Welcome to the first day of the blog tour for The Marchesa by Sarah Dunant which will be published in paperback on 7th October 2026. My thanks to Kelly at Folk PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and Weatherglass Books for my review copy.
About the Book
Inside the opulent world of the Italian Renaissance, Isabella d’Este ruled not just by birth-right, but by wit, will, and an unquenchable thirst for power.
In The Marchesa, Isabella tells her own story: a girl transcending a loveless marriage to become both the first and greatest female art collector of her time and its most formidable woman political operator, navigating an unstable Italy of fragile alliances, high art and brutal warfare.
Through her eyes, the vanished splendour of Mantua and the great Renaissance courts are brought back to life, contrasting their surface beauty and artistic brilliance with an underbelly of infighting, treachery and sexual transgression.
Vividly imagined and utterly immersive, Sarah Dunant’sThe Marchesa is a masterful portrait of one of history’s most remarkable women and a revelatory journey into the very soul of the Renaissance.
Format: Paperback (350 pages) Publisher: Weatherglass Books
Publication date: 7th October 2026 Genre: Historical Fiction
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My Review
I’ve read and loved many of Sarah Dunant’s novels set in the Renaissance – Sacred Hearts, In the Company of the Courtesan and In the Name of the Family – and now she’s returned to that period in The Marchesa, shining a spotlight on the life of noblewoman Isabella d’Este.
From the very beginning Isabella places herself front and centre of the story. She watches from what she describes as ‘this endless afterlife’ as scholars scour documents from the archives in an effort to research her life. She has one particular favourite scholar whose research she eavesdrops upon and even attempts to guide, for example creating a gentle draught so that a particularly interesting, possibly previously overlooked, document flutters to the floor. Others less favoured receive a blast of cold air.
However, as she points out, historical documents can’t tell the whole story. Documents may have been destroyed or discarded as unimportant. And there are aspects of life that would never be captured on paper: scents, sounds and tastes. As imagined by the author, Isabella sets out to put that right with her own narrative of events.
As in many noble families of the period, Isabella’s marriage to Francisco, Marquis of Mantua, was arranged at an early age as a form of strategic alliance. It was a successful marriage if not one born of love. Isabella found no pleasure in conjugal relations with her husband whose earthy scent and hirsute body repulsed her. As she tartly observes, she had felt more pleasure translating Cicero or Ovid. However she bore him eight children (only six of whom survived beyond infancy) although the longed for male heir took many years to arrive. Francisco was happy to seek sexual pleasure elsewhere, a situation Isabella accepted, but which came back to haunt the family years later.
With Francisco often away on military campaigns, this being a period in which it seemed every state was periodically in alliance with or in conflict with each other, Isabella was left to take over the reins of government. It was something she relished and, frankly, was much more skilful at than her husband. Whereas Francisco often put his foot it in it, Isabella was skilled in the art of diplomacy, exemplified by her carefully crafted letters. She also knew when, in her words, to ‘gild the lily’, marking an event in a way which would flatter. In something of an understament, she observes, ‘Ours was an age when most rulers considered themselves exempt from modesty.’
An entertaining aspect of the book is the contrast between public pronouncement and private thought. An example is in Isabella’s venomous relationship with her sister-in-law, the infamous Lucrezia Borgia, whom she addresses as her ‘sweet sister’ in her letters but in private refers to as ‘this upstart illegitimate Spanish nobody.’ Isabella also gleefully recounts how she deliberately upstaged Lucrezia at her wedding.
Isabella was an avid collector of works of art, the rarer the better, and proved a tough negotiator. She also commissioned works from well-known artists of the day and was quite prepared to lure them away from others. However, she frequently expresses impatience at the slow speed of their work. The book is illustrated with portraits of people mentioned in the book. Isabella herself was unhappy with most of the attempts to capture her likeness.
Isabella absolutely leaps off the page, from her love of fashion to her weakness for sweet things, marzipan fruits being a favourite. In summing her up I can’t do better than Isabella’s favourite scholar’s description of her. ‘Clever, greedy, competitive, imperious, bloody-minded, cunning. She can behave so badly when she wants something, then lie barefacedly about it. Yet she is also, well glorious.’
In her Acknowledgments Sarah Dunant describes The Marchesa as a ‘hybrid of novel, biography and art.’ I think that demonstrates the breadth of appeal of this book. Whether you’re interested in the history and culture of the Renaissance period or want a compelling historical novel that reveals the life of a fascinating woman in an entertaining way, you’ll find it in The Marchesa. It’s also a thought-provoking exploration of how we construct the past. As Isabella observes, ‘It is a slippery idea, this thing called history.’
Isabella d’Este is also the subject of five original BBC Radio 4 talks by Sarah entitled “Unearthing the past”.
In three words: Fascinating, spirited, colourful
Try something similar: For more Borgias, Blood & Beauty by Sarah Dunant
About the Author
Sarah Dunant has written twelve novels, four of which have been short-listed for awards, and edited two books of essays. She worked for many years for the BBC in radio and television. She featured as an expert in the BBC2 drama-documentary series ‘Renaissance: the Blood and the Beauty’ broadcast in December 2024.
Her most recent five novels, set within the Italian Renaissance, weave cutting edge historical scholarship into fiction, have become international bestsellers and have been translated into thirty languages. (Photo: Author website)
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