Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2013, vol. 8

Television Series Reviews

The Borgias, Season One, Showtime When the title credits flash on the screen, intercut with carefully selected details from Renaissance paintings at the start of each of the nine 45-min- ute episodes of The Borgias, Season One, it is immediately evident that this television series will not be revising the infamous Borgia legend that grew up around the notorious family during its reign and after its demise in the mid-sixteenth century. As the inspiration for Mario Puzo’s novel, The Family, and very likely of his blockbuster films, The Godfather and its sequels and prequels, the Borgias continue to be depicted as the original mafia dynasty (“meet the original godfather” is one of the omnipresent taglines for Showtime’s series), a family accused of debauchery, incest, murder, torture, and fratricide. This visual pastiche introduces the specta- tor to what will dominate each episode: male lechery pitted against inno- cent female purity as anachronistically symbolized by Philippe de Croy’s hands holding a rosary while a dagger pierces the pearly-white flesh of Roman heroine Lucretia’s martyred body (Philippe I de Croy by Rogier van der Weyden and Lucretia by Lucas Cranach the Elder); and brutality and revenge suggested by the lecherous Holofernes’s severed, bloody head gruesomely dangling in the corner of the screen after his decapitation by Judith (Judith and Holofernes by Lucas Cranach the Elder). These details, however, provide the false hope that virtuous pagan and holy women will prevail unaided against male coercion and female victimization. Not so. Rodrigo Borgia’s (Jeremy Irons) illegitimate daughter Lucrezia (Holliday Grainger) receives merely cursory nods at independent thought or action.

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When she transgresses gender lines in order to fight against male cruelty, she does so only at her father’s request. Female power does not concern this series’ creators. Garry Waller, the designer of the montage, affirmed in an interview that the details he selected were meant to emphasize the Borgias’ dynasty as synonymous with corruption during their precipitous rise to power and their fight to keep it against enormous obstacles. The spectator participates, therefore, more as a voyeur of the scurrilous family legend passed down by their many enemies than as an informed interpreter of the many complexities and contradictions in an immensely powerful family that succeeded in reshaping Italy’s dynastic map through marriage alliances, political bribery, and diplomatic cunning but that could not prevent French troops from invading, taking over the kingdom of Naples, and pillaging town after town for over fifty years, the most brutal warfare ever seen on European soil until then. Neither the Borgias’ political savvy nor their calculated cor- ruption for personal gain prepared them for, or could measure up to, the French army’s fast-moving and lightweight artillery. It would have required a careful reader and researcher to sort through the rumors that permeated even the official chronicles and diplomatic reports issued during Rodrigo Borgia’s reign as Pope Alexander VI and the meteoric political rise of his illegitimate eldest son Cesare (François Arnaud). Irish Catholic filmmaker Neil Jordan, the mini-series creator, producer, some time director, and writer (best known for The Crying Game, Mona Lisa, and Michael Collins), relies more upon legend to con- struct his story than on the well-documented portrait of a man obsessed with occupying the most powerful seat in Christendom and driven to buy his children’s love with power, fame, and money at all costs. These compul- sions led to some of Rodrigo’s most devastating political mistakes during his lengthy career. Jordan’s sumptuously designed Season One is a $49 million visual spectacle of a man’s ruthless search for power while aided by his sociopath son Cesare, whose lack of empathy and political brutality were described by Machiavelli in his political treatise, The Prince, as characteristics nec- essary for a model prince. Although Jordan claimed in an interview that “history is for textbooks” and what we see on screen is, of his own admis- Television Series Reviews 343

