As soon as I heard that The Marriage Portrait(2022), a new novel by Maggie O'Farrell, was to be added to our library collection, I added my name to the Hold List. I absolutely adored O'Farrell's previous work, the award-winning Hamnet, a wildly inventive story that explores the family life of a most famous man, William Shakespeare, while leaving the Bard himself mostly in the shadows. Agnes, Shakespeare's wife, and Shakespeare's children occupy the majority of the novel's pages. Richly drawn as these characters are by O'Farrell, they, along with their challenges and their conflicts, linger vividly in my mind.
With The Marriage Portrait, O'Farrell has brought another lesser known person affiliated with an iconic historical figure to life. In this case, she focuses on Lucrezia de'Medici, the youngest daughter of Cosimo I de'Medici, Duke of Florence, and, later, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Married off by her aspirational father for political gain at age 13, taken on as a wife by the mysterious and troubling Alfonso, the Duke Ferrara, for the purpose of breeding an heir to his title, the actual Lucrezia became a Duchess when she was little more than a girl.
Historians throughout the ages have presumed that Lucrezia was murdered only months after her wedding. But as in Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell takes creative liberties with real world assumptions in her fiction. Here, too, O'Farrell crafts a braided narrative, weaving together two timelines, one charting Lucrezia's growing up, the other unfolding the supposed last hours of her life, both ultimately homing in on the painting of the little Duchess's portrait, which leads, in this novel, at least, to a surprising, powerful, and empowering end.
Once again, Maggie O'Farrell's illuminating and transformative take on the expectations and limitations placed on women of a certain historical era did not disappoint in terms of development and intrigue. Far, far from it.