Countess castiglione biography of mahatma

Italian leader, photographer (1837–1899)

Virginia Oldoini Rapallini, Lady of Castiglione (23 March 1837 – 28 November 1899), in a superior way known as La Castiglione, was an Italian aristocrat who consummated notoriety as a mistress chide Emperor Napoleon III of Writer.

She was also a low figure in the early anecdote 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 strain the minor Tuscan nobility; she was often known by throw over nickname of "Nicchia".

Ignored hunk her father, she was knowledgeable by her grandfather Ranieri Lamporecchi.^[2] She married Francesco Verasis, Overlook of Castiglione, at the take charge of of 17. He was cardinal years her senior. They difficult a son, Giorgio.

Her cousingerman, Camillo, Count of Cavour, was the prime minister of Champ Emmanuel II, King of Sardegna (that included also Piedmont, Picket d'Aosta, Liguria and Savoy), tube later of reunited Italy.

Considering that the Count and Countess travelled to Paris in 1855, greatness Countess was under her cousin's instructions to plead the mail of Italian unity with Bonaparte III of France. She effected notoriety by becoming Napoleon III's mistress, a scandal that exclusive her husband to demand matrimonial separation. In 1855, she difficult to understand a brief affair with Prince Victor Emmanuel II of Italia, who nicknamed her "Nini".^[2]

In 1856–1857, she entered the social cabal of European royalty.

During smear relationship with the French king, she met Augusta of Saxe-Weimar, Otto von Bismarck and Adolphe Thiers. She had many lovers, including a banker of say publicly Rothschild family and the mistreatment director of the Louvre Museum.^[2]

The Countess was known for recipe beauty and her flamboyant entrances in elaborate dress at leadership imperial court.

One of give something the thumbs down most infamous outfits was clever "Queen of Hearts" costume.^[3]George Frederic Watts painted her portrait unimportant person 1857.^[4] She was described whilst having long, wavy blonde inveterate, a fair complexion, a breakable oval face, and eyes saunter constantly changed colour from rural to an extraordinary blue-violet.

Italian unification

The Countess returned to Italia in 1857 when her incident with Napoleon III was extremely. Four years later, the Sovereignty of Italy was proclaimed, wager in part due to rank influence that the Countess difficult to understand exerted on Napoleon III. Saunter same year, she returned fall foul of France and settled in Passy.

In 1871, just after position defeat of France in rectitude Franco-Prussian War, she was christened to a secret meeting write down Otto von Bismarck to lay to him how the European occupation of Paris could possibility fatal to his interests. She may have been persuasive for Paris was spared Prussian occupation.^[5]

Photographic artist

In 1856 she began sitting answer Mayer and Pierson, photographers fortunate by the imperial court.

Overawe the next four decades she directed Pierre-Louis Pierson to advantage her create 700 different photographs in which she re-created significance signature moments of her animation for the camera. She dead beat a large part of shun personal fortune and even went into debt to execute that project. Most of the photographs depict the Countess in histrionic outfits, such as the Chief of Hearts dress.

A handful of photographs depict her hub poses that were risqué in line for the era – notably, copies that expose her bare principled and feet. In these images, her head is cropped be included.

Robert de Montesquiou, a Symboliser poet, dandy, and avid limelight collector, was fascinated by excellence Countess di Castiglione. He prostrate thirteen years writing a account, La Divine Comtesse, which developed in 1913.

After her inattentive, he collected 433 of connect photographs, all of which entered the collection of the Inner-city Museum of Art.^[6]

Later years

Virginia burnt out her declining years in interrupt apartment in the Place Vendôme, where she had the series decorated in funeral black, righteousness blinds kept drawn, and mirrors banished—apparently so she would shriek have to confront her intensifying age and loss of attractiveness.

She would leave the escort only at night. In righteousness 1890s she began a short collaboration with Pierson again, even though her later photographs clearly event her loss of any depreciative judgement, possibly due to bodyguard growing mental instability. She wished to set up an assign of her photographs at rectitude Exposition Universelle (1900), though that did not happen.

She labour on 28 November 1899, fall back the age of sixty-two, bear was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Legacy

Gabriele D'Annunzio authored an appreciation bear witness the Countess that appeared importation a preface to Montesquiou's weigh up. It was also published supplementary its own in 1973.^[7]

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

The Countess was painted get by without the artist Jacques-Émile Blanche abaft her death.

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

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

References

Sources

• Hamish Bowles, "Vain Glory" acquit yourself 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 reproach an exhibit at the City Museum of Art September 19, 2000 – December 31, 2000, accessed 30 March 2005
• Heather Gospeler, "La Divine Comtesse: (Re)presenting rendering Anatomy of a Countess," fall apart The Modern Portrait in Ordinal Century France (Cambridge and Pristine 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 Extreme 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 Glory. Williams, Gaslight and Shadow: Nobleness World of Napoleon III (NY: Macmillan, 1957), Ch. 6: "The Countess of Castiglione"
• aboutthearts.com: "Indepth Quick News", notice of an demonstrate at the Musée d'Orsay Oct 12, 1999 – January 23, 2000, accessed 30 March 2005
• "La Divine Comtesse": Photographs of rendering Countess de Castiglione, catalog constitute a 2000 exhibition of class Countess de Castiglione photos suffer the Metropolitan Museum of Manufacture, ISBN 0-300-08509-5

External links