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Chapter 2: The Unfortunate Circumstances of Lucrezia’s Conception
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Marriage Portrait, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Art, Voyeurism, and Control
Duality and Identity
Gender Roles, Male Violence, and Female Solidarity
Primal Freedom vs. Civilized Imprisonment
Destiny vs. Chance
Summary
Analysis
After receiving a painting of a tiger from a foreign dignitary in 1552, Cosimo orders his advisor Vitelli to procure such an animal for the palace’s menagerie. Vitelli reluctantly obeys, and a Bengal tiger is captured and shipped to Florence. Vitelli instructs the convoy to wait until nightfall to deliver the beast, knowing that the Florentine populace will make a great fuss. When the tigress enters the palace, it lets out a mournful cry, heard only by seven-year-old Lucrezia, who is known for eavesdropping. The tiger’s cry sounds to her like the sound of a creature captured against its will.
Cosimo’s ability to procure a tiger on a whim demonstrates his immense power. Vitelli’s reluctance to obey points to his own serious disposition, which leaves no room for frivolousness. Lucrezia seems to recognize and connect with the tiger’s deep pain at being imprisoned, even before she sees the beast. Her talent for eavesdropping indirectly points to an ability to escape notice, perhaps because her family so often dismisses her as a problematic child.
Active
Themes
Lucrezia sneaks out of the nursery and enters one of the palace’s numerous hidden passages. She has heard Sofia speaking in the Neapolitan dialect (which Sofia thinks the children cannot understand) about how the passages exist for Cosimo’s family to escape in case of an attack. Now, Lucrezia steals away to the courtyard, where the tiger is being transported to the basement. She marvels at the animal’s fiery stripes, which seem to her like the bars of a cage. The mules and the men moving her seem to know she could slay them all were it not for the cart that confines her.
This moment simultaneously portrays Lucrezia as both clever beyond her years and childlike. She is wily enough to keep her ability to understand Sofia’s dialect a secret, but naïve enough to be ignorant of her father’s political enemies. Her fascination with the deadly tiger once again distinguishes her from her siblings and suggests she identifies with a powerful animal living in captivity, symbolized by the bar-like stripes.
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Themes
To Lucrezia, the palace alternatively feels like a safe place and a prison. She and her siblings are mostly confined to their quarters, apart from their daily exercise on the covered walkways. Sofia tells the children Cosimo has rooms just for weapons, books, maps, and jewelry. Lucrezia most wants to see the Sala dei Leoni—the room of the lions. Rumor has it her father displays his collection of beasts to special guests, that the lions love him enough to let him in their enclosure.
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The morning after the tiger arrives, Lucrezia is the last to breakfast. She is intent on seeing the animal again, and she imagines herself as a tiger in her siblings’ midst. She has four older siblings and three younger; between them and the nurses, there is no room for Lucrezia at the table. She swipes some bread and laps milk from a bowl before Sofia admonishes her. The old nurse commands control of the children. She combs Lucrezia’s hair while Eleonora’s youngest daughter daydreams about finding the tiger’s cage and communing with it.
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Themes
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Lucrezia’s daydream is interrupted by her siblings’ laughter—they tell her she was growling like a bear. Sofia comforts Lucrezia, who asks why she is missing teeth. The nurse claims to have lost a tooth for each baby she nursed. Lucrezia goes to the schoolroom, where she has recently started lessons with her older siblings. They are instructed in antiquities, music, and drawing. Lucrezia is most interested in the latter, but she is presently confined to her letters while her siblings are tutored on illustration. The antiquities tutor asks a question about Greek geography. Lucrezia knows the answer, but she sketches it instead of responding.
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The antiquities tutor continues his questioning, asking how Agamemnon obtained a favorable wind from the gods. Again, Lucrezia knows the answer: he sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, tricking her into thinking she was to be married instead. Cosimo enters the classroom, putting everyone on edge. The instructor asks Isabella—Cosimo’s favorite—another question, and Lucrezia whispers the answer to her. Taking advantage of sisterly camaraderie, she whispers that Papa has a tiger, knowing that Isabella will ask about it. She does, and Cosimo is so pleased that his daughters are well-informed that he tells them he may take them to see it if they do well in their lessons.
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Later in the day, the antiquities tutor discovers Lucrezia’s drawing of Agamemnon and Iphigenia on the sacrificial altar. He is surprised by how good it is and tucks it into his jacket. The next day, the antiquities tutor shows Lucrezia’s drawing to the art tutor, who is similarly impressed, thinking it the work of one of the older children. He, too, is surprised by the quiet Medici daughter’s illustrative talent, and he considers what to do about it.
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That evening, Cosimo takes his five eldest children to the Sala dei Leoni to see the tiger. Lucrezia holds onto her father’s cloak as he walks through the palace with confidence, leading them to the basement. They see many animals in cages: apes, a wolf, a bear, and two lions circling one another. They are distressed, Cosimo says, because they can sense the tiger’s presence. Reaching the tigress’s enclosure, they cannot see the beast through the bars. The others return to the lions’ enclosure, but Lucrezia remains behind, silently begging the tiger to come to her.
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The tiger suddenly appears behind the bars, moving liquidly toward Lucrezia. The beast pauses, looking at Lucrezia with sad loneliness, seeming to ask if she will ever go home again. Lucrezia sneaks a hand through the bars to caress the tigress’s fur, which is like fire. The two consider one another for a long moment, during which Lucrezia feels her identity slip away, the tiger becoming the only thing that matters. Suddenly, Maria screams and Cosimo’s guards pull Lucrezia away from the animal. They drag her down the corridor, away from “something she loved more than anything else in the world.”
