which had nothing to do with chapel singers—Angela Borgia. Angela Borgia was the most beautiful and charming of Lucrezia’s ladies, graceful and elegant, according to her many admirers. And among those admirers in 1505 were Ippolito and Giulio. Angela is held to have enraged Ippolito by telling him: ‘Monsignore, your brother’s eyes are worth more than the whole of your person.’
She was also the closest of all her ladies to Lucrezia, who was concerned about her; she was now eighteen years old and a good marriage was a necessity. Earlier that year, on 10 March, after Gonzaga’s visit to Ferrara, Lucrezia wrote to him: ‘After Your Lordship’s departure from
here I have spoken to Messer Cesari, the bearer of this letter, concerning some matters to refer to you about “el negotio” the business of Dona Angela . . .’ It may have been that Angela and Giulio had begun an affair which might make the question of a marriage all the more pressing. Less than a year later, on 18 January 1506, di Prosperi reported that Angela Borgia ‘had given birth on the ship’ but did not indicate the precise date of the birth, which could well have been some weeks before news of it reached him. She was still unmarried and no father was named, but tragic intervening events indicated who he might have been.
Shortly after Lucrezia returned to Ferrara, on 3 November 1505, Giulio, returning from a pleasure excursion in the meadows by the straight road leading to Belriguardo, ran into an ambush laid by Ippolito and his servants. He was dragged from his horse and stabbed in the eyes. The official version given by Alfonso in a letter of 5 November to Isabella was that the staffieri had done it of their own accord ‘perhaps to please their lord or perhaps because of some insult one of them had received from Don Julio . . .’ In a postscript, however, he confessed the truth. Ippolito had been present and had ordered the assault: ‘Don Julio returning from the fields as I have said, met the Most Reverend Cardinal, our brother, who had come there with four staffieri who he commanded “Kill that man: cut out his eyes”.’ There was no hope, they thought, for Giulio’s left eye, and no one could be sure about the vision in his right.
Unwisely, Alfonso gave a hostage to fortune by writing the next day to Francesco, including both versions he had given to Isabella, telling him to burn the postscript and only to disclose the official version which blamed it all on the staffieri and did not reveal Ippolito’s direct involvement.18
For a Renaissance prince to commit such damning information to paper is a measure of the shock Alfonso was feeling and his need for the support of his family and equals. It was quite out of character for a man normally so reserved and inclined to conceal his feelings and intentions. If either of these letters had fallen into the wrong hands – and couriers were frequently waylaid and spied upon – it could have caused him and his family enormous damage. As it was, the case intrigued Italy when the official version came out and was, of course, not believed to be the full story. In Rome Julius II was agog, embarrassing Beltrando Costabili with his acute questioning. Costabili wrote anxiously to Ippolito that the Pope was greatly desirous to know the cause of the attack on Don Giulio, asking the cardinal for instructions as to what he should say. On 14 November, Costabili reported that he had communicated the letters of Alfonso and Ippolito to the Pope who had found the case ‘most audacious’ and issued a brief for the capture of the delinquents should they be found in the States of the Church.19 (The nineteenth-century transcriber of this letter for Lord Acton could not resist a comment: ‘Marvellous impudence of the Cardinal Ippolito, who was the principal delinquent in the crime, having ordered his sicari [assassins] to carry it out, from envy of seeing Don Giulio preferred by a Lady.’) Five days later, however, Costabili informed Ippolito that the Pope no longer believed in the exactitude of the account he had been given—‘that he was of the opinion that the case had happened in another manner than Your Excellency’s account of it’. Needless to say, the guilty four were never brought to justice and it was rumoured that they had fled to Hungary.
Isabella and Francesco were outraged and sent Francesco’s surgeon Messer Andrea and another physician to attend Giulio, who wrote pathetically thanking them for their kindness ‘which has greatly alleviated my pain although it is most grave and almost insupportable’. Alfonso sent back the Mantuan doctors since the Gonzaga’s son, Federico, was ill; Giulio could see with his left eye and there were hopes of some sight returning to his right. Two weeks later di Prosperi visited Giulio to report to Isabella that her brother could see the outlines of people and things but could still not open his eyelid without using his hand as the muscle was so damaged; with his right he could only distinguish darkness from light and he was still in great pain. ‘God help him,’ di Prosperi added, ‘and from every side give that love and peace which there should be between good brothers for the good of their honour and of this Most Illustrious House . . .’ Alfonso had decided that the wisest course of action would be inaction, particularly against Ippolito, but tension and suspicion remained in the family. Ippolito went to Mantua without warning to visit Isabella, as Francesco nervously informed Alfonso who replied that he was grateful for Gonzaga’s firm determination not to receive anyone who might be unwelcome to him in Ferrara. But in the case of Ippolito, ‘Your Lordship must know that you have in no way disturbed us in any way by receiving His Most Reverend Lordship because it is our opinion and goodwill that he can go and stay wherever he wants in our dominions at his pleasure. And moreover Your Lordship has done well to receive his visit since it has in no way displeased us . . .’
