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Rating: I have always enjoyed tales of the fantastic, a genre that includes very diverse narratives, such as the chivalric romance, fairy tales, and unsettling horror stories like those of Poe and Lovecraft.
This "fantastic" story was written in the late 1800s by Vernon Lee, known in real life as Violet Page, an English writer residing in Italy, specifically in Florence, where she was inspired by this painting depicting a mysterious lady with a magnetic and melancholic gaze that makes the protagonist of the story fall in love.
In short, the Polish historical protagonist, who adores Italy, lands in Urbania, bored with village life. He is struck by the painting and begins to research the Lady who lived in the past and falls in love with her! He discovers she was a kind of Lucrezia Borgia—beautiful, tough, and a troublemaker—and amidst visions, ghosts, nocturnal tours, and musings dedicated to her, he finds himself in a whirlwind that leads him to madness.
The story weaves historical truth and invention smoothly and keeps you magnetized until the end. The writer skillfully maintains the circularity of the story—life, love, death, and again love, life, death—like the motto impressed on the protagonist's necklace: Amour Dure, Dure Amour (hard is the love that lasts).
I adore this story as much as I adore the Marche region where it is set, and in particular Urbania, which I recommend visiting, if only for the Church of the Dead where there are some truly frightening real mummies.
I recommend visiting in the autumn, dining in a local trattoria with half a liter of red wine. It would be better to smoke a little of some psychotropic substances (always with respect for others and oneself) and wander at night on foot through the streets of the town as the protagonist Spiridione did, with the music of Dead Can Dance in your headphones, hoping to encounter the Lady who seems to have made the unfortunate fall in love with a single glance...
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