The Pope's Daughter

“Lucrezia Borgia as a living, feeling woman rather than just another bodice waiting to be ripped . . . an evident tribute . . . to its much maligned heroine.” —New York Times

Lucrezia Borgia is one of the most vilified figures in modern history. The daughter of a notorious pope, she was twice betrothed before the age of eleven and thrice married—one husband was forced to declare himself impotent and thereby unfit and another was murdered by Lucrezia’s own brother, Cesare Borgia. She is cast in the role of murderess, temptress, incestuous lover, femme fatale par excellence.

But there is always more than one version of a story.

Lucrezia Borgia is the only woman in history to serve as the head of the Catholic Church. She successfully administered several of the Renaissance Italy’s most thriving cities, founded one of the world’s first credit unions, and was a generous patron of the arts. She was mother to a prince and to a cardinal. She was a devoted wife to the Prince of Ferrara, and the lover of the poet Pietro Bembo. She was a child of the renaissance and in many ways the world’s first modern woman.

From Dario Fo, Nobel Laureate and one of Italy’s most beloved writers.

“Lucrezia Borgia enthralls Fo, and he signals his enthusiasm with arch, knowing humor directed at the reader . . . Fo’s Lucrezia more femme fatale than incestuous poisoner.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Dario Fo takes the image that has been sent down to us all the way from John Ford’s Tis a Pity She’s a Whore through Victor Hugo’s play Lucrezia Borgia to a slew of the recent popular biographies and turns it inside out.” —La Repubblica