Lucrezia Borgia’s golden locks - Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan

In a small display case, a treasure is preserved; a tangle of thin tress of hair forming a looped knot at one end: Lucrezia Borgia's golden locks.

The display case was created around 1926–1928.

Documents attest that as early as 1685, a lock of hair belonging to Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519), daughter of Rodrigo, later Pope Alexander VI, was preserved in the Ambrosiana. She married Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.

The lock of hair was kept together with nine letters, also housed in the Ambrosiana, which Lucrezia wrote to Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), a humanist cardinal and man of letters.

This lock of blonde hair became almost an object of devotion for Romantic figures of the 19th century. It was preserved as a kind of relic in a display case created by Alfredo Ravasco, one of the finest Milanese jewelers of the first half of the 19th century.

Two pendants featuring the heraldic emblems of the aristocratic families—Borgia (the bull) and d’Este (the eagle), are particularly noteworthy.

In the 19th century, it became a sort of “pagan relic,” attracting pilgrimages from Romantic poets and writers such as Byron and Stendhal.