Genre Fiction
![Maggie O'Farrell - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001H6IT1S.jpg)
The Marriage Portrait: A novel
WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST • REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.
"I could not stop reading this incredible true story." -Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club Pick)
"O'Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you know what's coming, but don't be so sure." -The Washington Post
Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.
Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?
As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court's eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess's future hangs entirely in the balance.
Full of the beauty and emotion with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell turns her talents to Renaissance Italy in an extraordinary portrait of a resilient young woman's battle for her very survival.
"I could not stop reading this incredible true story." -Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club Pick)
"O'Farrell pulls out little threads of historical detail to weave this story of a precocious girl sensitive to the contradictions of her station...You may know the history, and you may think you know what's coming, but don't be so sure." -The Washington Post
Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.
Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?
As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court's eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess's future hangs entirely in the balance.
Full of the beauty and emotion with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell turns her talents to Renaissance Italy in an extraordinary portrait of a resilient young woman's battle for her very survival.
Editorial Reviews
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, THE WASHINGTON POST, GOODREADS • REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK • CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE NOMINEE
"I could not stop reading this incredible true story."-Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club December '22 Pick)
"[A] glittering, propulsive new novel . . . Few writers play as confidently with the nuts and bolts of language, and historical characters netted from the past. O'Farrell adroitly shrinks Lucrezia to her own vanishing point, even if the probable cause of the duchess's demise was a pulmonary embolism rather than poison. O'Farrell's creative license beautifully frames the chasms that open up between husband and wife, implicating an institution that has galvanized our canonical writers, including the Victorian poet Robert Browning, whose dramatic monologue ‘My Last Duchess' was inspired by Branzino's portrait of Lucrezia." -Oprah Daily
"O'Farrell intelligently connects Lucrezia's trapped circumstances with the art that her husband, a notable patron and collector, commissions to immortalize her . . . There is a blinding power to the heightened, almost fetishistic beauty of Renaissance art, this novel suggests as it portrays a world of far greater brutality and fierceness." -Wall Street Journal
"[O'Farrell] has spun pure gold out of this tragic history . . . The Marriage Portrait builds a rich interior world while vividly re-creating an era, in this case the Italian Renaissance, a period overflowing with intrigue and pomp, rustling heavy fabrics and glowing frescoes, blood and lust and the desire for power." -Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"This duchess certainly looks and sounds and feels as if she were alive . . . O'Farrell has an uncanny ability to put us in Lucrezia's very unusual shoes. One experiences, viscerally, Lucrezia's exhaustion and terror when she is abandoned in a strange place a few hours after her marriage, her giddy excitement and expansive feeling of freedom in the early days of her marriage, her revulsion and fear as her husband's ‘fury and contempt' emerge . . . The final twist is so unexpected and so gorgeously executed that it brought this reader to tears. With it, O'Farrell demonstrates fiction's ability to offer counter narratives to tho...
"I could not stop reading this incredible true story."-Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club December '22 Pick)
"[A] glittering, propulsive new novel . . . Few writers play as confidently with the nuts and bolts of language, and historical characters netted from the past. O'Farrell adroitly shrinks Lucrezia to her own vanishing point, even if the probable cause of the duchess's demise was a pulmonary embolism rather than poison. O'Farrell's creative license beautifully frames the chasms that open up between husband and wife, implicating an institution that has galvanized our canonical writers, including the Victorian poet Robert Browning, whose dramatic monologue ‘My Last Duchess' was inspired by Branzino's portrait of Lucrezia." -Oprah Daily
"O'Farrell intelligently connects Lucrezia's trapped circumstances with the art that her husband, a notable patron and collector, commissions to immortalize her . . . There is a blinding power to the heightened, almost fetishistic beauty of Renaissance art, this novel suggests as it portrays a world of far greater brutality and fierceness." -Wall Street Journal
"[O'Farrell] has spun pure gold out of this tragic history . . . The Marriage Portrait builds a rich interior world while vividly re-creating an era, in this case the Italian Renaissance, a period overflowing with intrigue and pomp, rustling heavy fabrics and glowing frescoes, blood and lust and the desire for power." -Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"This duchess certainly looks and sounds and feels as if she were alive . . . O'Farrell has an uncanny ability to put us in Lucrezia's very unusual shoes. One experiences, viscerally, Lucrezia's exhaustion and terror when she is abandoned in a strange place a few hours after her marriage, her giddy excitement and expansive feeling of freedom in the early days of her marriage, her revulsion and fear as her husband's ‘fury and contempt' emerge . . . The final twist is so unexpected and so gorgeously executed that it brought this reader to tears. With it, O'Farrell demonstrates fiction's ability to offer counter narratives to tho...
Readers Top Reviews
Maryanne KenostSa
I love the way Maggie O'Farrell writes. I didn't want to put this one down! I was rooting for Lucretzia from the very first page. She was smart and wiley in an age where those things were a liability for a woman, as she early on quietly rebelled at the limitations placed on her to be compliant and agreeable.
