Tag Archives: Florence

His Last Duchess: The Marriage Portrait

12 Monday Dec 2022

Posted by in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review: The Marriage Portrait, by Maggie O’Farrell
Knopf, 2022. 333 pp. $28

It’s 1561, and Lucrezia, the not-quite-sixteen-year-old duchess of Ferrara, refuses to believe that Alfonso, her husband of one year, means to kill her. She can see no cause for offense, and at certain moments, he seems tender and thoughtful, maybe even loving. Yet when Lucrezia, daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici and no stranger to the forms and unwritten rules of cutthroat court life, reconsiders how Alfonso has brought her to a deserted castle, she has to wonder.

A remarkable premise, this, and at times The Marriage Portrait reads like a thriller, written in O’Farrell’s trademark sumptuous prose. But this novel isn’t merely another tale of a child at risk, though Lucrezia is that; innocent, empathic by nature, a sensitive soul who loves animals, she’s ill suited to her time and station in life. Her father and husband care only to extend and preserve their power, which means that daughters exist to be sold in marriage for political advantage.

Like Hamnet, therefore, O’Farrell’s triumphant novel about the Shakespeare household, The Marriage Portrait deals with matrimony. But where Agnes Shakespeare worried about her husband’s constancy and their children’s health and struggled against the sexual double standard, here the stakes consider survival when a husband, not the plague, is the enemy. Lucrezia’s expendable, and as the novel opens, she’s coming to realize that.

Alessandro Allori’s portrait of Lucrezia de’ Medici, 1560 (courtesy North Carolina Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

The back story, which narrates her upbringing and bewildering early months of marriage, imagines how a young girl must have felt to be torn from home and thrust into the bed of a man almost twice her age. But Lucrezia’s much more than a victim. She has enough willfulness to want to ask why things must be how they are, even if she holds her tongue, and she likes to test the rules.

In that vein, there’s a terrific childhood scene in which she contrives to be alone with a tigress her father has imprisoned in his basement menagerie:

She saw how the animal lifted her lustrous muzzle, nosing the air, sifting it for all it could tell her. Lucrezia could feel the sadness, the loneliness, emanating from her, the shock at being torn from her home, the horror of the weeks and weeks at sea. She could feel the sting of the lashes the beast had received, the bitter longing for the vaporous and humid canopy of jungle and the enticing green tunnels through its undergrowth that she alone commanded, the searing pain in her heart at the bars that now enclosed her.

Not only is Lucrezia like the tigress; her father, the kind of man who’d imprison the beast for his own amusement, treats his daughter similarly. That relationship foreshadows the Ferrara court, where all eyes focus on her, as though she too were a beast on display, yet no one really sees her. She craves understanding and friendship but, to her shock, can trust nobody, not even—maybe especially—her sisters-in-law. If she takes small pleasures, such as opening a window to watch a storm, her husband scolds her, often dragging her around. So he’s not just a tyrant; his violence makes him a sociopath.

Such extreme character disorders can, in the wrong authorial hands, function in an exaggerated way to create tension. But here, Alfonso’s not just an erratic personality. The narrative shows his motives, fears, and overweening pride—from his young bride’s perspective, to be sure—but nevertheless depicts him so that the reader understands what drives him, even if Lucrezia doesn’t always.

I usually dislike cliff-hanger openings, a prologue by another name, followed by lengthy back story. But again, O’Farrell goes one better, using that device to achieve several goals. First, she introduces the mystery Lucrezia’s trying to decipher, whether Alfonso truly means to do away with her—and her confusion, not just the threat, propels the narrative. Secondly, I believe that novels should start where the protagonist realizes that life will never be the same—and in Lucrezia’s case, that life appears to be short.

Moreover, O’Farrell doesn’t abuse the reader’s patience. She returns frequently to the scenes of 1561 and Lucrezia’s duress, while the back story advances rapidly, and I never feel manipulated through the withholding of secrets. Quite the contrary; a historical note before the first chapter establishes the premise, apparently inspired by a Robert Browning poem I’ve always liked, “My Last Duchess,” quoted there. That forthrightness marks the story throughout.

