Guido Reni: Beatrice Cenci, 1599
http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/s/sirani

Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Cenci, 1819: A manuscript was communicated to me during my travels in Italy, which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinctions of one of the noblest and richest families of that city...

This story was well known in Italy for 200 years and already had the status of legend. It exactly fit the Romantic sensibilities of 19th century England. The Parent-Child conflict is a recurring theme. Electra, Antigone, Œdipus, Lear, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Don Giovanni, A Touch of the Poet, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Forever Yours, Marie-Lou,

The Cenci had its first London performance in1922.

Mark Sandy, University of Durham
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1290
By focusing on the taboo subject of incest, in The Cenci, Shelley intensifies our sense of Beatrice’s tragic inability to treat those who perpetrate dire crimes against her with love, compassion, and forgiveness (as Prometheus does when he overcomes Jupiter in Prometheus Unbound). Unable ‘to convert the injurer from [her father’s] dark passions by peace and love’, as Shelley urges, Beatrice fatally commits herself to those ‘pernicious mistakes’ of [r]evenge, retaliation, [and] atonement’ (SPP, p. 240). Throughout the play, the pathos of Beatrice’s unbearable predicament is heightened by the ineffable nature of the sexual crime inflicted upon her, rendering her incapable of vocalising the nature of this crime through the language of patriarchy which dominates both Court and Church. Shelley presents Beatrice’s tragic dilemma in a manner that, simultaneously, invokes and refutes moral judgements from his audience, so that the play’s events, perpetually, occupy a territory beyond good and evil. The dramatist’s ability to communicate these complexities ‘to the sympathy of men’ in ‘language and action’ (SPP, p. 239) is, for Shelley, the hallmark of great Sophoclean and Shakespearean tragedy and the standard by which The Cenci should be measured as an exploration of ‘the most dark and secret caverns of the human heart’ (SPP, p. 239).

John Simeon: A Contemporaneous narrative of the trial and execution of the Cenci, 1822? Special collections.
http://dra.library.ubc.ca/MARION/AJL-8298

Stendhal: (Marie-Henri Beyle) The Cenci, 1837: http://www.angelfire.com/mn3/mixed_lit/stendhal_cenci.htm

A TRUE NARRATIVE

Of the deaths of Giacomo and Beatrice Cenci, and of Lucrecia Petroni Cenci, their stepmother, executed for the crime of parricide, on Saturday last, the llth of September, 1599, in the reign of our Holy Father the Pope, Clement VIII, Aldobrandini.

The execrable life consistently led by Francesco Cenci, a native of Rome and one of the wealthiest of our fellow citizens, has ended by leading him to disaster. He has brought to a precocious death his sons, stout hearted young fellows, and his daughter Beatrice, who, although she mounted the scaffold when barely sixteen years old (four days since), was reckoned neverthelcss one of the chief beauties of the States of the Church, if not the whole of Italy. The rumour has gone abroad that Signor Guido Reni, one of the pupils of that admirable school of Bologna, was pleased to paint the portrait of poor Beatrice, last Friday, that is to say on the day preceding her execution. If this great painter has performed this task as he has done in the case of the other paintings which he has executed in this capital, posterity will be able to form some idea of the beauty of this lovely girl. In order that it may also preserve some record of her unprecedented misfortunes, and of the astounding force with which this truly Roman nature was able to fight against them, I have decided to write down what I have learned as to the action which brought her to her death, and what I saw on the day of her glorious tragedy.

The people who have supplied me with my information were in a position which made them acquainted with the most secret details, such as are unknown in Rome even to-day, although for the last six weeks people have been speaking of nothing but the Cenci trial. I shall write with a certain freedom, knowing as I do that I shall be able to deposit my commentary in respectable archives from which it will certainly not be released until after my day. My one regret is that I must pronounce, but truth will have it so, against the innocence of this poor Beatrice Cenci, as greatly adored and respected by all that knew her as her horrible father was hated and execrated.
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... the three eldest, Giacomo, Cristoforo and Rocco, ... found a father more severe and rigid, more harsh than ever, who, for all his immense wealth, would neither clothe them nor give them the money necessary to purchase the cheapest forms of food. They were obliged to have recourse to the Pope, who forced Francesco Cenci to make them a small allowance. With this very modest provision they parted from their father.

Shortly afterwards, on account of some scandalous love affair, Francesco was put in prison for the third and last time; whereupon the three brothers begged an audience of our Holy Father the Pope now reigning, and jointly besought him to put to death Francesco Cenci their father, who, they said, was dishonouring their house. Clement VIII had a great mind to do so, but decided not to follow his first impulse, so as not to give satisfaction to these unnatural children, and expelled them ignominiously from his presence.

The father, as we have already said, came out of prison after paying a large sum of money to a powerful protector. It may be imagined that the strange action of his three elder sons was bound to increase still further the hatred that he felt for his children. He continually rained curses on them all, old and young, and every day would take a stick to his two poor daughters, who lived with him in his palazzo.

The eldest daughter, although closely watched, by dint of endless efforts managed to present a petition to the Pope; she implored His Holiness to give her in marriage or to place her in a convent. Clement VIII took pity on her distress, and married her to Carlo Gabrielli, of the noblest family of Gubbio; His Holiness obliged her father to give her an ample dowry.

