Cesare Borgia
Cesare Borgia (1476-1507), Italian nobleman, the illegitimate son of Rodrigo de Borgia, who was Pope Alexander VI. Cesare became a cardinal at the age of 17, and succeeded his brother-in-law as papal captain-general. A brilliant soldier, he regained the central Italian states for the papacy but was dismissed by Pope Julius II. Borgia had a reputation for treachery and murder, but was also a patron of Leonardo da Vinci. He was the model for the ruthless administrator depicted by Machiavelli in The Prince. His sister, Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519), was married for the first time when she was only 12 years old. She subsequently married three more times. Her third husband was assassinated by her father and brother and in 1501 she married Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. The Ferrara court became famous as a centre of culture, the poet Ariosto and the painter Titian being amongst those who received patronage there. More recent research has suggested that Lucrezia’s reputation for cruelty and other crimes was unfounded.
“He was, by his twenty-seventh year, the most feared, hated, and envied man of his day, courted by the rulers of France, Spain, and the Empire…At thirty-one he was dead, dying in an ambush in northern Spain as violently and spectacularly as he had lived. Sarah Bradford, Cesare Borgia, his Life and Times (1967)”
