Forced hand

The author of Hamnet turns to the short life and marriage of Lucrezia de’ Medici.

- ANNA ROGERS

THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT, by Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press, $37.99)

You spend your first 15 years within the walls of a palazzo. You want for nothing material because the palazzo belongs to Cosimo de’ Medici, plutocrat ruler of the city state of Florence, and you are his third daughter. But there is no freedom or autonomy, no existence outside those walls, unless you create it for yourself – by observing carefully everything that goes on, by drawing and painting, by learning that you are different from your more obedient and accepting siblings. Then, just before she is to marry Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, your older sister Maria dies. You become the second choice of bride, a bargaining chip between powerful men, an intended producer of male heirs. And you come to realise that, for all his charm and intelligence, your husband is a cruel, volatile and controlling man who holds your life in his hands.