The resolution is predictable, based on a couple one-sentence clues dropped into the text. That bothered me, a little, though how the story gets there is anything but ordained.

Hamnet is a deeper novel, I think, offering at once a view of Elizabethan daily life, exploration of mortality and its impact on the living, and the themes of marriage referred to earlier. But The Marriage Portrait, though it has a narrower focus, is still a superb novel, and I highly recommend it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

What a Mystery Is Man: The Phoenix of Florence

22 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Review: The Phoenix of Florence, by Philip Kazan
Allison Camp; Busby, 2019. 349 pp. 15£

Onorio Celavini, one of sixteenth-century Florence’s two police inspectors (to use a broad term), has a typical case on his hands, or so it seems. Near a bridge, a man lies dead, the apparent victim of a gang attack, for he’s taken two of his assailants with him. Known as a seducer of other men’s wives, he’s unmourned in many circles, but as a wealthy, powerful aristocrat, his death matters to officialdom — more so when a well-born woman dies soon afterward, the crimes apparently connected.

Celavini has heard this all before and is sick of it; whatever a man has done, a woman winds up paying for it. But that’s life, in Florence or elsewhere, and orders are orders — solve this case, and quickly. So he bends his considerable skills to the investigation, aided by an enviable coolness in the face of danger, product of his years as a mercenary, and his knowledge of Tuscany and its politics, lessons that any successful soldier imbibes in the field.

Giovanni Bellini’s portrait of a condittiero, or mercenary captain, late fifteenth century (courtesy Samuel H. Kress Collection at the National Gallery, Washington DC, via Wikimedia Commons)

However, Celavini gets a surprise when he hears a familiar name associated with the crime, one he knew in his youth but had thought extinct. That brings these murders close to home. But though the investigator’s personal involvement is an old device, it’s different here. Unlike most mysteries, the real puzzle is Celavini himself, and The Phoenix of Florence tells a tale more of revenge than of who done it, more Count of Monte Cristo than Sherlock Holmes.

Don’t let that stop you, and don’t be surprised when the criminal investigation leaves off, and a long section of Celavini’s past takes over — for more than half the book. Kazan is less interested in who killed whom than in why men and women are the way they are, the greatest mystery there is. And I strongly suggest that if you let yourself follow his lead, you will be richly rewarded. Human nature, venal or honest, evil or benign, comes into full view, but the crux of the novel, I think, has to do with strength, weakness, and who perceives them, that perception often having deeper consequences than it should. What Celavini does with this provides both a satisfying story and a fitting ending.

It’s a brave author who departs for two hundred pages from the main narrative, and my regular readers may recall that I faulted Daniel Mason in The Winter Soldier for a much shorter digression. But much as I admire that novel and its author, he had a different purpose. Celavini’s past is the main story. I’ll say that it’s rather violent, so be warned, but I dare give nothing else away — The Phoenix of Florence tests this reviewer’s mettle — so I hope you trust me by now.

One way Kazan grips you, digression or not, is the prose. So many historical novels have been set in Florence (or Venice) that they’re practically a trope by now. But try this:

It was stiflingly hot, and the miasma of the dyeworks and the river mud had finally managed to creep into the house. The stench curled itself around me, ripe with rot and sharp with minerals, as clinging and insistent as the memories that wandered through the empty rooms, whispering in my ears. My nightshirt felt like a lead sheet and itched. When I sat down, the wood of the chair seemed to suck my skin. I went out into the courtyard, but the air was thicker there, and a rat was fidgeting around in the dry fronds of the date palm. At last I lay down on the flagstones in the kitchen and floated in a twilight where the cold stone brought relief but was painful as well; however, I couldn’t have one without the other.

