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The Marriage Portrait

The Marriage Portrait

Historical FictionLiterary Fiction
Pages
561
Published
2022
Language
English

Synopsis

In 1550s Florence, Lucrezia de' Medici is the overlooked middle daughter of a powerful ruling family — solitary, watchful, and happiest with a paintbrush in her hand. When her elder sister dies before her own wedding can take place, thirteen-year-old Lucrezia is offered up in her stead, betrothed to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, and married soon after.

Maggie O'Farrell braids two timelines: the wider arc of Lucrezia's childhood and journey into marriage, and the taut final stretch when Alfonso spirits her away to a remote fortress. Charming one moment and coldly ruthless the next, the duke needs an heir, and Lucrezia comes to suspect that her failure to provide one may cost her far more than his affection.

Inspired by the real, suspicious early death of the historical Lucrezia — the same duchess who haunts Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess" — The Marriage Portrait is a vivid, suspenseful portrait of a girl fighting for her selfhood, and her life, inside a gilded cage.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

AtmosphericTenseMelancholicDark
Dual TimelineCourt Intrigue

Genres

Historical Fiction Literary Fiction

About the author

M
Maggie O'Farrell

Maggie O'Farrell (born 1972 in Coleraine, Northern Ireland) is an Irish-British novelist and memoirist. Raised in Wales and Scotland after a childhood illness (encephalitis at age eight) that she has said shaped her love of reading, she now lives in Edinburgh. Her novels include After You'd Gone, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine (Costa Novel Award), Instructions for a Heatwave, This Must Be the Place, Hamnet (Women's Prize for Fiction, National Book Critics Circle...

Characters

Lucrezia de' MediciProtagonist

The artistic, watchful Medici daughter married young to the Duke of Ferrara.

Alfonso II d'EsteAntagonist

The charming, coldly controlling Duke of Ferrara, Lucrezia's husband.

EmiliaSupporting

Lucrezia's maid at the Florentine palace and her "milk-sister," who travels with her to Ferrara after the marriage.

All characters in The Marriage Portrait

Frequently asked questions

  • Has The Marriage Portrait won any major awards?

    The Marriage Portrait was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2023, but did not win. (O'Farrell won the Women's Prize in 2020 for her earlier novel Hamnet.)

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