Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy

Best-selling biographer Bradford offers a new slant on an old subject. Characteristically acknowledged as one of the most notorious women in history, Lucrezia Borgia has traditionally been accused of incest, murder, and political treachery. What Bradford convincingly argues is that she was actually a woman firmly grounded in the social strictures of her time, one who found it necessary to use her beauty, her intelligence, and her incredible resolve to eventually forge her own destiny. The illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia was initially a pawn to be married and divorced according to the whims and the political ambitions of her father and her brother. After her brother ordered the murder of her second husband, she took matters firmly into her own hands, orchestrating a third marriage to the reluctant duke of Ferrara. As a member of the formidable Este family, the new duchess was at long last able to apply her own considerable talents to the skillful administration of both the city-state and the royal court. Since no portrait of Lucrezia Borgia as a true Renaissance woman would be complete without a trace of scandal, this compelling biography is irresistibly interwoven with plenty of period gossip, sex, and intrigue.