sion, “the product of his [Jordan’s] imagination,” he does concede that “a lot of the history was written by Rodrigo’s successors, especially by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (Colm Feore), who became Pope Julius II. There was no Gibbon or Niall Ferguson to write about the Borgias, and so they become a little demonized.” Irons also acknowledged when interviewed that the complexity of Rodrigo’s character was more than the sum of diametrically-opposed dualities of good and evil. He was, he said, “a man of different colors and many different behaviors. He’s completely different when he’s being persuaded by his daughter or bullied by the mother of his children or negotiating with the Spanish ambassador. I never judge. I just try to link all those attributes.” Unfortunately, Irons’s interpretation lacks believability for precisely that vast array of attributes he mentions. With an unequal number of scenes devoted to his cavorting in bed with his mistress Giulia Farnese (Lotte Verbeek) than performing ecclesiastical duties as a pious cardinal, he is hardly credible in his role of pious pontiff. Similarly, he altogether lacks the magnetic sexual appeal that Johannes Burchard (Simon McBurney), Alexander VI’s German chief of protocol and master of ceremonies, dubbed the pope’s “endless virility.” Instead, Irons seems bored, even exhausted and overwhelmed by his character’s misdeeds. Painters and chroniclers alike saw Pope Alexander VI as larger than life both physically and politically. His broad forehead, full lips, hooked nose and immense energy, wit, and sense of humor, which made him appear much younger than his years, were repeatedly noted in the personal letters and diaries of his contemporaries. Irons, regrettably, is wizened, stiff, and awkward. His measured yet ponderous drone is laborious and over-calculated, and each gesture and declaration — and there are many of them — move at an agonizingly slow pace. Nothing about him bespeaks an over-abundance of sexuality or charisma. Nevertheless, Irons’s many loyal fans helped him to win a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by a Television Actor in a Drama, and the Showtime series in the sec- ond season went on to accumulate a total of ten Emmy nominations for Outstanding Costumes (Gabriella Pescucci, an Oscar winner for The Age of Innocence and much acclaimed for her Renaissance dress in Dangerous Beauty) and Outstanding Original Main Title Music (Trevor Morris). Pescucci’s costumes are wonderful and appropriate to the period. Silks 344 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Television Series Reviews

and velvet brocades decorated with gold threads and bejeweled borders abound; nets of silk and snoods crafted of precious beads fasten the noble women’s hair; cloth of gold and richly woven robes of white and golden silk make up the newly-appointed Pope’s ceremonial robes; slashed leather doublets fit snugly against the male character’s torso. Morris’s score, how- ever, is another pastiche of mismatched pieces by composers dating some eighty to a hundred years after the action. Paul Sarossy’s cinematography, however, is superb even though there is not even one atmospheric shot of Rome; the entire mini-series was filmed on location at the Korda Studios in Hungary. In reality, Rodrigo Borgia’s greatest liability was not that he was cor- rupt, as legend would have it, but that he was a foreign interloper, a fact that receives only lip service throughout the season. Italy, made up of a small number of states ruled by family dynasties, loathed the prospect of a Spanish pope from Valencia. This was his most daunting obstacle throughout his rise to power. Although he had succeeded in becoming one of the richest and most influential churchmen in all of Rome on account of the many benefices he accrued over many years, he found it extremely diffi- cult to go beyond his well-appointed, lucrative position as Vice-Chancellor to the Pope, a position he first acquired at the age of twenty-seven. But this fate finally changes thanks to chance and a little cunning when Season One begins. Set during the family’s rise to power in 1492, the season’s opening episode moves at a faster clip than many of those that follow. In “The Poisoned Chalice” Pope Innocent VII gathers his most trusted cardinals to his death bed. Representing the powerful dynastic families of faction- ridden Italy — the House of Sforza in Milan, the Medici in Florence, the Este in Ferrara, and the Spanish House of Aragon in Naples — he asks each cardinal to promise to wash away the greed and lechery that infects the Holy City. We are never told, however, how he himself sullied the church. In reality, he employed the same means as Rodrigo will during the first episode, that is, he obtains his papal tiara by granting favors to vari- ous cardinals right before the election. Jockeying for political influence and appointment as papal successor, Cardinals Giuliano della Rovere Ascanio Sforza (Peter Sullivan) and Rodrigo Borgia emerge as major rivals. Television Series Reviews 345

