Lucrezia Borgia
Bellonci, Maria

Softcover $19.95
ISBN 1-84212-059-X
Phoenix Press, 2000.
343 pages.

Cover painting 'Portrait of a Woman', thought to be that of Lucrezia Borgia by Bartolomeo da Zenezia, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, Germany. "Among the violent personalities of the High Renaissance, Lucrezia Borgia is chiefly remembered as a raven-haired poisoner. But the Lucrezia that Maria Bellonci depicts here is a passionate, womanly figure moving uncertainly through the Papal court and through the intrigues, ambitions and political chicanery that swirled about her.

Married three times for her family's political advantage Lucrezia also entertained, for her own pleasure, a long list of eminent lovers particularly the poet Pietro Bembo. Her father, Pope Alexander VI, emerges as a fiercely devoted parent while the catlike and sinister Cesare Borgia is seen as a relentless and unscrupulous power-seeker.

Winner of the Viareggio Literary Award and the Galante Prize in Italy upon its first publication in 1953, this celebrated biography is, in the author's words, 'an eternal feminine story swinging between consent and rebellion'.

Maria Bellonci was born and educated in Rome. Married to the distinguished critic, Goffredo Bellonci, she wrote and sponsored literature throughout her life, through the Strega Prize and the Italian P.E.N. society, of which she was the vice-President. With the publication of Lucrezia Borgia in Italy, she won the Viareggio Literacy Award and the Galante Prize. It was then published throughout the world to great acclaim. She wrote numerous distinguished works of history and also wrote for newspapers and radio."