Published in New Approaches in the Research on the Crown of Aragon

Keywords: 19th-c., Femme Fatale, Lucrezia Borgia, Pre-Raphaelite, Romanticism, Victorians.

With the success of the theatrical drama of Victor Hugo and Donizetti’s opera, the historical character of Lucrezia Borgia became a literary theme for artists of the nineteenth century. A beautiful woman, powerful and prepared, she met all the conditions for creators of different movements used her to embody the fears of the century. Even today, the figure of Lucrezia Borgia is determined and conditioned by the popularized image in the Eight hundred in painting presented as the femme fatale in the late fifteenth century was a angelicata donna. Despite the reaction of historians like Gilbert or Gregorovius, who try to reconstruct the Duchess of Ferrara with the authentic documents, Lucrezia Borgia will be too lush Mediterranean to Victorian morals.