Lucrezia’s mount, an elegant bay horse, was startled by the sudden deafening roar of artillery from Castel Tedaldo that sounded as she crossed the bridge, and it reared up, throwing her to the ground. Fortunately she was not hurt but picked herself up, laughing merrily, ‘and this I saw myself because I was right there,’ wrote one observer of the event. A mule was brought for her to continue, and she made her way through the narrow winding streets, past the entertainments staged for her at every turn, and finally into the great piazza in front of the ducal castle.
The piazza was crowded with people, ‘so full,’ remarked one observer, ‘that if a grain of millet had fallen from the sky it would not have reached the ground.’ The arrival of the cavalcade was heralded by a tremendous fanfare from the 113 trumpeters and pipers playing on the balcony of the ducal palace, and the dungeons beneath were opened to release a stream of prisoners. Two men then descended down ropes from the top of the high towers in the piazza, their arms outstretched so that ‘they looked like birds,’ as one man said, to land at Lucrezia’s feet. Zambotti commented that ‘everyone thought it a great marvel because it happened so quickly and neither of them was hurt.’
Lucrezia rode into the courtyard of the palace, where she dismounted and climbed the marble staircase, at the top of which Isabella d’Este and other female members of the ducal family waited to embrace her before escorting her into the Great Hall, which had been hung with cloth-of-gold ‘and silks of great value’ to mark the occasion. There she was guest of honour at the feast, the highlight of which was a series of life-size sculptures all made in sugar, followed by a ball.
At the end of the evening, the bridal couple made their way to their bedchamber in the apartments that had once belonged to Alfonso’s mother. The following day, the bridegroom’s father reported to the pope: ‘Last night our illustrious son, Don Alfonso, went to bed with his wife, and from all accounts, it appears they were quite satisfied with one another.’ Her husband seemed pleased with her and was attentive for the first few days, even though he did not linger for long of a morning in their bed, but, having slept with her, so the Ferrarese ambassador to Rome told the pope, he ‘took his pleasure with other women during the day.’ ‘Being young,’ the pope had commented, complacently, ‘it does him good.’
The phlegmatic, silent bridegroom, a man whose interests, so it was said, were limited to sewers and artillery, had regarded his marriage as no more than a painful duty. The two women he had most deeply cared for had both died young; his mother, Eleonora of Aragon, the sister of King Federigo, had died when he was seventeen years old; his younger sister, Beatrice, had died in childbirth four years later. Alfonso’s secretary thought it was interesting to speculate on his master’s feelings toward the bride in whom he had appeared to show no initial interest. As he came to know Lucrezia better, however, the more interesting and attractive he found her; he actually sought out her company, grateful to have reason to disbelieve the stories of her debauched past. ‘Whatever his feelings were before he met her, before long he conceived,’ so it seemed to the secretary, ‘a love as ardent as was the aversion he had felt for her when the marriage had first been proposed.’
The wedding festivities continued for over a week. There were jousts most days in the great square in front of the palace, followed by banquets and balls every night. A troupe of actors performed the comedies of Plautus each afternoon, which the duke, determined to show off the quality of culture for which Ferrara was justly famous, had insisted were to be better than anything that Lucrezia would have seen in Rome. There were also the customary ceremonial offerings of presents to the bride and groom. The Venetians produced two superb mantles of deep red velvet, worth 300 ducats each. The French ambassador had brought expensive gifts from Louis XII: a rosary for Lucrezia, its beads of perforated gold filled with aromatic musk, and a shield for Alfonso, decorated with the figure of Mary Magdalene, which, the ambassador was at pains to explain, was to show that he had taken a woman of virtue, though all of those present had heard the rumours of incest and many believed that Lucrezia’s past, like the Magdalene’s, had been far from virtuous.
Lucrezia, it seems, thoroughly enjoyed the parties. Zambotti described her as being ‘full of life and gaiety.’ The pope’s daughter, so it was agreed, danced ‘admirably’ and dressed ‘beautifully.’ Duke Ercole was full of praise for the daughter-in-law he had been so reluctant to accept and seems to have become genuinely fond of Lucrezia, taking her, as a mark of his favour, to visit Sister Lucia da Narni, the nun she had helped to move from Viterbo to Ferrara. ‘Her virtues and good qualities have so pleased me,’ the duke wrote to Alexander VI about Lucrezia, ‘that she is the dearest thing I have in this world.’