Struck by this unexpected blow, Francesco Cenci shewed an intense rage, and to prevent Beatrice, when she grew older, from taking it into her head to follow her sister's example, confined her in one of the apartments of his huge palazzo. There, no one was allowed to set eyes on Beatrice, at that time barely fourteen years old, and already in the full splendour of her enchanting beauty. She had, above all, a gaiety, a candour and a comic spirit which I have never seen in anyone but her. Francesco Cenci carried her food to her himself. We may suppose that it was then [p. 181] that the monster fell in love with her, or pretended to fall in love, in order to torment his wretched daughter. He often spoke to her of the perfidious trick which her elder sister had played on him, and flying into a rage at the sound of his own voice, would end by showering blows on Beatrice.
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All this was not enough for him; he attempted with threats, and with the use of force, to outrage his own daughter Beatrice, who was already fully grown and beautiful; he was not ashamed to go and lie down in her bed, being himself completely naked. He walked about with her in the rooms of his palazzo, still stark naked; then he took her into his wife's bed, in order that, by the light of the lamps, poor Lucrezia might see what he was doing to Beatrice.

He taught the poor girl a frightful heresy, which I scarcely dare repeat, to wit that, when a father has carnal [p. 182] knowledge of his own daughter, the children born of the union are of necessity saints, and that all the greatest saints whom the Church venerates were born in this manner, that is to say, that their maternal grandfather was also their father.
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Beatrice, driven to desperation by the horrible things which she had to endure, summoned Marzio and Olimpio beneath the walls of the fortress. During the night, while her father slept, she conversed with them from one of the lower windows and threw down to them letters addressed to Monsignor Guerra. By means of these letters, it was arranged that Monsignor Guerra should promise Marzio and Olimpio a thousand piastres if they would take upon themselvcs the responsibility for putting Franccsco Cenci to death. A third of the sum was to be paid in Rome, before the deed, by Monsignor Guerra, and the other two-thirds by Lucrczia and Beatrice, when, the deed done, they should be in command of Cenci's strong-box.

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The two brothers, put to the torture, were far from imitating the magnanimity of the brigand Marzio; they were so pusillanimous as to confess everything. Signora Lucrezia Petroni was so habituated to the ease and comfort of a life of the greatest luxury, and besides was so stout in figure that she could not endure the question by the cord; she told everything that she knew.

But it was not so with Beatrice Cenci, a girl full of vivacity and courage. Neither the kind words nor the threats of the judge Moscati had any effect on her. She endured the torture of the cord without a moment's faltering and with perfect courage. Never once could the judge induce her to give an answer that compromised her in the slightest degree; indeed, by her quick-witted vivacity, she utterly confounded the famous Ulisse Moscati, the judge responsible for examining her. He was so much surprised by the conduct of the girl that he felt it his duty to make a full report to His Holiness Pope Clement VIII, whom God preserve.

His Holiness wished to see the documents and to study the case. He was afraid lest the judge Ulisse Moscati, so celebrated for his deep learning and the superior sagacity of his mind, might have been overpowered by Beatrice's beauty, and be helping her out in his examinations of her. The consequence was that His Holiness took the case out of his hands, and entrusted it to another asa a more severe judge. Indeed, this barbarian had the heart to subject without pity so lovely a body ad torturam capillorum (that is to say, questions were put to Beatrice Cenci while she was hanging by her hair).

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Antonio Bertoletti 1879: in Charles Nicholl: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n13/nich02_.html

'Beatrice Cenci mia figlia. Naque alla 6 di febraio 1577 di giorno di mercoledi alla ore 23, et e nata nella nostra casa.'

Item. I bequeath to Madonna Catarina de Santis, widow, 300 scudi in money, to be placed at interest, and the interest to be given in alms according to the instructions I have given her. If the said Madonna Catarina should die, this legacy is to be transferred to others, on condition that they use it for the same purpose, according to my intention, as long as the person to whom these alms are to be given remains alive.

in a ... codicil to the will, added by Beatrice on 7 September 1599, ... she increases the sum allotted to Catarina to 1000 scudi and specifies the purpose of the bequest as being 'the support of a certain poor boy [povero fanciullo], according to the instructions I have verbally given her'.

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Encyclopædia Brittanica, 1911: http://49.1911encyclopedia.org/C/CE/CENCI.htm

CENCI, BEATRICE (1577-1599), a Roman woman, famous for her tragic story; poetic fancy has woven a halo of romance about her, which modern historic research has to a large extent destroyed. Born at Rome, she was the daughter of Francesco Cenci (1549-1598), the bastard son of a priest, and a man of great wealth but dissolute habits and violent temper. He seems to have been guilty of various offences and to have got off with short terms of imprisonment by bribery; but the monstrous cruelty which popular tradition has attributed to him is purely legendary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:1911_Encyclopaedia_Britannica

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Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Cenci, 1819: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/FrankenDemo/PShelley/cencitp.html
                                       http://web.bilkent.edu.tr/Online/www.english.upenn.edu/jlynch/Frank/PShelley/cencitp.html

Camillo: The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent/.....a marble form/ A rite, a law, a custom: not a man.

Bernardo: That perfect mirror of pure innocence..../ Beatrice, Who made all lovely thou didst look upon....

Camillo: ...And [the Pope] replied "....Parricide grows so rife/ That soon for some just cause not doubt, the young/ Will strangle us all dozing in our chairs./ Authority, and power, and hoary hair/ Are crimes grown capital....

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Antonin Artaud 1935: The Cenci

Orsino: ...His Holiness laughed in my face.... Am I to set myself up against the natural authority of a father? Am I to enfeeble in this manner the principle of my own authority.....When justice flies out of the window, the victims of opression do well to show solidarity and defy the law.

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Moravia 1958: Beatrice Cenci

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George Elliott Clarke 1999: Beatrice Chancy

Lustra enters... At 30, she accepts that the genius of her culture is theft.

Peacock: Slavery satisfies our ordained world / Where wolves and blossoms co-exist.

Lustra: Beatrice, my chains are invisible, silent;/ But they weight me, they press me down.