Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait is historical fiction at its' very finest. Lucrezia de' Medici is an unusual child, extremely bright, a gifted artist, and very different from her siblings in the Medici court in sixteenth-century Florence. When Lucrezia is given in marriage to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio in what was a typical political move of the time, everything changes. O'Farrell's brilliant writing and multi-faceted descriptions of the Italian court hundreds of years ago have made it possible for us to imagine what toll this union would cause Lucrezia. What a life she could have led under different circumstances.