Isabella d’Este and Elisabetta Gonzaga were less enthusiastic about their new sister-in-law. No longer in their prime, the Duchess of Urbino was thirty and Isabella just three years younger, while Lucrezia, despite her three husbands, was still only twenty-one years old. The two older women were clearly put out by the bride, who was undeniably younger and prettier than themselves and, moreover, took precedence over them at court.
The malicious Isabella did her utmost to make the unwelcome bride uncomfortable; ‘yesterday,’ she wrote grumpily to her husband in Mantua, ‘we all had to stay in our rooms until five o’clock because Lucrezia chooses to spend hours dressing so that she can put the Duchess of Urbino and myself into the shade in the eyes of the world.’ The Borgia girl, she complained, spent an unconscionable time dressing, washing her hair, and chattering in her rooms; she also declined to attend such festivities as did not appeal to her; and when a risque comedy was performed, she was obviously amused by it, while Isabella made it clear that she, like all respectable ladies, found it most objectionable.
With the departure of the guests on February 9, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, Lucrezia settled down to life at court as wife to Alfonso, the duke’s heir. On Maundy Thursday she acted as hostess for her father- in-law at the customary dinner given to 160 poor people, serving their food and assisting in the washing of their feet. The next day, Good Friday, she attended Mass in the cathedral, where the congregation was entertained by a Passion play, a five-hour spectacle with angels descending from the roof to hover over Christ as he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, his Crucifixion on a hill specially built in front of the high altar and his Descent into Hell through the head of a huge writhing serpent.
Yet as the days passed, she found life in Ferrara hard, homesick for Rome and her beloved father. She spent mornings in bed; she lay in the scented waters of her bath, accompanied by one of her young ladies, who, when they emerged, would read erotic novels to her. She passed increasingly long periods in the rooms that had been assigned to her with her Spanish attendants to whom she spoke in their own Valencian dialect and with whom the Ferrarese ladies were soon on the worst of terms. She even offended her conservative father-in-law, as she did many other Ferrarese, by introducing at court a Spanish costume,
Duke Ercole, despite his affection for Lucrezia, was growing anxious about the cost of all the entertaining that he was expected to provide. Most of the marriage guests had departed; but several members of Lucrezia’s court remained, and ‘these women,’ her father-in-law complained, ‘by remaining here cause a large number of other persons, men as well as women, to linger on… [I]t is a great burden and causes heavy expense. The retinue of these ladies… numbers not far short of 450 persons and 350 horses.’ He also worried about the cost of maintaining Lucrezia’s large and mostly Spanish household, declaring that the number of his daughter-in-law’s ladies and servants must be reduced; and, despite her protests, he dismissed from her court all whom he considered unnecessary.
To the evident surprise of her critics, she accepted her father-in-law’s decision with good grace; and not only this, she set about conciliating the most critical of the Ferrarese ladies. Among them was a friend of Isabella d’Este, Teodora Angelini, who was frequently invited to dine at Lucrezia’s table, an enticing privilege, especially during Lent, when the duke’s table became excessively monotonous, while Lucrezia’s was plentifully supplied with a variety of dishes from oysters and scampi to sturgeon, crayfish, and caviar.
The extravagance of the meals served at Lucrezia’s table naturally horrified the duke. He consulted his daughter, Isabella, who declared that Lucrezia’s needs could easily be met by an allowance of 8,000 ducats a year rather than the 12,000 ducats that the pope was demanding for her. The duke offered to compromise by allowing her 10,000 ducats; this the pope refused; and Lucrezia, anxious to escape the acrimonious gossip that this quarrel was causing at court and, suffering the symptoms that told her she was now bearing Alfonso’s child, retreated to the convent of Corpus Domini.
The news that Lucrezia was pregnant, so soon after the marriage, delighted the duke and also the pope. ‘His Holiness has taken on a new lease of life in consequence of the news from Ferrara,’ wrote Burchard, ‘and every night he is commanding into his presence young women chosen from the best Roman brothels.’ As though in celebration of Lucrezia’s pregnancy, he also sent for Jofre, Jofre’s wife, Sancia, and even for Sancia’s lover, Prospero Colonna; one particularly lurid account suggests that the pope then left the two men in an antechamber