Janna Wong HealyM
I loved Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet so when her latest book was published, I was anxious to read it. I found it not nearly as engrossing as Hamnet, which I could not put down. Conversely, this one felt like a slog...I read a few pages a day and that seemed to be enough. I can't figure out why that was...it was beautifully written, had a dramatic storyline, and plenty of palace intrigue. Then again, on further thought, I didn't feel any compatibility with any of the characters: the 15-year-old bride Lucrezia, her bold and controlling husband Alfonso, her jealous sister, conniving sisters-in-law, uncaring parents...none of them were the least bit sympathetic. While Lucrezia is a character to be worried about and to feel sorry for, she is also a character I could not relate to. And, without the "rooting" effect, I found myself at a loss as to why I continued to read about her journey. In addition, I loathed her parents and siblings. I know these are different times but, really, what kind of parents allow their 13-year-old daughter to be betrothed to a man in his 20s? What kind of parents silence a young child who has artistic talent and a curious mind, ignore her choices, and send her to a prison of sorts in a marriage that she doesn't understand or want? I have no problem understanding that people from different times behaved very differently from our current society and I am an avid reader of historical fiction because I love learning about different times and cultures. But this novel, its characters, and its subject matter didn't sit well with me.
M. M.Janna Wong H
This was a very interesting story, chosen by my book club. I could not give it five stars since occasionally I was confused by the jumps in time. The book is well written, and I really enjoyed it.
Elizabeth Tichit
I liked this book, especially the descriptions of life in Italy during this period. The beginning was slow, but the end was satisfying.
Mary AnnElizabeth
THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT is a plausible work of fiction that is framed by its historical setting and the little that is known about its historical figures. It is beautifully written and paced. It's a satisfying read because the characters are well developed, the story that unfolds never ceases to capture one's imagination, and the plot comes together very nicely. It is so good that I'd LOVE it if Maggie O’Farrell wrote a novel for what follows in the lives of each of the surviving major characters!
Short Excerpt Teaser
A Wild and Lonely Place
Fortezza, near Bondeno, 1561
Lucrezia is taking her seat at the long dining table, which is polished to a watery gleam and spread with dishes, inverted cups, a woven circlet of fir. Her husband is sitting down, not in his customary place at the opposite end but next to her, close enough that she could rest her head on his shoulder, should she wish; he is unfolding his napkin and straightening a knife and moving the candle towards them both when it comes to her with a peculiar clarity, as if some coloured glass has been put in front of her eyes, or perhaps removed from them, that he intends to kill her.
She is sixteen years old, not quite a year into her marriage. They have travelled for most of the day, using what little daylight the season offers, leaving Ferrara at dawn and riding out to what he had told her was a hunting lodge, far in the north-west of the province.
But this is no hunting lodge, is what Lucrezia had wanted to say when they reached their destination: a high-walled edifice of dark stone, flanked on one side by dense forest and on the other by a twisting meander of the Po river. She would have liked to turn in her saddle and ask, why have you brought me here?
She said nothing, however, allowing her mare to follow him along the path, through dripping trees, over the arch-backed bridge and into the courtyard of the strange, fortified, star-shaped building, which seemed, even then, to strike her as peculiarly empty of people.
The horses have been led away, she has removed her sodden cloak and hat, and he has watched her do this, standing with his back to the blaze in the grate, and now he is gesturing to the country servants in the hall's outer shadows to step forward and place food on their plates, to slice the bread, to pour wine into their cups, and she is suddenly recalling the words of her sister-in-law, delivered in a hoarse whisper: You will be blamed.
Lucrezia's fingers grip the rim of her plate. The certainty that he means her to die is like a presence beside her, as if a dark-feathered bird of prey has alighted on the arm of her chair.
This is the reason for their sudden journey to such a wild and lonely place. He has brought her here, to this stone fortress, to murder her.
Astonishment yanks her up out of her body and she almost laughs; she is hovering by the vaulted ceiling, looking down at herself and him, sitting at the table, putting broth and salted bread into their mouths. She sees the way he leans towards her, resting his fingers on the bare skin of her wrist as he says something; she watches herself nodding at him, swallowing the food, speaking some words about their journey here and the interesting scenery through which they passed, as if nothing at all is amiss between them, as if this is a normal dinner, after which they will retire to bed.
In truth, she thinks, still up by the cold, sweating stone of the hall's ceiling, the ride here from court was dull, through fields stark and frozen, the sky so heavy it seemed to droop, exhausted, on the tops of bare trees. Her husband had set the pace at a trot, mile after mile of jolting up and down in the saddle, her back aching, her legs rubbed raw by wet stockings. Even inside squirrel-lined gloves, her fingers, clutching the reins, had been rigid with cold, and the horse's mane was soon cast in ice. Her husband had ridden ahead, with two guards behind. As the city had given way to countryside, Lucrezia had wanted to spur her horse, to press her heels into its flank and feel its hoofs fly over the stones and soil, to move through the flat landscape of the valley at speed, but she knew she must not, that her place was behind or next to him, if invited, never in front, so on and on they trotted.
