Five centuries ago, Italy was a dangerous and brutal place for the nobility and the general populace. Political machinations resulted in swift changes, with assassinations and war commonplace.
Born into this dynamic was Lucrezia Borgia, one of the most complex and intriguing figures of the Italian Renaissance. She was a woman subject to the political games played around her and the victim of propaganda spread by the enemies of the Borgia family. The truth is often obscured by popular belief.
Was she a Machiavellian femme fatale or simply a pawn in the machinations of others?
Lucrezia Borgia’s Background
The Borgia family was not an old and established line like many of its peers. Established around 1455, it was young but had risen to prominence very quickly. Lucrezia was born on April 18, 1480, and by then, the family was already feared and respected. In fact, by the time she was born, her great uncle, Alonso, had served as Pope Calixtus III (d. 1458).
Lucrezia’s life was controversial from the moment she was born. Her father, Rodrigo Borgia, was a cardinal, and her mother, Giovanna “Vannozza” dei Cattanei, a landlady of several inns, is believed to have been married to Domenico d’Arignano, an officer of the Church at the time she started the affair with Rodrigo. This, however, was not particularly strange for the time, as many cardinals had mistresses. The relationship resulted in four children, of which Lucrezia was the third, that Rodrigo publicly acknowledged.
Lucrezia received an excellent education, and her father planned to use her hand in marriage to increase the power of the Borgia family.
Incestuous Relationships
One of the most vicious rumors spread about Lucrezia was that she was engaged in an incestuous relationship with her older brother, Cesare, who was a cardinal. Not only did Lucrezia have to suffer this allegation, but she was also accused of paternal incest.
The source of these accusations was a slighted Giovanni Sforza, Lucrezia’s first husband. The two were married on June 12, 1493. Lucrezia was just 13 at the time, while Giovanni was 26. After a short time, however, Rodrigo, who was by then Pope Alexander VI, no longer needed or wanted the Sforza family of Milan as allies.
The pope desired more powerful and valuable allies and thus sought an annulment of his daughter’s marriage so he could marry her off to someone else. Thus, he claimed that the marriage had never been consummated on the grounds that Giovanni was impotent. The truth of the matter is that this charge was most likely nonsense. Several sources mention that Giovanni had fathered children by a previous marriage.
Giovanni initially refused but was eventually forced to sign a confession of impotence and an annulment to the marriage in 1497. Insulted by this turn of events, he accused the pope of wanting to annul the marriage so he could sleep with Lucrezia instead. In a short space of time, these rumors would spread and evolve. The accusation of paternal incest grew to involve that of fraternal incest.
The incidents that followed did not lend themselves to dispelling these rumors. While the marriage to Giovanni Sforza was in the process of being dissolved, Lucrezia is purported to have had an affair with a young Spanish servant, perhaps Pedro ”Perotto” Calderón, Alexander’s chamberlain. His body was later found in the Tiber River along with a maid named Pantasilea. Following this, a child was born into the Borgia household, whose parentage remains a mystery, but it is widely believed that Lucrezia was the mother.
Sometime after the child, Giovanni, was born, Alexander VI publicly issued a bull stating that the boy was born to a Roman woman and that the father was Cesare. This was done to protect the infant as well as Lucrezia’s reputation. However, in not naming the Roman woman, rumors began to circulate that Lucrezia was, in fact, the woman in question. Rumors of incest spread like wildfire and were recorded as fact by respected historians Francesco Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli.
Lucrezia the Poisoner
Among the political intrigues of the Italian Renaissance, assassinations were commonplace. The Borgias were not exempt from accusations, nor were they exempt from having to navigate their way through the murky and immoral waters of the political scene. It can be said with certainty that the Borgias had some of their enemies murdered.
Lucrezia’s second husband, Alfonso of Aragon, was assassinated on Cesare’s orders, likely to strengthen ties with France, as Alfonso was the illegitimate son of King Alfonso II of Naples and Cesare had recently married into French nobility. The French King Louis XII had designs on Naples and Milan, so the Borgias found themselves in a difficult position.
Therefore, Cesare acted to sever ties with Naples. As Cesare was close to his sister, this assassination added fuel to the fires of jealousy and incest. In truth, Lucrezia had no hand in this murder. It is widely believed that she was madly in love with her husband. Nevertheless, Cesare and Lucrezia remained close, although how Lucrezia managed to forgive her brother and how long it took is unknown.
Being so close to the political intrigue and the plotting of murders, Lucrezia was naturally a target for accusations. She was said to have used a ring that contained poison to dispose of her family’s political rivals. The poison of choice for the Borgias, according to legend, was cantarella. It is unknown what this substance was or even if it existed at all, but it was supposed to have been a white powder with a pleasant taste. It may have been arsenic, but the lack of evidence for its existence is echoed by its omission in contemporary works. As for Lucrezia poisoning her enemies, there is no conclusive evidence she was involved in such activities. The only evidence comes in the form of rumors from her enemies.
