The Marriage Portrait

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

Historical Fiction

2022

Finished on December 8, 2025

Rating: 5/5 (Outstanding!)

Publisher's Blurb:

From the author of the New York Times best seller Hamnet--winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Women's Prize for fiction--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 devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, 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 trouble 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 sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court's eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferrarese dynasty. Until then, for all her rank and nobility, the new duchess's future hangs entirely in the balance.

Full of the drama and verve with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life and offers an unforgettable portrait of a resilient young woman's battle for her very survival.

Bravo! I love this novel! Maggie O'Farrell is a consummate storyteller, and The Marriage Portrait may be her best book yet. With vivid settings and strongly defined characters, O'Farrell transports her readers to 16th century Italy. 

The sky above her head is vast, stretching from the tops of the cypresses all the way to the distant peaks of the Apennines, which can be seen, far off, in the purple-grey haze. As she walks beneath it, she is aware of its spectrum shifts, from the pink of sunrise, to red, to orange.

This, she thinks. All this. The cypresses like rows of upended paintbrushes, waiting for the giant hand of an artist, the low and subjugated wind, the jagged line of mountains drawn in charcoal on the horizon, the muted calls of servants to each other, somewhere behind her, the open doors of the villa, the clink of bells around the necks of cattle, the lines and lines of fruit trees that open into avenues as she walks by. She wants this. She feels the bliss of it all on her skin, like the graze of drizzle after a parching drought. She can take the other, she can bear it, if it means she can have this. She will exchange that for this. She will, she can.

Narrated in alternating timelines, the suspense of Lucrezia's future kept me reading late into the night. And yet I read slowly, savoring the prose, visualizing each scene and introduction of new characters.

The gown rustles and slides around her, speaking a glossolalia all of its own, the silk moving against the rougher nap of the underskirts, the bone supports of the bodice straining and squealing against their coverings, the cuffs scuffing and chafing the skin of her wrists, the stiffened collar hooking and nibbling at her nape, the hip supports creaking like the rigging of a ship. It is a symphony, an orchestra of fabrics, and Lucrezia would like to cover her ears, but she cannot.

While I have enjoyed several of her contemporary novels, O'Farrell talent shines in her dramatic historical fiction. I can't wait to read her upcoming 2026 release, Land, a multi-generational historical epic set in Ireland during the Great Famine. 

Highly recommend. I was tempted to re-read it the moment I finished!