The Mantuan court and its sumptuous world give life in Segreti dei Gonzaga to one of Maria Bellonci‘s most bitter and secretly cruel tales: cruelty of dynastic reason; cruelty, morbid and unbridled, of sex and love; cruelty of pomp and wealth, powerless against the laws of nature and life.
The story of Vincenzo Gonzaga, ruler of Mantua, in the last quarter of the XVI century. A dramatic parable about power, rooted in politics and set within the Mantuan court and its sumptuous world. It’s divided in three parts: Il duca nel labirinto, on Vincenzo I of Gonzaga; Isabella fra i Gonzaga, on Marquise Isabella d’Este; Ritratto di famiglia, inspired by Mantegna’s frescoes in the bridal chamber in Mantua.
The vocation of the storyteller, alternating with that of the historian, often takes the upper hand in Maria Bellonci, favouring psychological probing, the search for a private truth, of which the document is merely the practical solicitation that gives rise to the chain reactions of a fantastic and timeless ‘memory’.