MADDALENA is the love story of a papal grandson for a Jewish apothecary’s daughter. Set in artistic milieu of Michelangelo’s sixteenth-century Rome, the cardinal’s moral struggle reflects that of the Roman Catholic Church plagued by corruption, while the heroine triumphs like her biblical ancestor, St. Mary Magdalen.
Cardinal Alessandro Farnese was no ordinary man. He was the grandson of Pope Paul III. While Farnese saga is complicated, success comes with simple networking. When the father of Lucretia Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, created a bunch of cardinals, his son Cesare was among them. On a second thought, the Borgia pope also included the brother of his favorite concubine, Alessandro Farnese. The elder Alessandro, and the future Paul III, also loved women like his Borgia benefactor. Before a dagger cut his life short, the real Pier Luigi, one of Paul’s four children, fathered the main character in Maddalena. Nothing was new in the papal curia where corruption and lust went hand in hand, all around.
As the plot opens, a newly-discovered sculpture of Venus also reawakens young Alessandro Farnese’s passion for women and, after the most powerful prelate in Rome becomes ill, for Monna Rebecca, the flower girl who heals him. His palaces open the world of art for Berti Spranger, a Flemish artist attached to the Cardinal’s son Don Alphonso. The lovers’ saga blends into the religious and artistic fabric of sixteenth-century Rome with Berti as an accomplice.
A colorful cornucopia of characters, Adrien, Hans, Cornelius and Karl, his friends and fellow artists, stretch the plot until the newly-elected Gregory XII strikes at Alessandro through Maddalena, when her horrible trial, torture, and execution by fire expose the evil practices of the Roman Inquisition.
Will Maddalena, the converted Jewish maiden, survive her ordeal? If you are one of those readers turning to the last page before you open the book, enjoy the color illustrations with sneaking previews of the plot.
And, after ten turbulent years in Rome, Berti comes alive, again, in his thrilling memoir revealed in My Life with Berti Spranger.