Rodrigo has set out to rig the conclave of twenty-three cardinals when two public scrutinies leave the contenders in a deadlock. Rodrigo cleverly con- vinces the youngest and most inexperienced cardinal, Giovanni de’ Medici (the future Pope Leo X) to cast his vote in his favor, although Jordan does not question whether Giovanni saw through Rodrigo’s posturing and lies. What he does emphasize is that Giovanni’s vote gives Rodrigo the major- ity, thereby achieving the position that he has long coveted and will hold for thirteen years. He is thus well placed to buy his sons positions of power and politically advantageous marital alliances for them and his beautiful daughter Lucrezia. It would have been fascinating to explore how Medici rivalry was one of the factors that eventually spurred Cesare Borgia to carve out for his family a dynastic power structure in the middle of Italy. History tells us that although he was enormously shrewd and quick on his feet in public disputations, he was never regarded by his contemporaries as the social or intellectual equal of a legitimate Medici male. Instead, what we see in scene after scene in Season One are the conflicts that fester between Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere, who has lost out to a Spaniard who, he claims, bought the papacy through bribery. Della Rovere seeks revenge for this act of simony by adding his support to the French invasion and stirring up sentiments against Alexander VI even though he is fully aware that the control of Naples under a French monar- chy would further destabilize Italy and the papacy. If Season One begins with gusto, albeit missing some choice oppor- tunities for delving into the Borgias’ history without relying upon the infa- my of legend, it concludes with a number of ludicrous rewritings of both legend and official history. One unnecessary invention finds the French king Charles VIII (Michel Muller) and Alexander VI meeting for the first time in Old St. Peter’s. Alexander decides to transform himself from the sumptuously dressed pontiff into a humble, plain-clothed Franciscan monk in order to ingratiate the king with his humility and piety. When Charles enters the church in search of the illustrious and regal Pope, he is shocked but impressed by the Pope’s simple demeanor. This moves him so much that he decides to enter into diplomatic agreements with Alexander VI and leave the city of Rome unscathed. That the ruthless Charles is 346 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Television Series Reviews so easily hoodwinked by Alexander’s role playing would be completely laughable if it were not based on a small shred of historical accuracy. In fact, Charles VIII went to hear Mass in the French royal chapel in Old St. Peter’s and was then escorted into the papal palace’s lavishly decorated private apartments. Alexander VI’s informality and disregard of ceremonial etiquette and protocol stunned the monarch when later that day Alexander declined to sit down until his French guest was seated first, and he insisted on accom- panying the monarch himself to the royal apartments. Alexander’s artful staging of deference to and equality with the French king were intended to impress upon him that they were not enemies but equals. Two days later, the pope learned that his theatrical display had succeeded in capital- izing on the young monarch’s naiveté; he was able to sidestep two of the king’s political demands: appointing a council to reform the church and a formal papal recognition of Charles VIII’s claim to Naples. In exchange, Alexander allowed him to pass freely through the Papal States even though Charles already had seized most of the territory north of Rome. This was a pyrrhic victory at best for the young French king but a major diplomatic victory for the pope, who convinced Charles to profess publicly his obedi- ence to him. After all, only a month earlier, Alexander VI’s country had been under French siege. Another particularly notable example of historical rewriting involves Lucrezia. When escaping from Pesaro on horseback where she had been living with her first husband Giovanni Sforza (Ronan Vibert), she is appre- hended en route by some French soldiers who force her and her traveling companion, Giulia Farnese, onto the battlefield where they come face to face with Charles VIII. To protect themselves and her father from danger, Lucrezia proceeds to charm the French king with her beauty and female allure, thereby sparing both of them from harm and averting the destruc- tion of Rome. In fact, it was Alexander VI’s mistress, Giulia Farnese, when returning to Rome after visiting her husband on his country estate, who was apprehended and taken for ransom, which Alexander agreed to pay. While Lucrezia is credited briefly (although erroneously in this case) with political diplomacy and cunning, these attributes are quickly forgotten when she assumes her primary and prescribed duty as the pope’s daughter Television Series Reviews 347 to provide male heirs. Indeed, the season’s finale concentrates on her giving birth in a convent to a child fathered not by her husband but by his illiter- ate stable boy, changed by Jordan from Rodrigo’s personal valet. While Season One suggests that Lucrezia Borgia is smarter than her years, it falls short in proving it. Holliday Grainger is very capable of switching back and forth from a daughter who, although suspecting her father’s political treachery and lying, is unable to act against it to a young woman bursting with rage when, for example, she is subjected to unfair treatment because of her sex. Lucrezia is portrayed first and foremost as the cherished beauty of the family, adored, fussed over, and protected by both her father and her besotted and jealous brother Cesare. Grainger deftly moves from the innocent yet pious ingénue, who tells Cesare that she is “betrothed to God” in an early episode to the thirteen-year-old bride of Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, a widower twice her age, chosen for her in order to guarantee Rodrigo a Sforza ally against Naples. Jordan subjects the viewer to Sforza’s repeated sexual abuses and psychological torturing of his bride, transforming him into a psychotic pervert who rapes his spouse night after night while shouting slurs about her Spanish origins and illegitimacy. Unfortunately, Lucrezia’s abuse at Sforza’s hands is another meaningless invention. Giovanni was never known to physically abuse her, nor was he a perverted misogynist. It would have been sufficient to assert her understandable fear at marrying a man totally unknown to her for the sole purpose of cementing a political alliance for her family. In reality, Giovanni Sforza’s conflict was due to his being both a condottiere of Milan by virtue of his name and birth and a condottiere of Naples on account of his marriage to Lucrezia, the pope’s daughter. Once Alexander VI switched his allegiance from Milan to Naples, Giovanni was no longer a political asset, and he knew his days as Lucrezia’s husband were num- bered. Alexander began divorce proceedings on the charges of Giovanni’s not having consummated the marriage. Lucrezia, always her father’s pawn in political intrigues, is forced to prove her virginity before a group of car- dinals and undergo a midwife’s inspection. Jordan retains only this part of Sforza’s story, making Lucrezia’s desire to follow her father’s wishes have more to do with the sexual abuse she has purportedly endured than with the political maneuvering between two powerful men. 348 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Television Series Reviews

