The Marriage Portrait
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the author of the breakout bestseller Hamnet—winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Women’s Prize—an electrifying new novel set in Renaissance Italy, and centering on the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de Medici. Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Moderna and Regio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sister
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Lucrezia de Medici, the third daughter of Cosimo de Medici, is married off at fifteen to Alfonso d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara. The novel circles a winter day in 1561 when Alfonso takes her alone to a remote hunting lodge and Lucrezia is sure he is going to kill her, while she remembers her life.
Yes. The Marriage Portrait is fictional but built around the real Lucrezia di Cosimo de' Medici, who married the Duke of Ferrara in 1558 and died at 16, possibly poisoned by her husband. Maggie O'Farrell drew on Robert Browning's poem My Last Duchess.
Yes. Both novels by Maggie O'Farrell reimagine the lives of historical young women in early modern Europe. Hamnet (2020) focuses on Shakespeare's wife and son; The Marriage Portrait (2022) reimagines Lucrezia di Cosimo de' Medici.
The Marriage Portrait was written by Maggie O'Farrell, published in 2023 by Knopf.
The Marriage Portrait is 352 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Marriage Portrait takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
The Marriage Portrait is a standalone novel by Maggie O'Farrell, not part of a series.
The Marriage Portrait is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
