Quotes from Leonie Frieda

Lucrezia knew well that Elisabeth had fallen under Isabella's malignant thumb, and the usually kind duchess found a mean streak that Lucrezia's sensative antennae picked up, but did not show.

Sorry as she was for the couple, the consummate actress trained at the Vatican school of drama and diplomacy may have felt more than a scintilla of satisfaction at her brother's success.

Duke Ercole's condition deteriorated and he lay listening to the gentle music on his favorite clavichord. Sinking slowly, with the family gathered about his bed, Ercole beat time to the music with his hand.

Any irony intended proved words wasted, for they were drowned in Isabella's rapacity.

A notable absentee at her father's bedside had been Isabella; she could no longer attempt to guide the rule of both Mantua and Ferrara as she had been wont over the past years.

Both husband and wife looked regal and perfect for the part life had chosen for them to play.

Lucrezia's Borgia instincts and experience had taught her that these moments do not last long, and she lent herself to the festivities wholeheartedly.

When any new monarch ascends his throne some changes are made due to the exigencies of the time, others merely because of different interests, beliefs, friends, and favourites.

The scene had been orchestrated for a display that would overpower the envoys; it did not help the visitors' nerves when Cesare's stern-faced bodyguards proceeded to lock the doors behind them.

In religious matters she was no fanatic except when her sons and their birthright were concerned. The Catholic Mass suited her, a lifelong habit that she found comforting, almost as though it were another talisman to ward off evil.

The marchioness would have done better to consider her immense strengths: her commanding personality, her majestic attitudes, and above all, her keen political sense would have allowed for a more even result between herself and her sister-in-law.

The duchess approached her health, her style, and her entire presentation with all that she had learned at the far more exotic Vatican court, and the practices of her father's homeland.

Tradesmen rarely pursued their rulers for payment, particularly one who could be as vicious in acquisition as Isabella D'Este.

Angela had become the spoiled monster created by a loving Lucrezia.

It is a peculiarly Renaissance conundrum that each and every deadly sin could happily join hands with the virtues, that the crimes of the body could coexist with a sincere desire for purity of soul.

She had watched Rome burn down, taking with it her own world.

His mother might claim to be a loyal light in the shadows, but he was determined to shove her even further into the shadows.

The fact that Isabella had failed her friend in the hour of her greatest need and effectively stolen her possessions was forgotten in her touching display of grief.

What followed seemed barely unbelievable, in the sense that Europe reeled from an assault that seemed impossible, heretical, demonic.

Isabella had spent her whole life chasing the capricious goddess Fortuna: what we call Chance or Luck. She held the Humanist belief that the vicissitudes of Chance could be managed-if not entirely, then to a greater extent than if she succeeded them, the result would be Virtú. In some senses this encapsulated the meaning of the Renaissance.

Although still driven by curiosity and ambition, she did not realize quite how much she had herself become viewed as a curiosity of her time. Still less could she know how, much later, she would come to be seen as the paradigmatic woman of the High Renaissance.

Francois I had commanded that the French speak one tongue, and the Langue d'oil triumphed over the Langue d'oc.

The Italian Renaissance was as much an age of culture and learning as of violence and deceit.