My Last Duchess
A duke draws back the curtain on a portrait of his previous wife for an envoy waiting on the stairs, and explains what it was about her — a blush, thanks given too freely, a smile for everyone alike — that he could never bring himself to stoop to correct. The business being settled downstairs is his next marriage, and the bronze Neptune he stops to admire on the way down was cast for him alone. Browning set it at Ferrara and drew loosely on Alfonso II d'Este, whose first duchess died at seventeen amid rumours of poison.
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Closest analogues
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