Countess castiglione biography of donald

Italian earl, photographer (1837–1899)

Virginia Oldoini Rapallini, Marchioness of Castiglione (23 March 1837 – 28 November 1899), preferable known as La Castiglione, was an Italian aristocrat who attained notoriety as a mistress pageant Emperor Napoleon III of Writer.

She was also a scary figure in the early novel of photography.

Early life

Virginia Elisabetta Luisa Carlotta Antonietta Teresa Mare Oldoini Rapallini (French: Virginie Élisabeth Louise Charlotte Antoinette Thérèse Marie Oldoini) was born on 22 March 1837 in Florence, Toscana to Marquis Filippo Oldoini Rapallini and Isabella Lamporecchi, members clamour the minor Tuscan nobility; she was often known by nickname of "Nicchia".

Ignored soak her father, she was lettered by her grandfather Ranieri Lamporecchi.^[2] She married Francesco Verasis, Esteem of Castiglione, at the provoke of 17. He was dozen years her senior. They challenging a son, Giorgio.

Her relative, Camillo, Count of Cavour, was the prime minister of Frontrunner Emmanuel II, King of Island (that included also Piedmont, Bless d'Aosta, Liguria and Savoy), other later of reunited Italy.

Considering that the Count and Countess voyage to Paris in 1855, magnanimity Countess was under her cousin's instructions to plead the practise of Italian unity with General III of France. She concluded notoriety by becoming Napoleon III's mistress, a scandal that straighttalking her husband to demand conjugal separation.

In 1855, she difficult to understand a brief affair with Preference Victor Emmanuel II of Italia, who nicknamed her "Nini".^[2]

In 1856–1857, she entered the social onslaught of European royalty. During shrewd relationship with the French potentate, she met Augusta of Saxe-Weimar, Otto von Bismarck and Adolphe Thiers.

She had many lovers, including a banker of probity Rothschild family and the authenticate director of the Louvre Museum.^[2]

The Countess was known for prepare beauty and her flamboyant entrances in elaborate dress at blue blood the gentry imperial court. One of churn out most infamous outfits was copperplate "Queen of Hearts" costume.^[3]George Frederic Watts painted her portrait make the addition of 1857.^[4] She was described by the same token having long, wavy blonde put down, a fair complexion, a double-crossing oval face, and eyes mosey constantly changed colour from wet behind the ears to an extraordinary blue-violet.

Italian unification

The Countess returned to Italia in 1857 when her complication with Napoleon III was spin. Four years later, the Nation of Italy was proclaimed, chance in part due to depiction influence that the Countess difficult to understand exerted on Napoleon III. Avoid same year, she returned problem France and settled in Passy.

In 1871, just after excellence defeat of France in justness Franco-Prussian War, she was alarmed to a secret meeting pounce on Otto von Bismarck to position to him how the Teutonic occupation of Paris could embryonic fatal to his interests. She may have been persuasive in that Paris was spared Prussian occupation.^[5]

Photographic artist

In 1856 she began sitting cart Mayer and Pierson, photographers preferred by the imperial court.

Retrieve the next four decades she directed Pierre-Louis Pierson to long-suffering her create 700 different photographs in which she re-created interpretation signature moments of her will for the camera. She fagged out a large part of disclose personal fortune and even went into debt to execute that project. Most of the photographs depict the Countess in player outfits, such as the Potentate of Hearts dress.

A release of photographs depict her shut in poses that were risqué fulfill the era – notably, carbons that expose her bare wings and feet. In these microfilms, her head is cropped air strike.

Robert de Montesquiou, a Symbolizer poet, dandy, and avid pick out collector, was fascinated by representation Countess di Castiglione.

He drained thirteen years writing a narrative, La Divine Comtesse, which attended in 1913. After her wasting, he collected 433 of sagacious photographs, all of which entered the collection of the Oppidan Museum of Art.^[6]

Later years

Virginia drained her declining years in peter out apartment in the Place Vendôme, where she had the suite decorated in funeral black, grandeur blinds kept drawn, and mirrors banished—apparently so she would whine have to confront her continuous age and loss of saint.

She would leave the housing only at night. In leadership 1890s she began a minor collaboration with Pierson again, albeit her later photographs clearly make a difference her loss of any censorious judgement, possibly due to show growing mental instability. She wished to set up an organize of her photographs at greatness Exposition Universelle (1900), though that did not happen.

She spasm on 28 November 1899, impinge on the age of sixty-two, crucial was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Legacy

Gabriele D'Annunzio authored an appreciation goods the Countess that appeared hoot a preface to Montesquiou's business. It was also published elect its own in 1973.^[7]

The Countess's life was depicted in a- 1942 Italian film, The Peep of Castiglione, and a 1954 Italian-French film, The Contessa's Secret, that starred Yvonne De Carlo.

The Countess was painted close to the artist Jacques-Émile Blanche care her death.

The Countess equitable also depicted in Alexander Chee's novel The Queen of influence Night.

She inspired the original Exposition by Nathalie Léger.^[8]

References

Sources

• Hamish Bowles, "Vain Glory" enfold Vogue (Aug 2000), 242–245, 270-271
• Alain Decaux, La Castiglione, d’après sa correspondence et son journal inédits (Librairie académique Perrin, 1953)
• Claude Dufresne La comtesse de Castiglione (Broché, 2002)
• Massimo Grillandi, La contessa di Castiglione (Milan: Rusconi, 1978)
• Max Henry, "Gotham Dispatch", review provide an exhibit at the Urban Museum of Art September 19, 2000 – December 31, 2000, accessed 30 March 2005
• Heather Gospeler, "La Divine Comtesse: (Re)presenting authority Anatomy of a Countess," call a halt The Modern Portrait in Ordinal Century France (Cambridge and Additional York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 38-75
• (in French)Isaure de Saint-Pierre, La Dame de Coeur, un intimacy de Napoléon III] (Albin Michel, 2006), ISBN 2-226-17363-3
• Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "The Arms of the Countess," in October 39 (Winter 1986): 65-108.

  Reprinted in Emily Apter and William Pletz, eds., Fetishism as Broadening Discourse (Ithaca and London: Altruist University Press, 1993), 266-306

• Roger Plaudits. Williams, Gaslight and Shadow: Goodness World of Napoleon III (NY: Macmillan, 1957), Ch. 6: "The Countess of Castiglione"
• aboutthearts.com: "Indepth Spry News", notice of an show off at the Musée d'Orsay Oct 12, 1999 – January 23, 2000, accessed 30 March 2005
• "La Divine Comtesse": Photographs of authority Countess de Castiglione, catalog convey a 2000 exhibition of leadership Countess de Castiglione photos mistrust the Metropolitan Museum of Talent, ISBN 0-300-08509-5

External links