MADDALENA

Step inside my historical novel, Maddalena, please, and travel back to sixteenth-century Rome. You’ll meet Alessandro, a prelate born into a life of enormous prestige and wealth but with few scruples―like some other men of God about whom we hear today. You’ll meet Alessandro’s handsome and colorful servant and painter, Bartholomaeus Spranger (Berti)―young, inexperienced, and yearning to succeed. And you’ll meet Monna Rebecca, Alessandro’s mistress― beautiful, intelligent, dedicated, and destined for an unimaginable future. The lives of Alessandro, Berti, and Monna Rebecca collide during the harshest days of the Catholic Inquisition, a time when the simplest transgressions could lead to horrific punishments, as Monna Rebecca fatefully discovers.

Maddalena is the story of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese’s love for a simple Jewish apothecary. The Cardinal’s passion costs him both the papal chair and the woman he so desires. Of the wrong class, religion, and color, Rebecca, the converted Maddalena, becomes a pawn in the hands of the Inquisition. The Cardinal’s moral struggle reflects that of a Roman Catholic Church plagued to the present by corruption, nepotism, simony, and sodomy, while the heroine, in her strength and love for Alessandro, triumphs above all—like her biblical ancestor, St. Mary Magdalen.

The initial inspiration for writing Maddalena was a painting, Titian’s nude Penitent Magdalen, which once belonged to the Duke of Urbino, Alessandro Farnese's brother-in-law, and today hangs in the Pitti Palace in Florence. Who was the beautiful young Magdalen in the painting—was she real? And what was her relationship to the once-exalted Cardinal Farnese?

Although I’d asked myself these questions many times during my visits to Florence, I never entertained the notion of using fiction to find a satisfying answer. Then, ten years ago, I lived in Rome and conducted research into the lives of sixteenth-century north-European painters who worked there. Each night as I walked the Spanish Steps from the Herziana Library and into the old city I began sensing the presence of those who had traversed the very same streets four centuries earlier. At first spooky, the feeling gave way to a clear image of Michelangelo’s Rome, one filled with people walking the old cobblestones, making their way through muddy alleys and bypassing grand palaces and tall church domes. Soon my vision gave way to a plot, and characters began emerging in words and illustrations—the young beauty in Titian’s painting, Alessandro Farnese, Bartholomaeus Spranger, the Cardinal’s artist, and a host of other historical and fictional figures.

My questions about the mysterious subject of Titian’s Penitent Magdalen are now answered. But so many others have arisen about the life and times of Bartholomaeus Spranger and his contemporaries that my initial work, Maddalena, has evolved into a trilogy that extends through the Thirty Years War. In the next volumes, you’ll meet more of my friends and their foes through words and images of unprecedented splendor and beauty, shocking intrigue, and unspeakable cruelty of war so long and so dreadful that it pales current events. Ultimately, these books will bring to life new powerful characters. The heroes will remain with you forever.

In Praise of Maddalena

"Siroka does a first-rate job crystallizing the greed, betrayal, and passion of Renaisance Rome."- Historical Novels Review

“Within a few pages the reader is involved in a beautiful, credible love story and experiences Italy of 500 years ago as if it were yesterday.” - Philip O’Connor, award-winning author; chair, Pulitzer Prize Committee for fiction 1994.

"The invention of Maddalena is a very original and audacious idea. The story is adventurous and modern, but the plot is clear, and it is a real pleasure to follow the action in the very familiar streets of Rome... [and] even to Florence." - Nicole Dacos Crifó, Professor, Université Libre, Brussels

"The author deftly explores the cardinal’s illicit love for Maddalena and, within a few pages, you too will want to explore it with her."- Bookviews

"An engaging and thoroughly entertaining read. . . . With meticulous attention to historical detail that rises to the level of true scholarship, and with her undeniable talent for originality and storytelling, Eva Jana Siroka's Maddalena will leave her readers looking eagerly toward her next foray into fiction. . . ." - Midwest Book Review