At the table, facing the man she now suspects will kill her, she wishes she had done it, that she had urged her mare into a gallop. She wishes she had streaked by him, cackling with transgressive glee, her hair and cloak lashing out behind her, hoofs flinging mud. She wishes she had turned the reins towards the distant hills, where she could have lost herself among the rocky folds and peaks, so that he could never find her.
He is setting an elbow on either side of his plate, telling her about coming to this lodge-as he persists in calling it-when he was a child, how his father used to bring him hunting here. She is listening to a story about how he was made to release arrow after arrow towards a target on a tree until his fingers bled. She is nodding and making sympathetic murmurs at appropriate moments, but what she really wants to do is look him in the eye and say: I know what you are up to.
Would he be surprised, wrongfooted? Does he think of her as his innocent,...
Fortezza, near Bondeno, 1561
Lucrezia is taking her seat at the long dining table, which is polished to a watery gleam and spread with dishes, inverted cups, a woven circlet of fir. Her husband is sitting down, not in his customary place at the opposite end but next to her, close enough that she could rest her head on his shoulder, should she wish; he is unfolding his napkin and straightening a knife and moving the candle towards them both when it comes to her with a peculiar clarity, as if some coloured glass has been put in front of her eyes, or perhaps removed from them, that he intends to kill her.
She is sixteen years old, not quite a year into her marriage. They have travelled for most of the day, using what little daylight the season offers, leaving Ferrara at dawn and riding out to what he had told her was a hunting lodge, far in the north-west of the province.
But this is no hunting lodge, is what Lucrezia had wanted to say when they reached their destination: a high-walled edifice of dark stone, flanked on one side by dense forest and on the other by a twisting meander of the Po river. She would have liked to turn in her saddle and ask, why have you brought me here?
She said nothing, however, allowing her mare to follow him along the path, through dripping trees, over the arch-backed bridge and into the courtyard of the strange, fortified, star-shaped building, which seemed, even then, to strike her as peculiarly empty of people.
The horses have been led away, she has removed her sodden cloak and hat, and he has watched her do this, standing with his back to the blaze in the grate, and now he is gesturing to the country servants in the hall's outer shadows to step forward and place food on their plates, to slice the bread, to pour wine into their cups, and she is suddenly recalling the words of her sister-in-law, delivered in a hoarse whisper: You will be blamed.
Lucrezia's fingers grip the rim of her plate. The certainty that he means her to die is like a presence beside her, as if a dark-feathered bird of prey has alighted on the arm of her chair.
This is the reason for their sudden journey to such a wild and lonely place. He has brought her here, to this stone fortress, to murder her.
Astonishment yanks her up out of her body and she almost laughs; she is hovering by the vaulted ceiling, looking down at herself and him, sitting at the table, putting broth and salted bread into their mouths. She sees the way he leans towards her, resting his fingers on the bare skin of her wrist as he says something; she watches herself nodding at him, swallowing the food, speaking some words about their journey here and the interesting scenery through which they passed, as if nothing at all is amiss between them, as if this is a normal dinner, after which they will retire to bed.
In truth, she thinks, still up by the cold, sweating stone of the hall's ceiling, the ride here from court was dull, through fields stark and frozen, the sky so heavy it seemed to droop, exhausted, on the tops of bare trees. Her husband had set the pace at a trot, mile after mile of jolting up and down in the saddle, her back aching, her legs rubbed raw by wet stockings. Even inside squirrel-lined gloves, her fingers, clutching the reins, had been rigid with cold, and the horse's mane was soon cast in ice. Her husband had ridden ahead, with two guards behind. As the city had given way to countryside, Lucrezia had wanted to spur her horse, to press her heels into its flank and feel its hoofs fly over the stones and soil, to move through the flat landscape of the valley at speed, but she knew she must not, that her place was behind or next to him, if invited, never in front, so on and on they trotted.
At the table, facing the man she now suspects will kill her, she wishes she had done it, that she had urged her mare into a gallop. She wishes she had streaked by him, cackling with transgressive glee, her hair and cloak lashing out behind her, hoofs flinging mud. She wishes she had turned the reins towards the distant hills, where she could have lost herself among the rocky folds and peaks, so that he could never find her.
He is setting an elbow on either side of his plate, telling her about coming to this lodge-as he persists in calling it-when he was a child, how his father used to bring him hunting here. She is listening to a story about how he was made to release arrow after arrow towards a target on a tree until his fingers bled. She is nodding and making sympathetic murmurs at appropriate moments, but what she really wants to do is look him in the eye and say: I know what you are up to.
Would he be surprised, wrongfooted? Does he think of her as his innocent,...
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