Lucrezia Borgia

Lucrezia was the illegitimate daughter of a man who, from 1492, was Pope Alexander VI. She spent the first half of her life in the shadow of the papal tiara, as her father pawned her, via several marriages, in his gambles for power and land. It was the time of the Italian Wars, shaped by devastation, syphilis and unparalleled cultural splendour at the Italian courts – a time of glamour and violence that also framed Lucrezia’s life. Initially the instrument of her father’s changing alliances, his death in 1533 left her, as Duchess of Ferrara, the only survivor of the Borgia family. Hausmann draws a subtle and empathetic portrait of Lucrezia and her time, and shows up both the limits of a woman’s agency and the leverage available to the daughter of princes.