About book Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, And Death In Renaissance Italy (2005)
It's hard to review this book because I know she spent a fair amount of time researching materials for the biography but then good research does not imply good writing. I seldom read histories of biographies, but when I do I always turn to Antonia Fraser and I think Bradford should take a page from one of her books to understand the tonality biographies of these types should assume in order to express both admiration for a great, historical figure and empathy for a real human being. Lucrezia is never fleshed out; in the beginning of the book she is hardly mentioned and toward the middle and end the vast majority of the time is spent describing her outerwear rather than her personal life (save letter quotations from her lovers). Even that aspect of her personal life which Bradford seems most interested in sharing with the reader, her love affairs, are never properly described. Books written about the medieval period where little written material is available should depend on the biographer/historians own inference. Fraser does this rather beautifully. She explains the feelings these historical figures must have had at important junctures of their lives, giving the impression of a real human being. In Fraser's Marie Antoinette, the final scene of the dying queen's life, already sick in her prison cell, brought tears to my eyes. I truly felt as though someone I had watched grow up, mature into a mother and wife, then slandered and cornered into prison, would die and I felt her humiliation and pain as she prepared for the guillotine. Lucrezia's death is given as much attention as the death of her servant Strozzi; she was sick, had convulsions, and died, quite simply (on second thought, Strozzi's death was given far more attention). I was also annoyed by the minimal weight given to her major relationships: brothers and father. The only relationship that was given appropriate attention was the relationship she had with her husband, Alfonso, though only because of the length of their relationship and the eventfulness of his life. However, her principle familial relationships are practically ignored. For example, when Lucrezia is sick and Cesare, her brother, comes back and forth from battle to support her as she was bled, even making her laugh during her treatments, comprised an extremely touching scene. Cesare's darkness and amorality juxtaposed to Lucrezia's purity and religiosity could have been an interesting aspect to discuss; what did Cesare write about his sister? Did Lucrezia understand, or admit to herself, her brother's amorality? Was that what attracted her to him? This is never explored. In the end, I expected some reference to be made of her other near-death experience; something like "Perhaps Lucrezia clung to life in remembrance of her convalescence from that earlier illness, whence all her doctors, and herself, thought for certain her life was lost. However, this time, without the love of her brother who would drop his murderous affairs in order to deliver her from death, she gave into her illness. The young girl who, in her darkest moment approaching death, had been made to laugh by her brother who held her as she prayed to live and accomplish the dreams her father had envisioned for her, was now an adult, with the hopes the principle players in her life had had for her long fulfilled. She had been a dutiful wife, a faithful servant of Ferrara, and mother to the heir of the throne. It is not unreasonable to assume that instead of fighting to live, she had resigned herself to heaven where she would be met with her beloved father and brother." That, in my opinion, would have been a better ending. The feeling you get from the book is that her father controlled her life while her brother would come to only complicate it; but still, her devotion to them both is impressive. Her second marriage, which ended with the murder of her beloved husband by the hands of Cesare's henchmen, perhaps brought the most exhilarating scenes: love, betrayal, and the overwhelming commitment to family. When Lucrezia's husband is killed, Cesare immediately visits his furious and grievous sister - what did he say? How did he explain what he did? Any assumptions or inferences? All Bradford says is that it proves how close they were that Cesare would visit her directly after the murder. Even something like this would have been nice: "One can imagine the conflicting feelings Lucrezia had for her brother then - confronting his violence as it touched on one she loved. But in the end, their love would triumph, and she would forgive this travesty as a peccadillo only pardonable due to its author. And, certainly, Cesare was confident he would ascertain this forgiveness, though his bold appearance directly after the murder underlines how unbearable it must have been to imagine she would harbor enmity toward him." Furthermore, another annoyance was that Bradford's proofs of Lucrezia's intimacy with her third husband, Alfonso, is that he was attracted to her (evidenced in her constant pregnancies) and trusted her to be in charge of his state while he was away. The latter proves nothing, because that was the tradition for most Italian states (even Isabella, Francesco Gonzaga's wife and sister of Alfonso, was in charge of their state when Francesco was off at war and he didn't trust her at all). And physical intimacy does not exactly prove affection; perhaps true affection would have been acknowledgment on his part that her pregnancies almost always proved near-fatal and an understanding that he would not endanger her life and take his conjugal visits elsewhere. Then, the love affair between Bembo and Lucrezia - this isn't fleshed out at all. Really, we get the feeling that Bembo is curious to see if he can be with a woman of Lucrezia's stature and fills her head with empty promises and pretty words, there is no hint of true affection. Lucrezia's relationship with Gonzaga, her brother-in-law, is more interesting, but still dry considering one gets the