A Breakthrough to Freedom: Portrait of Renaissance Femme Fatale

Senka Suman

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A Breakthrough to Freedom: Portrait of Renaissance Femme Fatale

In: The Evil Body

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Senka Suman

Senka Suman
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 221–230

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848880740_022

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Lucrezia Borgia was a real Renaissance femme fatale. She was an Italian Renaissance duchess, beautiful, wise, powerful, and a patron of the arts. However, she also personified the other side of Renaissance in incest, orgies, poisonings, and intrigues, whether in questions of politics or love. Many historians wanted to portray Lucrezia as a political pawn in the hands of her famous father, Pope Alexander VI, but she was beyond that. She was a wise, determined woman who used her beauty and political power as a means to satisfy her personal and political cravings. She enjoyed rare freedom for a woman in the Renaissance period, having been married several times, entertaining lovers, exchanging love letters with poets, and living openly and freely a life for which any other woman living then would be hanged. She proved Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ as an essential drive in her life; she loved passionately and wasn’t afraid to make brave political moves. The Borgia family was not interesting only to historians, but also to philosophers like Machiavelli and writers like Alexander Dumas and Victor Hugo as well as the poet Lord Byron. How did Lucrezia Borgia succeed in enjoying so much freedom? Why was she portrayed as a whore, infamous murderess, evil character, while she was doing exactly what other powerful Renaissance men were doing, but they kept their reputation as brave shrewd political leaders or just manipulators? This chapter will explore whether Lucrezia Borgia was born with an evil character and her power enlarged her inner evil, or whether Nietzsche was right, that the primal drive in humans is ‘will to power’, which corrupts our true nature. This exploration makes us wonder if we would be able to do what Lucrezia did in her time, in her position, in her situation.

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The Evil Body

E-Book ISBN:: 9781848880740

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 15 Apr 2011

Subjects
- Social Sciences
  - Cultural Studies
  - Gender Studies

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A Breakthrough to Freedom: Portrait of Renaissance Femme Fatale

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The Evil Body

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