Analyzing the first Sant Jordi sales data, it is clear that there is a great hidden winner. The Northern Irishwoman Maggie O'Farrell (Coleraine, 1972) is the only author to appear among the best-selling titles in both Catalan and Spanish and in both cases she occupies third place, with her novel El retrat de matrimoni (L'Altra/Asteroide), which is why we must presume that, together with the two editions, we can be talking about at least the second best-selling author, which has more merit since she did not travel to Barcelona to sign on Sunday. The author spoke with this newspaper a few days ago in a Madrid hotel.
What was the first idea for the book? The same thing he did with Hamnet, about Shakespeare's son, with other characters?
One day I was rereading My Last Duchess, a poem by Robert Browning ("here is my last Duchess painted on the wall, as if she were alive..."), narrated by a perverse duke who mocks the woman he has murder I wondered if it was based on real events or not and so I discovered Lucrezia de' Medici, who was married at age 15 by parental obligation to Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, her dead sister's fiance, and then died in 16. I then observed the portrait of her painted by Bronzino and it was clear to me that I would write her a novel. That face was much more expressive than what was used at the time: it looked worried, distressed, it had something to say to me. I wrote the story she wanted to tell the painter.
I looked for the portrait you talk about in the book but it doesn't exist.
Sometimes these old paintings turn up in someone's attic, or they suddenly realize that the model was mistaken for someone else. They recently discovered one of his sister Isabel. So, you never know. The only one there, the one I saw, was painted before the marriage.
He died, officially, of tuberculosis.
Yes, that's what they said, but there were rumors of poisoning.
There are funny scenes in the Medici zoo.
They had a caged tiger in the basement, too. A zoo was a common symbol of power among the rulers of the time.
Lucrecia belongs to a rich family, but it is hard to imagine a more horrible life.
This is the key. She was unhappy, like other Medici, although she was born with enormous privileges and wealth, she had an incredible education because the parents were quite progressive and gave their daughters an education similar to that of their sons, something not uncommon . She and her sisters spoke several languages, including ancient Greek. But, at the same time, they lived closed all their lives because it was very dangerous for them to leave the palazzo. There were so many assassination attempts that his father Cosimo never left the house without armor or chain mail.
Can you give more examples of this lack of freedom?
The brothers lived in a couple of rooms in the palazzo and, if they wanted to get some fresh air, they had to go outside to the battlements, where they were safer. They had their destiny written: boys were trained to be soldiers and rulers and girls were expected to marry politically advantageous.
It reflects the world of portrait painters of the nobility.
Now we think of painters like Bronzino, Da Vinci and others and we have the idea that they painted the portraits we attribute to them. And it's not true. They had a large studio of apprentices and they entrusted them with the work, they even shared the same painting among several boys, there were specialists to paint hands or certain details. This common effort is fascinating.
Hence the importance you give to the painters' assistants.
I didn't want to just focus on the Dukes. I worked as a cleaner in hotels and I know the amount of work it takes to keep a place clean, for everything to work, to wash clothes, to cook... A 16th century palazzo required an army of servants. I can see through their eyes: ignored people who walked through corridors traversed by people of great power, and who felt many things. I tell the never-told story of the people who coexisted with the powerful.
The advice to make love every five days in order to beget...
It's real, a fertility method of the time! It even detailed different postures during intercourse so that it was a boy or a girl.
The whole book has an atmosphere of terror.
Yes, I re-read a lot of thrillers while writing it, and Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. I liked that atmosphere of premonition that her husband will kill her. It must be true or is he imagining it? He also has very affectionate gestures, I wanted to show ambiguity.
Is it a feminist novel?
I don't know what to say. What I set out to do is write about a family, but the story speaks for itself: the girls were married, and were often killed by their relatives.
