The poem – which first appeared in Browning’s Dramatic Lyrics in 1842 – is a dramatic monologue spoken by Alfonso il d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, a real historical character who lived between 1533 and 1598. In 1558 he married the 13 year-old Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici. Lucrezia died three years later, and it was widely rumoured that she had been murdered, although this has never been proved.
Browning imagines the Duke showing a portrait of the deceased Lucrezia to an envoy from an unnamed Count whose daughter the Duke intends to marry. The Duke opens the monologue by praising the picture – and the artist – but very quickly moves on to describe aspects of his wife’s behaviour that he found unacceptable: the fact that she found delight in other men, the lack of respect she showed to his status and her flirtatious smiles which he quickly put an end to:
Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.
With these chilling words the Duke unwittingly admits his crime, before suggesting that he and the envoy go downstairs to meet the rest of the company, only stopping on the way to point out a bronze statue of ‘Neptune …/ Taming a sea-horse‘, a figure of the control the Duke clearly exerted over his wife.
Browning’s poem, and the little historical information that exists about the couple, lie behind Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel, The Marriage Portrait, published in 2022 which, like her previous novel Hamnet is similarly inspired by historical events and literature, and which I blogged about here.
The Marriage Portrait opens in 1561, the year of Lucrezia’s death. with Lucrezia and the Duke arriving at a fortress located near a small village, Bondeno, a few miles from the couple’s main residence in the city of Ferrara in Northern Italy. Sitting next to her husband at the long dining table, as dinner is served, ‘it comes to [Lucrezia] with a peculiar clarity… that he intends to kill her’.
The novel then rewinds to 1544, to a chapter titled ‘The unfortunate circumstances of Lucrezia’s conception‘, setting up a complex chronological structure as the narrative weaves back and forth between Lucrezia’s birth and early childhood, her teenage years, her wedding to the Duke and the first months of married life and the final days in the fortress.
Like Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes, who is the central character of Hamnet, O’Farrell places Lucrezia at the centre of the novel. In so doing the reader can appreciate all too clearly the constraints she faces as a woman in Renaissance Italy: limited in her choices, she is designed for marriage and motherhood and subject to her father’s – and then her husband’s – will.
Married to the Duke by default – he was betrothed to her older sister, Maria, who unexpectedly dies before the ceremony – Lucrezia, once she has accepted the inevitability of marriage, initially takes delight in her new lifestyle with a husband who seems to offer her an unexpected freedom: ‘She still cannot believe that such liberty, such motion, is allowed to her‘. Having been ‘kept under attentive watch in a limited number of rooms, until marriage‘, the fact that Alfonso allows her to ‘wander at will‘ in the villa gardens is an exciting novelty.
However, this freedom is quickly curtailed with Lucrezia’s inability to conceive (though historical records show that Alfonso, who ended up marrying three times, had no children, suggesting the ‘fault’ probably lay with him), and her outspokenness, so that within a year of marriage she is isolated in the fortress awaiting her end.
O’Farrell illustrates the dismal situation for women at this time through an epigraph from The Decameron, a collection of 100 short stories gathered together by Giovanni Boccaccio in the mid-14th century:
The ladies… are forced to follow the whims, fancies and dictates of their fathers, mothers, brothers and husbands, so that they spend most of their time cooped up within the narrow confines of their rooms, where they sit in apparent idleness, wishing one thing and at the same time wishing its opposite…
What the men cannot control though, is the women’s imagination and spirit. O’Farrell presents Lucrezia as inwardly rebellious and with great artistic talent which provides an outlet for her desires and feelings. O’Farrell also exploits the lack of historical certainty about what actually happened to Lucrezia, to take the ending of the story in a different direction (and one that I won’t spoil for you).
And there is of course food – Italian ingredients and dishes punctuate the story, reflecting the mood and atmosphere. On arriving at the fortress where Lucrezia senses her impending death, she is served ‘venison baked in wine‘, which she struggles to eat as ‘the fluid oozing out of the slab of venison… the way it stands in puddles of red, which could be either wine or blood, makes her stomach heave‘.
However, in the early days of the marriage when life is looking good there are ‘milk and honey cakes‘ brought to Lucrezia’s chamber for breakfast. Then, when Alfonso and his adviser and confidante, Baldassare, go away on business, Lucrezia has the freedom to request the food she wants:
Instead of heavy food, like the meat and fish Alfonso favours, she orders milk puddings from the cook, fresh bread with a salted crust, figs cut open and served with soft cheese, the juice of apricots in a dainty cup.
It seems only appropriate to provide a recipe for a dish that Lucrezia chooses to eat – rather than one she is constrained to – so I thought I would research – and make – milk puddings.
Milk puddings are found in a number of culinary cultures. Italian milk puddings – or biancomangiare (like our blancmange) – are similar to panna cotta (which means cooked cream) though less creamy (since the main ingredient is milk, not cream) and set using cornflour (rather than gelatine). To give mine an Italian twist, I sprinkled chopped pistachios on the top before serving.
DUCHESS MILK PUDDING
Ingredients (makes 2 hearty-sized or 4 more delicate puddings):
500ml milk
25g cornflour
55g granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
A small piece of lemon peel
A handful of chopped pistachios (optional)
Method:
Whisk the milk, cornflour, sugar and cinnamon in a medium sized saucepan until smooth.
Add the lemon peel and then place the saucepan over a medium heat. Whisk frequently until the mixture comes to a gentle boil and begins to thicken – this will take about 5 minutes.
Remove the lemon peel and discard. Divide the mixture between two or four bowls / ramekins / glasses. Allow to cool before placing in the refrigerator and chilling for at least 3 hours before serving.
If you wish, sprinkle chopped pistachios over the top before serving.
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