impression they never saw each other. Because we only have her letters to him, she seems extremely desperate, begging him to come visit her which he never does. It hardly seemed like love. Three issues with the content (above has only been style and things she omitted, following will be my issues with the things she actually wrote): 1) long quotes from letters that are completely meaningless and could have been summed up in one sentence, 2) lengthy descriptions of clothes and foods which have no bearing on the story and distract the reader, 3) not enough introduction/ reintroduction of characters; when there are so many people it would be nice for her to say something like, "remember earlier in her life when she was at this ball and this guy said this, it's that guy." She never does anything of the sort, so it's very easy to get mixed up in all the names, especially since there are many people with the same name. Altogether, Bradford makes Lucrezia's life rather boring. The first half of the book the reader is thinking, "Well, Rodrigo sounds way more interesting, I'll just read a book about him," then in the middle replace Rodrigo with Cesare, then in the end replace Cesare with practically any male character in the book. Lucrezia is a tertiary and unimportant character in her own biography. It was very sad indeed.
Like most historical figures that interest me, I was first introduced to Lucrezia Borgia and her awesome, psychotic family through historic fiction. In high school I read The Borgia Bride, which was told from the perspective of Lucrezia's sister-in-law, Sancha of Aragon. It was awesome (and, as I now know from reading this book, pretty accurate) for several reasons: first, lots of sex, which to a fifteen-year-old is a great recommendation in itself; second, it was full of poisonings, backstabbing both figurative and literal (I recall that Sancha carried a dagger in her gown and used it several times), political intrigue, and general skullduggery. Also the author decided that, yes, the rumors were true and Lucrezia was sleeping with both her father and her brother Cesare, so there was that additional bit of escandalo. It was an awesome read, is what I'm saying, and when I saw this in a bookstore I decided to buy it on a whim and find out more about the real Lucrezia Borgia. The first half, when her father is Pope and is gaining power (and then at the height of it), is fascinating. There are murders, wars, scheming, teenage mistresses, bastard children, and other classic Renaissance-style fun (and syphilis). What I learned from this segment of the book is that the Borgias' bad historical reputation is well-earned - Alexander basically bribed his way into the papacy and, despite being a religious person, had no problem keeping a mistress and being a power-hungry, murderous jackass in order to keep his power; his son Cesare wanted to take over Italy and came pretty damn close; and one of the Borgia children was murdered, probably by his own siblings, and found dead in a river. The only thing that's missing is the incest, which Bradford adamantly insists did not happen. I'm inclined to agree (after all, Cesare and Alexander could sleep with literally any women they wanted, so it's not like they were so desperate for tail they resorted to banging their sister/daughter), but in the interest of fairness and rumor-mongering, Bradford doesn't really offer up any compelling evidence that Lucrezia didn't sleep with her father or her brother. Just sayin'. In fact, there aren't many claims made in this book at all, which is one reason it loses a star. Bradford isn't really making any specific points with this book, aside from setting out to show us that Lucrezia was a) not sleeping with her family members and b) not nearly as villainous as she's portrayed, and was actually very intelligent and sympathetic. Many of the other characters are more interesting that she is, particularly her fascinating and totally evil brother Cesare, who deserves a book of his own (I'm sure there are several already, but at times it felt like he was the one Bradford really wanted to be writing about). Sancha also makes a few appearances (she's known as Sancia here) and the little bits of information that Bradford reveals about her actions are tantalizingly brief. She'll mention offhandedly "Sancia was now Cesare's mistress" and then a few chapters later, "Sancia was no longer with Cesare and was now the mistress of so-and-so" with nothing in between. This made me want to find a biography of Sancha, because she sounds cool as hell. Equally so is Lucrezia's other sister-in-law, Isabella d'Este (the sister of Lucrezia's third husband), who becomes an important character in the second half of the book. Unfortunately, that's where it gets boring. Once Lucrezia marries Alfonso d'Este and moves away from Rome, she's away from the center of the papal goings-on, which means the reader is too. Then Cesare and Alexander die, and there are no more cool characters doing batshit crazy things. Instead, it's just chapter after chapter of "Then Lucrezia got pregnant again and had another miscarriage. Then she wrote this letter to this person. Then Alfonso went to war and Lucrezia was in charge of Ferrara, and here's some stuff she did." Once the crazy Borgias are gone and it's just Lucrezia, the story stops being interesting. It doesn't help that Bradford's writing style is so dry and dull already, even when describing poisonings and ruinous affairs, and she makes Lucrezia's later life intolerably boring. Also Bradford's writing can be very confusing and oddly-structured, as evidenced in this bizarrely-constructed sentence that I had to read three times before I understood what it was trying to say: "That very day, alone in charge at Ferrara since Alfonso was away in camp and Ippolito also, Lucrezia, despite Sanudo's report of panic, kept her head, informing Alfonso of all she was doing to help, including sending a spy to Venice to find out whether the Venetians were arming forces and, if so, of what kind." What? There has got to be a better way to phrase all that.
