PROBABLE PORTRAIT OF LUCREZIA IN ST. CATHERINE AND THE ELDERS
BY PINTORRICCHIO
This power to be continuously gay, which was so markedly to distinguish her all her life, was perhaps the only good quality Alexander was able to transmit to his daughter; but by this one quality alone, almost, Lucrezia finally lifted herself away—as if it had been solely a cloak thrust about her by the brutality of others—from the darkness of her original reputation. Now one is chiefly conscious of a creature courageously cheerful; a creature continuously desirous to please, to convey gentle impressions, to smooth out everything into pleasantness. Having carefully and repeatedly read the various books upon her, the feeling left is actually of a woman who understood, up to a point, her woman’s business uncommonly well, but who suffered sore mishandling during the early crucial years of her existence. The moment they took her out of the undesirable surroundings in which she had been reared, nothing but brave, becoming laughter and comfortable domesticity—Ruskin’s demand that a woman should bring “comfort with pleasantness”—issued from her. Obviously there were no roots of evil to renew themselves; at the worst there had been only a nature over-adaptable to outside forces, and a temperament not forceful in powers of resistance.
Born in 1480, she was the daughter of Alexander, then known as Cardinal Rodriguez, and Vanozza Cataneri, a woman whose origin is obscure, but who was certainly educated, and who had two husbands, Giorgio di Croce, and later, when Alexander had turned to younger idols, a certain Carlo Canali, an author of some reputation in his day. During her babyhood Lucrezia remained with her mother in a house close to the cardinal’s. But later, though why or when is not known, she was taken from Vanozza and given into the care of Madonna Adrienne, a widow, and a connection of the cardinal’s, said by Gregorovius to be also “very deep” in the Spaniard’s confidence. The atmosphere of Madonna Adrienne’s house could not have created for Lucrezia early impressions of delicate or winning conduct—she had no groundwork afterwards of moving ideals to fall back upon. There is one incident which lets in all the daylight necessary upon the character of Lucrezia’s guardian. Julia Farnese was her son’s wife, and it was with her mother-in-law’s complete acquiescence that the girl became Alexander’s acknowledged mistress. There is something, therefore, under the flagrant circumstances of the case almost offensive in the fact that Adrienne had the child carefully instructed in religious observances, though, for that matter, they were all religious, these women of undesirable conduct. Vanozza, for instance, built a chapel, and was looked upon as deeply devout long before Alexander’s death.
Lucrezia’s intellectual education took the same surface quality as her spiritual one. The Renaissance ideas of culture for women had not penetrated to Rome, and the child underwent a very different schooling from the D’Estes, the Gonzagas, and so many others. Her chief facility appears to have been in the matter of languages. Bayard, in 1512, said of her, “She speaks Spanish, Greek, Italian, and French, and a little and very correctly Latin; she also writes and composes poems in all these languages.” Moral sense must have remained absolutely sheathed. None of the set who brought her up would have dared to instil so dangerous and disturbing a quality. In Pintorricchio’s portrait there is no sign of a living conscience, though she might well from her expression be wistfully looking for it, aware of something wanting.
When Lucrezia was eleven years old, besides, a new impropriety was added to the number already submersing ordinary moral comprehension. It was then that Julia Farnese, aged sixteen, became Alexander’s mistress. There was no concealment, and Lucrezia became unhesitatingly involved in the new arrangements. To her the circumstance wore no more unnatural air than marriage. The child had never been in an atmosphere of customary domesticity since she was born; her playfellows were almost all the children of other cardinals, and in thinking of her life it should be remembered that few minds question easily the standards of conduct grown familiar since early childhood.
She was herself already engaged to two people. Alexander, looking at this time to his own country for a good match for his daughter, had formally promised her hand to a Spaniard. In the same year, considering it a better bargain, he also affianced her to a certain Don Gasparo; so that the child had actually two prospective husbands at one time. Nothing came of either. In 1492, Innocent VII. died, and Rodriguez Borgia was elected Pope in his place, assuming the name of Alexander. He had always notably pleasant manners, but Giovanni de Medici, looking at the new Pope, remarked, nevertheless, under his breath, “Now we are in the jaws of a ravening wolf, and if we do not flee he will devour us.” He devoured a good many, though his primary policy was widespread propitiation.
For Lucrezia, her father’s elevation from cardinal to Pope proved immediately significant. The two previously chosen husbands were dropped; neither was good enough for a Pope’s daughter. And in 1493 they married her to Giovanni Sforza, who was an independent sovereign, and a relation also of the powerful Ludovico Sforza of Milan. She was then thirteen years of age, and was to remain, after the marriage, one more year in Rome before her husband took her away to his own possessions. Ostensibly, however, they made a woman of her immediately. She received a house of her own close to the Vatican, Madonna Adrienne passed from governess into lady-in-waiting, and the whole weariness of formal social life became a part of the child’s ordinary duties. She had to receive all important visitors to Rome, and behave with the effortless dignity of a great lady. Alphonso of Ferrara, come to render homage to the new Pope, had also to pay his court to this thirteen-year-old bastard, whom he was himself later to marry. He brought her, in fact, as a wedding present from the duke his father, two large and beautifully worked silver washing jugs and basins.
Curiously enough, in the comments made about the marriage, there are none at all concerning the girl herself. At that age she had clearly no distinguishing precocities. The Ferrarese ambassador dismissed her with a phrase, and that referring more to Alexander than the newly made bride. He wrote that the Pope loved his daughter in a superlative degree. It may have been so: it is a fact most biographers lay stress upon. Nevertheless, almost every single known incident tells against much affection, and it is very certain that he sacrificed her whenever it was necessary, either for Cæsar’s ambition or his own purposes.
Another brief reference made to her at this time is in the well-known letter by Pucci. From his statement it would almost seem as if Julia Farnese and Lucrezia were housed together. For he mentioned going to call upon Julia at the Palace of Santa Maria in Porlica, and wrote, “When we got there she had just been washing her hair. We found her sitting by the fire with Madonna Lucrezia, the daughter of his Holiness, and she welcomed both my companions and myself with every appearance of delight.... She desired me to see the child, who is already quite big and as like the Pope adeo ut vere ex ejus semine orta dici possit.