The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell is historical fiction at its best. Besides riveting readers with a ticking clock to a murder, O’Farrell places us firmly in Renaissance Italy with a woman who is young, with limited agency, and trapped in a world she is not completely equipped to understand.
Lucrezia is nothing if not resourceful, and as the story of her marriage to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, unfolds, the reader goes with her on a journey into a web of privilege, wealth, power, and fear. Lucrezia, whose Medici father loves her mother, must leave Florence and the only home she has ever known while learning to navigate in a world where the Duke, her husband, controls everything.
The narrative alternates between two timelines: the runup and early marriage of Lucrezia and Alfonso and their time at the hunting lodge, which is where Lucrezia is set to die. The portrait of the title is a binding element, which ties both timelines together.
Masterfully woven, compulsively readable—if you love historical fiction with layers of meaning, don’t miss this one.