Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara

Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is the protagonist in The Marriage Portrait. Throughout the novel, the narrative follows her life as she contends with isolation in her parents’ home and an arranged marriage to Alfonso, who is fifteen years her senior. As a child, Lucrezia spends her time painting, eavesdropping on the court, and coping with her siblings’ relentless teasing. She knows that her father has a Sala dei Leoni and prods her sister to ask Cosimo to bring them. In the cavernous room filled with caged animals, Lucrezia sneaks away from her family to see the tiger. In the dark, “Lucrezia and the tigress regard each other, for a stretched moment, the child’s hand on the beast’s back” (37). However, her private moment is interrupted by her sister’s shrieks and she is dragged away from the tigresses’ enclosure.

Five years later, when Lucrezia...