I wish I could say more, but I shouldn’t. Read The Phoenix of Florence and be amazed.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Flesh and Faith: The Painter of Souls

18 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Herod's Feast, Salome's Dance, painted by Lippi between 1460 and 1464, Prato, Italy (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Herod’s Feast, Salome’s Dance, painted by Lippi between 1460 and 1464, Prato, Italy (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Review: The Painter of Souls, by Philip Kazan
Pegasus, 2015. 261 pp. $25

One pitfall of biographical fiction is the elbow-in-the-ribs aha! moment, when our protagonist meets the great and renowned on his or her way up the ladder of fame. Such scenes afflict The Painter of Souls, a novel about the fifteenth-century Florentine Carmelite painter Fra Filippo Lippi. Not only does the young–and I mean young–friar run across such luminaries as Donatello and Brunelleschi as easily as rolling out of bed, they instantly recognize his talent and praise him generously, to which he rubs his sandal in the dust and utters the Italian equivalent of “Aw, shucks.” Meanwhile, the prior gives Fra Filippo every bit of leeway, impressed with his gift, which surely comes from God, and sees no reason not to let him paint church frescoes and altar pieces under the tutelage of lay artists.

Despite these happenings, which sometimes seem too good to be true, I like The Painter of Souls. What saves the novel for me is its good-natured, winning protagonist. Pippo, to his secular friends, likes a drink, a game of dice, and has sexual fantasies about the paintings of Eve that adorn church walls. His father died when Pippo was six, and his mother has been virtually catatonic from grief ever since, leaving the boy to fend for himself. He’s learned how to beg, scrounge for food in garbage heaps, rob market stalls, fashion crude pens and ink to make drawings of passersby for pennies, and share his gains with the gang to which he belongs. Pippo comes dangerously close to letting that dead-end life swallow him altogether. Entering the church has saved him.

However, he doesn’t take well to the discipline. He wants to, but he misses too much of the outside world to accept his new surroundings, especially the restraint, which he finds excessive. The silence of the convent feels “heavy, deliberate, enforced,” its purpose to stifle noise except at prescribed times, as with bell ringing or the ponderous closing of cell doors. Pippo loves the sky, the sights, sounds, and smells of Florence, the taste of roast meat and the good grape, the glimpse of a pretty face. Or more than a glimpse, which of course leads him to sinful daydreams. How he reconciles all that with his religious faith, his desire to believe, makes the story worth while. Constant contact with painters unbound by monastic rules only increases the temptations, which he tries to channel toward its acceptable object. Beauty is divine, therefore re-creating it in religious art serves God. If, however, the act of creation involves a little transgression here and there, well, He’ll understand.

Consequently, it’s not Fra Filippo’s strengths as an artist, nor his seemingly effortless rise to fame, that make The Painter of vSouls worth reading. Rather, it’s Pippo’s weaknesses as a friar and a man that propel this novel–the whoppers he tells on the spur of the moment; the deals and excuses he makes with himself so that he can still feel honorable; his delight in the forbidden; and the pull his former life still exerts on him (and its vivid portrayal in Kazan’s deft hands). Pippo understands that he’s a sinner, and though he loves nothing more than to paint, part of him fears accepting the offer of a dispensation to remain a friar while still becoming a member of the painter’s guild, a privilege offered to very few. Who is he, a sensualist with a brush, or a man of God?

While he’s weighing this question, an artist he’s working for brings him to a barber, after whose ministrations Pippo looks in a mirror for the first time in his life:

He is looking at an almost round head, an elongated sphere, domed like a cannonball above, and gleaming from the passage of the razor. His chin is round as well, dimpled. He had no idea his mouth was so wide. There is a hunger implied in the fleshy, almost feminine curve of his lips which he finds disturbing. He looks into his own eyes. They are heavy-lidded, dark ink-brown, close-set but large, watching him, watching themselves. The irises dart, gathering, betraying an appetite, a need for satiation. This face is thinking, how will I draw you? How will you draw me?

