A Medici–Habsburg heir, grandchild to Emperor Charles V and under his protection, would offer a new level of security for the regime. The news quickly circulated to the courts of Italy. ‘It’s believed that the Lady Duchess is pregnant,’ wrote Imperio Ricordati to the duke of Mantua, ‘on account of certain signs that usually come to women who find themselves in that position.’ On 13 September Alessandro took from the wardrobe a piece of unicorn horn on a little gold chain. To Renaissance people, unicorn horn was a cure-all, good not only during pregnancy but for all manner of ailments. Most importantly, it was thought to expel poisons. Lorenzo the Magnificent had owned a unicorn horn about six and a half feet long (in fact a narwhal tusk).1 Perhaps, after the panic over Cibo’s banquet, Alessandro was feeling cautious.
Some of Alessandro’s contemporaries either did not know about, or did not tell of, Margaret’s condition. Their histories relate a quite different story. Filippo Nerli wrote that after Alessandro was married ‘he threw himself entirely into pleasure-seeking’ and in doing so ‘made many more enemies’. Girolamo Ughi, in a less hostile account, conceded that Alessandro ‘governed quite wisely’ but took advantage of the relatively quiet state of Florence to turn to womanising, ‘profaning and insulting convents, and women common or noble, now with one scheme, now with another, though never by force’. Although ‘he used many virtues in his government, and showed himself quite favourable to justice; nonetheless for his disordered lusts he was hated, but feared.’2
There may be some truth in these stories, despite the evidence for a relatively stable relationship between Alessandro and Taddea Malaspina. His marriage to Margaret is less well documented, but the careful attention to gift-giving suggests a degree of marital affection. That does not rule out the possibility, indeed likelihood, that Alessandro had other affairs, but it should qualify the more hostile accounts. Some observers were more laid back than the republicans and clergy of Florence.
Marguerite of Navarre, sister of Francis I, excused Alessandro’s liaisons on the grounds that they spared his very young wife his attentions. Satirist Pietro Aretino was unsurprised by the Duke’s behaviour. ‘Tell me,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘is love an abominable thing in a young man like Alessandro? What would the lowest slave do if he could freely satisfy his desires?’ (Admittedly, Aretino was one of the most sexually explicit writers of the Renaissance, and several of his works were banned.) However, this letter does suggest he thought there was some truth in the tales about Alessandro, a view confirmed in another of his letters, some years later, to a courtesan named La Zufolina. In it Aretino recalled how Alessandro had wanted to have sex with La Zufolina so he could discover whether or not s/he was really a hermaphrodite.3
Reading the accounts of Alessandro’s lascivious behaviour, we should bear in mind that most of them were written after his assassination. They fit the classical narrative of hubris, the idea that extreme pride or arrogance comes before a fall, in other words that Alessandro brought his murder upon himself. They reinforce an argument that Alessandro was unfit to rule, that his masculinity was compromised by the excessive influence of women.4 It is remarkable how hindsight can change a picture.
If conceiving an heir was important to the Duke and Duchess, so was establishing a court for Margaret. Although Alessandro had commissioned numerous outfits and home furnishings prior to the wedding, the process went on. Luxury goods flowed in and out of the wardrobe. In July 1536 Alessandro gave two masquerading costumes in the style of nuns’ habits (perhaps those from the notorious Strozzi party or the Naples trip) to his tailor Agostino, with orders to make them into a carriage cover. Margaret’s wardrobe master, Messer Antonio, took from the wardrobe carpets for her bedroom, fifteen black velvet cushions ‘for ladies’, two red velvet chairs, two leather chairs, two more cushions in rich brocade; two further carpets, one for Margaret herself, a dozen red velvet cushions ‘for ladies’, ‘for sitting on the floor’. We can imagine the young Duchess perched on a chair, surrounded by kneeling courtiers. There were covers for Margaret’s mules and two satin door curtains with the ducal arms on them.
