How did the sister of Machiavelli’s prince get so wealthy during an economic downturn? In popular legend, Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara (1480- 1519), stands falsely accused of poisoning her second husband. Victor Hugo portrayed her in thinly veiled fiction as a tragic femme fatale. Buffalo Bill named his gun after her. But new research by USC historian Diane Yvonne Ghirardo reveals that the only sister of Machiavelli’s Prince was less interested in political intrigue than in running a business, undertaking massive land development projects that ‘stand alone in the panorama of early sixteenth-century projects, not only those initiated by women,’ Ghirardo says. Forced by an economic downturn to cut expenses and become an entrepreneur, the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI would control between 30,000 and 50,000 acres in northern Italy within six years. ‘This is a classic case of seeing only what you’re looking for and not getting the whole picture,’ Ghirardo says of the centuries-old mystery surrounding how Lucrezia accumulated her vast personal wealth. Ghirardo notes that historians have long dismissed Lucrezia as stupid because no record exists of her collecting art or antiquities. ‘The information was there in the archives, but […]