Why Catherine de Medici Is a Fitting Icon for Modern Times

Dazzling the world with lavish expenditure and artfully crafted public image may be a mainstay of our TikTok times, but it is not a new secret to success. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Medici family used extravagant patronage to gain and keep political power. Small wonder, then, that two of this fall’s guiltiest pleasures, the Starz series The Serpent Queen and Maggie O’Farrell’s novel , show Medici women—­Catherine de’ Medici, the consort of one 16th-century French king and the mother of three more, and Lucrezia de’ Medici, Duchess of Ferrara, whose husband was thought to have murdered her… Read Full Article