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17aus63: Der C.H.Beck-Fragebogen
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Unsere Autor:innen
Autor:innen treffen
17aus63: Der C.H.Beck-Fragebogen
Klassiker und Werkausgaben
Sachbuch
Neuerscheinungen
Specials
Published
Current Material
Lucrezia Borgia
Friederike Hausmann
She is generally portrayed as the femme fatale of the Renaissance, a poisoner, adulteress, accused of incest with her father and her brother. But who really was Lucrezia Borgia (1480 – 1519)? In her brilliant book, Friederike Hausmann tells the story of Lucrezia, daughter of the pope and Renaissance princess, away from the murky legend of the Borgias.
Lucrezia was the illegitimate daughter of a man who, from 1492, was Pope Alexander VI. She spent the first half of her life in the shadow of the papal tiara, as her father pawned her, via several marriages, in his gambles for power and land. It was the time of the Italian Wars, shaped by devastation, syphilis and unparalleled cultural splendour at the Italian courts – a time of glamour and violence that also framed Lucrezia’s life. Initially the instrument of her father’s changing alliances, his death in 1533 left her, as Duchess of Ferrara, the only survivor of the Borgia family. Hausmann draws a subtle and empathetic portrait of Lucrezia and her time, and shows up both the limits of a woman’s agency and the leverage available to the daughter of princes.