Perhaps the series will go on to develop Lucrezia’s character, and the other women’s roles, in more interesting and powerful ways. But that is beyond the scope of this review. A new historical novel, Blood and Beauty: A Novel of the Borgias (Random House, 2013) by Sarah Dunant, bestsell- ing author of acclaimed Italian Renaissance novels — The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan, and Sacred Hearts — does just that and succeeds brilliantly. When Lucrezia defends her having taken a lover to her father and Cesare, who both charge her with indecency and jeopar- dizing her chaste reputation, Dunant reaches into Lucrezia’s thoughts about the double standard most women were forced to accept: “Without stain! How many women have you bedded in the last six months? She thinks. She almost wants to say the words out loud, but there is no point. Every woman who walks through the world knows there are two roads: a wide, triumphal route for men and a second mean little alley for women. Freedom is so much men’s due that even to draw little attention to it is to make them angry.” Based on extensive historical research, Dunant expertly unravels the slander and rumors surrounding the Borgia saga and probes into what the original sources reveal about the motivations that fueled such slanderous claims and the Borgias’ reaction to them. It is comforting to know that a fictional story for non-specialists finds the work of modern historians helpful: their “judgment on the Borgias is more scrupulous and discriminating than many in the past. I have listened to their views,” she writes in the “Historical Epilogue” to her novel. She adds that “where there is contemporary evidence (be it true or false), through letters, reports, speeches or diaries,” she has incorporated it into the text. It is unfortunate that the same cannot be said of The Borgias, Season One. Margaret F . Rosenthal University of Southern California