Maria Bellonci

Maria Villavecchia Bellonci (30 November 1902 – 13 May 1986) was an Italian writer, historian and journalist, known especially for her biography of Lucrezia Borgia.

Her father, Gerolamo Vittorio Villavecchia, was a professor of chemistry, and came from an aristocratic Piedmontese family, while her mother, Felicita Bellucci, came from Umbria.

[2] Bellonci's literary debut was in 1939 with the acclaimed biography of Lucrezia Borgia, published in Italian by Mondadori, and translated into twelve languages.

[3] This and her subsequent works on historical subjects, based on rich and detailed research of extant primary documents, were lauded for their vivid reconstructions and psychological motivations of their characters from which the public obtained a credible picture of history stripped of legends and accretions over the centuries.

For the first time, in the compendium Tu vipera gentile, she introduced fictional characters in order to propel the historical narrative.

Similarly, her final novel Rinascimento Privato (Private Renaissance) which came out in 1985, was written in the first person by the protagonist Isabella d'Este; she added fictional characters to describe historical events, in essence creating a metahistorical novel.