LOCK OF HAIR FROM LUCREZIA BORGIA

LOCK OF HAIR FROM LUCREZIA BORGIA

Documents show that as early as 1685, the Ambrosiana Library in Milan, had a lock of hair from Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Rodrigo Borgia ~ later Pope Alexander VI.

The hairy memento along with nine love letters, were apparently a gift from Lucrezia to her paramour, Pietro Bembo.
The lock of hair, originally in a cardboard box, were kept at the library with their handwritten correspondence for over 400 years.

Lucrezia’s life was in upheaval when she first made the acquaintance of the poet Pietro Bembo in 1502.
At age 22, she was already infamous.
The illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, and sister to Cesare, she had arrived in the Northern Italian city of Ferrara for her third arranged marriage.
This was in the relatively recent wake of the highly suspicious death of her young second husband ~ most likely at the hands of her scheming brother Cesare.

Bembo was a poet, who was employed at her new husband’s estate.
He was ten years older than Lucretia, and no one really knows the full extent of their relationship.

However, it is clear from the handwritten letters, spanning some 16 years, that the two shared an intimate and romantic attraction.
Pietro Bembo kept this lock of hair inside a folded sheet of vellum, secured with a ribbon.

This lock of blonde hair became an almost cult object for the Romantics in the nineteenth century.
In 1928 a local jeweller was contracted to create a fitting reliquary to hold Lucrezia Borgia’s hair.

The display case, was made by Alfredo Ravasco, one of the finest goldsmiths in Milan.
Made with a combination of precious materials, hardstones and gems, with two pendants, with the heraldic emblems of the aristocratic Borgia (the bull) and d’Este (the eagle) families.

Lucrezia’s lock of blonde hair caught the eye of Lord Byron when he stopped by the famous Ambrosiana Library in 1816.
Her love letters have also been collected and translated in a book, named for Byron’s description of them as
“the prettiest love letters in the world.”

❣ Display case with the hair of Lucrezia Borgia ~ Alfredo Ravasco