The tailors and other staff were issued with fabric for the production of further items: twenty-one braccia of pavonazzo velvet to make another carriage cover; twenty-eight braccia of red silk crushed brocade to make vestments for the chapel staff; fourteen braccia of red velvet for the underside of gold brocade cushions; twenty-four braccia of red velvet to make carpets for Margaret. New hangings depicting the story of Aeneas were commissioned. A crimson damask palio won at Verona was used to line a cover for Margaret’s litter; other palios of red velvet covered cushions and chairs. Half a palio won at Pistoia – a piece of grey damask – went to make a dress for a woman variously described in the records as ‘the duchess’s dwarf’ and ‘the wife of Bibiliano the dwarf’. Just as Ippolito had kept people of various nations as curiosities in his household, so many noble families kept dwarves, often as jesters or fools.5
The lavish decoration of the palazzo interiors during the four years of Alessandro’s rule is apparent from the number of items that were still in use almost two decades later when an inventory was taken in 1553. Half a dozen cloth hangings with a foliage pattern and Alessandro’s arms then adorned the enormous Room of the Two Hundred in the Palazzo della Signoria; others hung in his successor Cosimo’s chambers; another eleven hangings with the Duke’s arms were in a little room; still others were stored in the wardrobe. Fourteen arras hangings with Alessandro’s arms were in use by the court: they must have been of good quality to stand the test of time. No wonder Cosimo found little need to commission new domestic furnishings or artworks while he lived in the Palazzo Medici.6 He could simply make use of Alessandro’s. Add to these items what we already know of the art commissioned during Alessandro’s rule – the frescoes of Julius Caesar in the Palazzo Medici; portraits by Vasari and Pontormo; Pontormo’s take on Michelangelo’s Venus and Cupid and Vasari’s Entombment originally intended for his cousin and rival Ippolito – and we have all the makings of a thoroughly magnificent princely court, and a palace fit for an Imperial match.
Margaret’s pregnancy proved difficult. On 4 October, Imperio Ricordati wrote to the duke of Mantua: ‘All day yesterday people were frantic that Her Excellency the Duchess might lose her baby, but today the physicians, and women of that science, have high hopes that there are no ill effects, and that things will go well.’7
Married and relatively secure in government, Alessandro could afford to consider his long-term future. As for many princes of small Italian states, one promising option was a military career. Still only in his mid-twenties, Alessandro had plenty of opportunity to acquire fame and fortune on the battlefield. Paolo Giovio, to whom Alessandro had sent a gift of ecclesiastical dress in 1532,8 recounted the story of how the Duke had asked him to design a suitable emblem.
After the Cardinal’s death, Duke Alessandro had taken to wife Madama Margherita of Austria, daughter of the Emperor. He was governing Florence justly, for which the citizens were grateful, especially when it came to property cases. Finding himself strong and powerful of person, he desired to become distinguished in warfare, saying that in order to acquire glory – and for the Imperial faction he would have boldly entered into any difficult enterprise – he thought to win, or to die. One day he asked me with great insistence if I might find him a pleasing emblem for his surcoats with this meaning. And I chose for him that proud animal, which is called a Rhinoceros, capital enemy of the elephant.
Back in the days of Pope Leo X, King Manuel of Portugal had sent a rhinoceros to Rome. He had already sent an elephant and it is possible the two were intended to fight. The rhinoceros, however, had drowned before it could be delivered. Giovio had read the ancient author Pliny’s account of the rhinoceros, and had put it together with Portuguese descriptions. The rhinoceros was a fierce opponent. It never left its enemy before it had floored and killed it. Alessandro had the rhinoceros embroidered on the livery of the barbary horses he raced in Rome, with a motto in Spanish. No buelvo sin vencer meant ‘I shall not return without victory’. The emblem so pleased Alessandro, wrote Giovio, that he had it engraved on the breastplate of his armour.9
Alessandro now set off for Genoa to make his farewell to Charles, who was finally returning to Spain. The Emperor had other matters of government to attend to. The task of managing an Empire that stretched from Spain to the Netherlands and east to Austria was challenging – some would say impossible. Charles’ departure would leave Italy for the first time in many years without the presence of an Imperial army. Accompanying Alessandro was Francesco Vettori, who evidently remained in the Duke’s favour despite his earlier reluctance to attend the hearings in Naples.10
With Alessandro away in Genoa, Margaret was left in Florence with her ladies-in-waiting. At some point during October she miscarried. On the 31st Imperio Ricordati reported in a letter to Isabella that ‘the Duchessina is out of hope of being pregnant’.11 The word duchessina – little duchess – hints at an explanation. Margaret was only fourteen and earlier accounts suggest she was petite. If the miscarriage was a personal tragedy for Margaret, it also meant that, for now, there was no Habsburg grandson to inherit the duchy of Florence. That was good news for Alessandro’s enemies.