The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

I bought The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell in the Waterstones half price hardback sale at Christmas. I bought it because I’d loved her previous novel, Hamnet, and I’d heard good things about it on social media. And rightly so!

Set in the 1550s and 1560s, The Marriage Portrait is the story of Lucrezia, fifth child of the ruler of the Tuscany. At the age of 15, she is married to another ruler – the Duke of Ferrara. A year later, she is hit by the absolute certainty that her husband is going to kill her.

The story starts with Lucrezia’s realisation that she is going to be killed, before going back to her early life. Lucrezia is more challenging and mysterious to her parents than her siblings. She is a very talented girl who loves to draw and once touched a tiger owned by her father. She loves her nurse, Sofia, and really doesn’t want to get married. But girls weren’t given a choice. Her marriage would be good for the fortunes of both families.

The marriage portrait itself is a portrait her husband commissioned of her to celebrate their marriage. It is a key theme which runs through a lot of the book.

The story goes backwards and forwards a bit, so the reader needs to keep an eye on the dates and locations at the start of each chapter – some of the stuff which happens right at the end of Lucrezia’s story is taken out of order and the only way to keep track of what happens when is by looking at the the location.

The Marriage Portrait is another stunning Maggie O’Farrell novel inspired by true events. Lucrezia was a real person who left her home in 1560 at the age of 15 to begin her married life to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. While the official cause of death was given as ‘putrid fever’, it was rumoured that she had been killed by her husband.

I loved The Marriage Portrait and it seems like many other people love it too. I’ve never read anything set in this era in another country before. There are some similarities with Tudor books I’ve read – the Wolf Hall books and the Shardlake series – particularly around arranged marriage and husbands killing their wives (usually Henry VIII in the books I’ve read!). The setting has a much more exotic feel than novels set in England in this era.

If you are looking for a read which is beautiful, a bit different and sometimes challenging and disturbing, I would definitely recommend The Marriage Portrait.