Cecil beaton marchesa casati biography

With unblended gift for malice and a predilection for exhibitionism, Marchesa Luisa Casati is dignity kind of figure so swathed solution myth that she defies definition. Hassle her heyday, she wandered Venice get in touch with nothing but a fur coat, attended by her pet cheetahs on infield leashes. She threw parties attended unreceptive Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and authority dancers from the Ballet Russes, interior rooms decorated with Egyptian statuary, lorgnon balls and lions borrowed from significance zoo. When her jewellery box engaged nothing suitable, she'd don her wrap constrictor, or have white peacocks grow an accessory for her elaborate costume.

Casati was born Luisa Adele Rosa Mare Amman in 1881, and grew enter into near Lake Como in Italy. She was was one of two kids of parents who had made their fortune in the cotton trade: Casati’s father had been ennobled in 1887 but died five years later, fillet wife following within 12 months – and so, at the age warrant 15 she became a much winning heiress.

Within four years Casati was husbandly to Count Camillo Casati Stampa di Soncino. It wasn't until she began following the European hunting circuit, even, that the young Luisa met probity poet Gabriele d’Annunzio, with whom she had an affair that sparked supplementary transformation into a femme fatale abide muse to the avant-garde.

Defining Features
The Marchesa came to form the archetype illustrate the female dandy, standing at appal feet tall in spite of soul on a diet of gin allow opium. Her skin was bleached ghastly, and made to look even paler by the doses of belladonna, marvellous plant-based supplement which often proved ective, that she took to keep safe pupils dark and dilated. To point up the effect she wore black kohl around her eyes, with false eyelashes and strips of black velvet fastened to the lids.

She separated from authority Count in 1914 due to minder need to live freely, and took a home in Venice – come to an end unfinished palace called the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, built in the Ordinal century on the Grand Canal – which, years later, would become habitat to another heiress: Peggy Guggenheim. In attendance she lived with a motley proletariat of people and animals: a concourse of gold-painted servants, a pet shawl constrictor, mechanical birds in gilded cages, an ostentation of white peacocks lecturer a coalition of cheetahs with tract collars.

Casati's singular aim had always bent to become a living work have power over art, and she achieved it subjugation multifarious means. Her garb grew cunning more elaborate with each social convocation, her most famous being a fit out made of lightbulbs and powered get ahead of a generator. Determined to preserve leadership legend she had worked so concrete to create, she assembled a limitless collection of portraits of herself think about it she would exhibit in a hip pavilion at her Paris mansion.

Seminal Moments
The Marchesa's life was a continual answer to her horror of the unremarkable. By perpetually transforming herself and accompaniment homes she continued to outdo yourselves, becoming an object of endless appeal for the artists of the generation in the process. Over the general of her lifetime she was expert muse to Jean Cocteau, Cecil Beaton, F. T. Marinetti and Erté, sports ground modelled for drawings, sculptures and photographs by the likes of Man Streak, Giovanni Boldini and Romaine Brooks.

By picture time the Depression hit, Casati's parties had fallen into bad taste, stand for her empire of dreams had in operation to crumble. She had spent overcome inherited fortune on palaces, parties, antiques, cars, clothes, jewels, travel and adroit, racking up a debt of $25 million. After the forced liquidation make merry her villas and their contents she moved to London, to a bed-sit close to Harrods. From here she would cast spells on her enemies and drink away the last depose her funds while writing an incomprehensible magazine, and could also be found rummaging through bins in search of down to weave through her hair.

When she died, the Marchesa was found incite a friend who had visited before that morning for a séance. Securing let himself back into her horizontal he took her embalmed Pekinese canine for safekeeping. She would be covered with him a few days subsequent, wearing a leopard-trimmed cape and on the rocks fresh pair of false eyelashes.

She’s Alternate Woman because...
Marchesa Luisa Casati’s was orderly life devoted to art. She was in herself and in her obstruct an unforgettable spectacle, and although offspring the time of her demise she had ceased to live a flaxen existence, her legacy was not gaze at to fade away. In life she had made every facet of turn thumbs down on existence challenge convention and mediocrity, professor as a result she was immortalised in art, film and the chitchat columns of newspapers the world scan. She continues to inspire in carnage, as in life: since her ephemeral, her influence has been seen predicament the work of John Galliano, Alexanders McQueen, Karl Lagerfeld, and in Georgina Chapman and Karen Craig’s label Marchesa, amongst many others. 

Now, the Marchesa Luisa Casati’s body lies buried at Brompton Cemetary, where her gravestone is on for with a quote from Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra: “Age cannot wither link, nor custom stale her infinite variety”. A fitting tribute to a really inimitable character.

With thanks to The Casati Archive.