Do You like book Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, And Death In Renaissance Italy (2005)?
I thought the Borgias were supposed to be interesting. Perhaps it is Bradford's writing style that made it less so.I know as much about Lucrezia as I did before - which is almost nothing. She never feels like a real person and two of the three most important relationships in her life are hardly given much attention.I know Bradford did a lot of research and she certainly knows her subject well, but it doesn't translate into helping her readers know Lucrezia better. Highly disappointed in this one.
—Sarah
While this is clearly a thoroughly well researched book it somehow still leaves me knowing very little about Lucrezia Borgia, maybe this is because so much of the detail of her life is known only through the letters of the other people in her world. Unfortunately for Sarah Bradford it seems that there just isn't enough evidence to support or refute any claims about Lucrezia, and she remains a largely shadowy figure. This book seems to not quite know what it is trying to be, it's not informative enough to be a purely academic text but also not entertaining enough to be a 'light read'.The detail Bradford lavishes on some aspects of Lucrezia's life is in places absorbing however it is strikingly out of place when compared with the vast gaps she leaves in others areas of the contemporary society or culture. For instance numerous chunks of text are given over to describing the various cloths Lucrezia used for her dresses but not once is there any explanation of the seeming custom of adultery prevalent amongst aristocratic society at this time.All in all I felt I was left rather cold by this work, although I did gain insight into a few details of Lucrezia's life, such as her grooming regime, there seems very little evidence of a real person on the pages of this book. The bold claim that this work will in some way expose new thinking or diminish previous assumptions about a much maligned figure in history is simply unsupportable, Lucrezia remains a mystery but I feel very much that it is not because she is an enigmatic, chameleon-like personality with an almost mystical or legendary presence but much more because she was simply an aristocratic lady who like many others mentioned in this book did what was customary - that is necessary, to get by.
—Chloe
This was a wonderful biography---and one of the few honest ones of Lucrezia Borgia out there. Most bios before a certain time are to be avoided--littered with inaccuracies and downright slander. Also usually far too filled with information on her illustrious if somewhat decadent family. This book truly focuses on Lucrezia herself. It starts with her beginnings and a nice overview of the warring families and duchys that made up Italy at the time and from which she sprung. The book pretty quickly debunks most myths about Lucrezia which is long overdue. Far from the poisoning, incestous creature she is described as in most books,or films and even history books or the simpering, slightly soft headed child of fate, controlled equally by her brother and father, Lucrezia evolves as a very human, and very interesting woman of her times. Starting with her strange childhood as the bastard child of a pope and ending with her days as the acclaimed and much loved Duchess of Ferrarra this book covers it all, using her existing letters as well as descriptions and histories by less biased folks of the time. What emerges is a portrait of a complicated, beautiful, wily, charming and religous woman who despite committing the same sins as any human might commit, is often colored as blackly as her sociopathic brother Cesare. She is even quite a feminist figure, ruling Ferrarra in her husband's absences (quite frequent) and deeply respected by poets, artists and writers of the times as a cultured, intelligent and kind woman. Having been fascinated by Lucrezia since I was a child (I read my first book about her at the age of 10) and always wondering what the truth was about her life, I was quite pleased to find a really detailed and in depth look at her life to add to my own opinion of the lady.
—Belinda