Pippo has one other endearing trait that helps counteract the smoothness of his career arc. He believes that there’s good in everyone, and whenever he can, he uses social outcasts as his models, finding grace in them that no one else does. It’s hard to quarrel with that, and with The Painter of Souls, even if the story seems incredible, at times.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Those Double-Crossing de Medicis: The Red Lily Crown

11 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review: The Red Lily Crown, by Elizabeth Loupas
NAL, 2014. 418 pp. $16

It’s April 1574, and Florence braces for the death of one de Medici grand duke, Cosimo, and the accession of another, Francesco. It’s common knowledge that the heir apparent has two interests, women and alchemy, and the skinny is that he’ll be a crafty, intemperate ruler–just like his forbears, in other words, except more so.

Bronzino's portrait of Francesco de Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, 1567? (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Bronzino’s portrait of Francesco de Medici; 1567? (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

But such thoughts are secondary for Chiara Nerini, the fifteen-year-old daughter of an alchemist and bookseller who immolated himself searching for the Philosopher’s Stone. Alchemy fascinates Chiara as well, and her father’s laboratory has many treasures in it:

It was fantastical, disconnected from hunger, hunger, hunger, worn-out clothes and winter cold, as mysterious as if it had been created by some kind of magic. There was an athanor made of brick and clay from Trebizond–wherever that was–and a green glass alembic in the shape of a crescent moon. There was a gold-and-crystal double pelican and a silver funnel engraved with an intricate circular labyrinth design, supposedly a thousand years old.

But tragedy as well as poverty has dogged the family; her mother is dead, and horsemen ran over and killed Chiara’s brother, knocking her on the head too, a blow that still causes her headaches and fainting spells. She and her two surviving sisters live with their grandmother, a woman of republican sympathies who ill conceals her contempt for the ruling house. Nevertheless, Chiara has taken it upon herself to sell off her late father’s equipment, and who better to buy it than Francesco de Medici?

However, even to approach the great man is a dangerous gambit, and she’s nearly trampled again in the attempt. But she’s also lucky that Ruanno, an English alchemist working for Francesco, recognizes the worth of the object she has brought to sell–except that when de Medici sees it, and her, he makes a proposition she can’t refuse. Chiara is to remain in his house as a servant and assist in his laboratory, where he’s trying to create the Philosopher’s Stone. He believes that to succeed, he needs someone to represent the feminine principle, and she’s nominated. If she passes several tests to prove she’s a virgin , she’ll work alongside Ruanno and the grand duke, and her family will receive food, money, and gifts. But if Chiara fails the tests or breaks her vow, she’ll die. Simple.

This chain of events illustrates the key strength of The Red Lily Crown. You’ll notice that each twist in the story corresponds to a “yes, but,” the parallel structure to the “no–and furthermore” common to thrillers but also appearing in well-plotted novels of other genres. In the “no–and furthermore,” the protagonist thinks she’ll get what she’s looking for, only to fail and be presented with an even worse problem. Here, Loupas relies on a different sort of complication. Yes, Chiara sells her father’s equipment, but Francesco co-opts her. Yes, that has its advantages but could also prove fatal. Later in the novel, the author employs the “no–and furthermore” too; but to set the stage, she’s content to lead Chiara into a labyrinth.

De Medici drives the tension, changing minute to minute, leaving everyone around him to wonder what he really wants, what he’s got on them, and what they can or can’t get away with. I find him a bit much, vicious and selfish beyond belief, and the information that his parents persecuted him doesn’t quite balance the portrayal. But Loupas re-creates the Medici court, its intrigues, affairs, murders, and rituals, with a sure hand. I believe that part.

I have more trouble crediting certain plot turns, well done though they are, especially the de Medici arsenal of poisons. You know that Ruanno, who seems too good to be true, and Chiara will attract one another, so that’s no surprise, though Loupas keeps you guessing as to how it will unfold. I wish she hadn’t rushed important transitions in the romance, and it seems as if Chiara can read his thoughts whenever she wishes, a telepathy to be envied.

But I like a good story, and The Red Lily Crown is one.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.