Rinascimento privato was the last novel written by the Italian writer Maria Bellonci

Maria Bellonci

Maria Villavecchia Bellonci was an Italian writer known especially for her biography of Lucrezia Borgia. She and Guido Alberti set up the Strega Prize in 1947....

. It won the Strega Prize

Strega Prize

The Strega Prize is the most prestigious Italian literary award. It has been awarded annually since 1947 for the best work of prose fiction by an Italian author and first published between 1 May of the previous year and 30 April...

 in 1986. It is a fictional autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 of Isabella d'Este

Isabella d'Este

Isabella d'Este was Marchesa of Mantua and one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance as a major cultural and political figure. She was a patron of the arts as well as a leader of fashion, whose innovative style of dressing was copied by women throughout Italy and at the French court...

, covering the major years of the Italian Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 from a private point of view within the court of the Duke of Mantua.

Structure

The book, like other works of Bellonci, is very well documented and accurately based on original documents that the author had the opportunity to study in detail. However, this is not a historical reconstruction, like the previous book on Lucrezia Borgia (whose creation perhaps generated the idea for Private Renaissance), but it is a true historical novel, with a few inventions of the author – such as the introduction of the completely fictional character of Robert de la Pole, an English clergyman who wrote to Isabella from various points of Europe (probably inspired to Cardinal Reginald Pole).

The inclusion of this figure in the novel makes it possible to introduce important historical figures and events in the historical context of the time, even if they did not come into direct contact with Isabella. It is also valuable in replacing the figure of the narrator – irreconcilable feat with the book's autobiographical form – and the figures of other speakers who may have historically existed as a source to Bellonci, but it can not be used directly without compromising the flow of the text itself. Working with a fictional character, the author avoids exaggerating one or more actual figures and respects the historical accuracy.

Parallel to the memories of the protagonist, Bellonci develops the relationship between the English (called Anglicus) and Isabella into an uncanny connection: on the one hand, the instant attraction towards this devoted and distant figure; on the other, perplexity because of his unconventional ways. Isabella solves the difficult node of how to respond through her tacit consent in receiving his letters – while she does not attempt to stop de la Pole's writing to her, she does not ever answer.

Plot

The book is divided into seven parts, interspersed with twelve letters by Robert de la Pole. The narrative is constructed as a long flashback that takes place in 1533, when the almost sixty Isabella is writing her memoirs in the so-called Clocks' Room, in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantova. Apart from some reference to the present or the distant past, the narrative takes place mostly in chronological order, from the year 1500 to 1533, precisely the date when Isabella comes out of that scene, ending the main events of his life (she then died in 1539).

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