At around the same time an act of private violence occurred which was probably in some way connected with the undercurrents of bad blood between the senior Este brothers and Francesco Gonzaga. Gonzaga’s principal favourite at court, Antonio Regazzi da San Secondo, known as ‘il Milanese’, was murdered by Enea Furlano, the courtier known as il Cavaliero, who happened to be married to one of Francesco’s illegitimate daughters. After a brief spell of imprisonment, he was released and exiled from Mantua. Bacchelli explicitly claims that il Milanese was killed on the orders or instigation of Alfonso and Ippolito.20 Furlano was afterwards often seen in Alfonso’s company and after Francesco Gonzaga’s death even his sentence of exile was reversed by Isabella.21
Unperturbed, Alfonso continued his ducal business, receiving his secretaries but no one else except for his brothers and intimate friends. He and Lucrezia were occupied with the extension and redecoration of their rooms. He spent hours overseeing the planting and working of his garden. The city was filling up again as the plague was now over and the citizens returning. Lucrezia came and went between Ferrara and Belriguardo, supervising the work on her apartments. ‘Yesterday I saw the Rooms which the Duchess is having made [in the Torre Marchesana of the Castello] which will be most beautiful,’ di Prosperi reported on 6 December, ‘as will a small salon where the balcony was: And from the rooms of His Lordship her Consort [the camere dorate in the Palazzo del Corte] you can proceed to Her Ladyship’s rooms without being seen from the piazza or anyone being aware of their passage unless they wished it to connect their private rooms with each other’s. For the present the Lady is staying in the rooms in the Castello where His Lordship was . . .’ Giulio was installed in an apartment in the Corte rather than his splendid palazzo in the Via degli Angeli, presumably for better security. Antonio Costabili told di Prosperi that Alfonso thought it was time to settle the differences between Ippolito and Giulio and that the cardinal should return to Ferrara for this purpose. On 24 December, di Prosperi was able to report that a reconciliation between the two had taken place.
Alfonso had sent Antonio Costabili for Ippolito who arrived accompanied by Count Lodovico Pico della Mirandola and had supper with Alfonso in his camerini. Subsequently Alfonso sent Hieronymo Ziliolo to Giulio to tell him of his great desire that he and the cardinal should be reconciled, and that he hoped Giulio would accede to this. At their meeting, Alfonso spoke first of the repentance felt by the cardinal and of his regret and of the goodwill in which he would hold Giulio, ‘whereupon the Cardinal added in most kindly and repentant words of how he would in future be a good and loving brother and other words of similar tenor’. Giulio then spoke a few words, addressing himself to Alfonso: ‘My Lord, you see how I am’, and then, turning to the cardinal, he said that he had to thank God and Our Blessed Lady who had granted him his sight. ‘And although my case has been most cruel and inhuman and done to me with no fault of mine, nonetheless I pardon Your Lordship and will not cease to be to you that good brother I have always been’, to which Ippolito replied pleasantly. Alfonso was seen to be deeply moved and ‘incapable of many words except to say that he prayed them to love eac
h other and to enjoy this State with him’, warning them that if they did not do so he would be obliged to force them to comply. Unable to go on, he turned to Niccolò da Correggio to speak on his behalf. Finally, Ippolito and Giulio exchanged a formal kiss of peace. ‘God grant that things go from good to better,’ intoned the ever-optimistic di Prosperi.22
Lucrezia, who had been warned by Alfonso to cease any attempts at mediation that summer, had kept out of these Este family quarrels which were uncomfortably dangerous and still, as it was to turn out, far from settled. Her first year as Duchess of Ferrara had, apart from her romance with Francesco, not been a happy one. Her state of mind regarding her own fertility cannot have been enhanced by the news that Isabella had been safely delivered of a second son, Ercole, in November. And bitterest of all, perhaps, was her concern for Cesare’s continuing captivity.
12. The Congiura
‘May God put his hand in these things and discords’
Lucrezia Borgia Page 28