The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell
‘Examining themes of art and artifice, O’Farrell’s exploration of a 16th-century Italian court examines one woman’s captivity, creativity, and courage in an often cruel and claustrophobic existence.’
“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.”
Maggie O’Farrell’s spellbinding novel begins at the point at which a Renaissance bride discovers that her husband intends to murder her. Through a vivid and transporting narrative, O’Farrell reimagines the life of the Italian duchess, Lucrezia de' Medici who, newly married, died by poison at the age of only 16.
The Marriage Portrait is framed by Lucrezia’s impending murder, with O’Farrell transporting the reader between the tense hours following her realisation and the circumstances that led to her marriage to the callous Duke of Ferrara. Examining themes of art and artifice, O’Farrell’s exploration of a 16th-century Italian court examines one woman’s captivity, creativity, and courage in an often cruel and claustrophobic existence.
However, The Marriage Portrait also has an alluring hidden wildness running through it; from Lucrezia’s enraptured stroke of a tiger, covert paintings of imagined creatures, to her undying, untamed spirit. The Marriage Portrait is O’Farrell’s signature storytelling at its best.
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