The Carnal Exploits of Lucrezia Borgia
As with the rumors of poisonings and incest, there is little evidence that Lucrezia was the seductress she has been made out to be. It is true she had multiple husbands, and it is possible she had more than one affair while married. At the same time, it is also true that her marriages were disasters as a result of the political scheming of her family. Her first husband was accused of impotence and forced to sign an annulment, and her second husband was murdered.
By the time she married her third husband, rumors had tainted Lucrezia’s reputation so much so that a hard bargain had to be struck for her to marry Alfonso d’Este, heir to the dukedom of Ferrara. One such damaging rumor was her presence at the so-called Banquet of Chestnuts, alleged to have been an orgy held at the Papal Palace in Rome, attested to by Johann Burchard in his Liber Notarum. According to the Protonotary Apostolic, Cesare Borgia held a banquet in his apartments in the Apostolic Palace, wherein guests entertained themselves with courtesans, all watched over by the pope, Cesare, and Lucrezia. There is strong evidence to suggest some sort of event happened, but the details are debated by modern historians.
Despite the rumors and the lies, Lucrezia was not faithful to her third husband, nor was he to her. In 1503, she began a relationship with her brother-in-law, Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. The two wrote sexually charged love letters to one another. It is possible that this relationship was more sexual than emotional, but nothing can be confirmed with any serious degree of certainty.
During her third marriage, Lucrezia also had an affair with the Venetian poet and scholar Pietro Bembo. The two exchanged love letters that Lord Byron claimed were “the prettiest and fairest imaginable.”
The Fall of the Borgias and a Different Life for Lucrezia Borgia
While Lucrezia’s third marriage was not a faithful one, with both partners having extra-marital affairs, after the fall of Rodrigo and Cesare, the public attention on the Borgias was averted, and Lucrezia gained a new reputation as an honorable noblewoman. Away from the intrigues of Rome and her manipulative family, Lucrezia was afforded the freedom to thrive. Her intellect and education served her well during this time, and Lucrezia became a great patron of the arts. Her father died in 1503, possibly from malaria, and Cesare died in 1507 while fighting in Navarre (now part of Spain).
After her husband became the Duke of Ferrara in 1505, Lucrezia took the title of Duchess of the Duchy of Ferrara and gained much respect from her subjects. In 1510, the Duchy of Ferrara was endangered by Pope Julius II, who wanted to add it to the Papal States. Lucrezia is said to have pawned her jewelry to pay for the city’s defense. She also won a great deal of respect by refusing her husband’s orders to have arrested men tortured.
Lucrezia had eight children with Alfonso d’Este, four of which survived to adulthood. In 1512, Lucrezia heard news of the death of Rodrigo, her only child from the marriage to Alfonso of Aragon. She had been obliged to abandon her child to marry Alfonso d’Este, and despite repeated attempts to bring him to the court at Ferrara, she never saw him again. After he died, Lucrezia spent time in the Convent of Saint Bernardino in mourning. On June 24, 1519, Lucrezia died at the age of 39, allegedly due to complications with childbirth.
Lucrezia Borgia’s Image in the Media
Lucrezia Borgia and the myths and legends surrounding her have been catapulted into the modern imagination through works—largely of fiction—that portray the woman in different lights. Of great importance is her legacy in films.
In Lucrezia Borgia (1922), she is depicted in a more sympathetic light, being the object of Cesare’s ambitions rather than the femme fatale of popular imagination. In the erotic period drama Young Lucrezia (1974), Lucrezia is portrayed as having a relationship with her brother Juan and having to deal with Cesare’s jealous anger. The Nights of Lucretia Borgia (1959) portrays Lucrezia as being sexually aggressive, while the 2011 series The Borgias depicts her as struggling to have agency while being used as a pawn by those she loves.
Of course, the silver screen has not been the only medium in which Lucrezia Borgia has been portrayed. She has appeared in books, paintings, plays, an opera by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti, and even video games. In Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft, 2010), Lucrezia is displayed as being in an incestuous relationship with Cesare. No matter the medium, Lucrezia has almost always been portrayed as an object of desire, alluding to her reputation as a sexualized figure from history.
Throughout much of history, society has been especially restrictive toward women. Expected to be subservient to the men around them, women often lacked agency and were manipulated for political gain. This is certainly true of Lucrezia Borgia. This is not to say, however, that she did not have a certain amount of power or that she did not command a significant amount of respect.
While she was not the salacious femme fatale of popular imagination, her affairs later in life showed that she certainly had the courage to buck the societal expectations of her station and gender.
Interpreting Lucrezia Borgia’s legacy is difficult, especially because there were so many rumors and later visions of who the woman actually was. Ultimately, however, it seems most likely that Lucrezia was a victim of being guilty by association rather than an active agent in the legal and moral crimes committed by her family.
