Marchesa Luisa Casati

An inspiringly decadent true tale of a bizarre Italian aristocrat. Pet cheetahs, séances and dresses made from lightbulbs, the heiress, socialite and artist's muse Marchesa Luisa Casati led a life every bit as unusual as her outfits.

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Hello, I was wondering where you did find the information for your post abour the red Boldini painting, which is believed to be Luisa Casati. "Giovanni Boldini, Reclining Nude. The model is said to be Marchesa Luisa Casati, 1930.Oil on canvas, 74 x 55.3 cm.". Kind Regards Susi

Dear Susi. Sorry late reply. Wiki is one:

File:Boldini - Reclining Nude.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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It's Marchesa Luisa Casati's 8 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

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Marchesa Luisa Casati, 1923. Found in the collection of Espacio Cultural Ignacio Zuloaga (Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta (Spanish, 1870-1945),

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Casati set about transforming herself into the world's most amazing woman. She succeeded brilliantly. Weird and wonderful...both scary and hypnotic.

– Colin McDowell, Sunday Times of London

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1922 Man Ray, Marchesa Luisa Casati. 

"In 1922, Luisa visited a young and still unknown photographer named Man Ray. In his autobiography, the American tells the story of the photo that became the most famous of all the representations of the Marchioness Casati (...) "I drew a few where one could distinguish a semblance of face; On one of the negatives, we saw three pairs of eyes. It could have been mistaken for a surreal version of the Medusa. It was precisely this photo that delighted her: I had made a portrait of her soul, she said, and she ordered dozens of copies from me. I wish my other clients had been so easy to please. The photo of the marquise went around Paris. Figures from the most closed circles began to come, all expecting miracles. I had to leave my hotel room and find a real studio. » (x)

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Marchesa Luisa Casati spent recklessly and, beyond the sums she lavished on her wardrobe, she hosted parties of astounding extravagance. Many were held at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, but the one that entered Venetian folklore was the 18th-century costume ball for which Luisa took over the whole of Piazza San Marco, hiring 200 black servants, all dressed by Leon Bakst, to hold back the watching public.

Christie’s

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Master of Sketches: Design sketch by Karl Lagerfeld. To reinvent Marchesa Luisa Casati, the designer channelled her idiosyncratic spirit in a series of sketches and photographs of Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue: 

“She has the same bone structure and wildly daring fashion sense,” Lagerfeld says. “She plays a modern Casati, but the drama of Casati was that she was not playing.”

Karl Lagerfelds sketch of  Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue in an evening dress by Gucci.

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"The Marchesa Luisa Casati was immensely rich and almost equally strange.  She gave fantastic dressing-up parties in her Venetian palazzo (now the Guggenheim Museum) and posed for portraits by Boldoni and Man Ray.  She didn’t like sex much, but she and d’Annunzio were partners in making spectacles of themselves.  He hung the bushes in her garden with flowers made of Murano glass.  She wrote to him ‘the glass-maker has given me two large green eyes as beautiful as the stars, do you want them?’ He said she was: The only woman who ever astonished me."

Words by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, author of The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War.

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George Lepape, Vogue Cover of a woman eating. Marquise Marchioness Casati (Marchesa Luisa Casati), Palais Rose, Mode d'Automne, Chapeaux et Tissus Nouveaux. August 15 1927. 

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1965 Vivien Leigh (52) as Contessa Sanziani in the play La Contessa. 

The Contessa of the title was actually based on a real person, the eccentric Marchesa Luisa Casati, one of the most notorious women of the 20’s, who scandalized polite society with her desire to be “a living work of art”; which once manifested itself in a dress made of illuminated lightbulbs. 

The play was financed by a film company that hoped a success on the stage would lead to a film, but sadly after a try out in Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester the play folded without ever coming to London. Perhaps audiences were not yet ready to accept Vivien in a character role that played down her looks; because whilst the Marchesa Luisa Casati had been a glamourous figure in her youth, immortalized on canvas by Boldini, the play takes place in her twilight years, when aged 71 she was broke, washed up and living in London. 

Even Vivien admitted “If I appeared in a flashback as the beauty the Marchesa Luisa Casati was supposed to have been, I think we would have had a success.” But the decision to play an older woman was a conscious one, and she saw the play as a “bridge to parts where I don’t have to be a beautiful woman. I thought it would make me acceptable as an actress that didn’t have to be cast that way anymore.”

Play: La Contessa. Role: Contessa Sanziani. Playwright: Paul Osborn from the novel by Maurice Druon. Theatre: previews in Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester. Opening Night: 6 April 1965. 

Photo: Rita Maylon collection Vivien Leigh Circle Archive THM/530 – V&A Museum.

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Paul Cesar Helleu, and Marchesa Luisa Casati in Indo-Persane costume designed by Leon Bakst in the garden of Palazzo Fortuny (Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei), Photo by Mariano Fortuny, September 1913.

About Palazzo Fortuny:

Situated in the Gothic Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei in Campo San Beneto; the building was transformed by Mariano Fortuny into his own photography, set-design, stagecraft, fabric-creation and painting atelier: the building still testify to all of these activities, with various art and tapestries collections. The museum also hosts temporary art exhibitions, all of which closely connected to the spirit of its founder.

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Credit: Alamy

The secret life of Venice

Favourite spot

Home - the Palazzo Papadopoli. We have always lived here, since we were born. We live on the top floor, and the rest of the palace is now the Aman hotel.

We'd rather not tell you about...

...Trattoria Antiche Carampane, which serves the absolute best granseola tagliolini (spider-crab pasta).

Top tip

Naranzaria, a tiny osteria next to the Rialto bridge, is a brilliant stop for an Aperol Spritz

Best buys

Our father's [Count Giberto's] handmade Murano glasses. Or our slippers, of course...(x)

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“Quite suddenly and simply by chance, I once met a bizarre lady while taking tea with some friends in London. She arrived wearing black velvet from head to foot, her mouth painted blood red, and carrying a very tall umbrella with a decorated handle. And, you must understand, this ensemble was being worn in the middle of the day. This picturesque ruin of a woman was very tall and thin, and gave the impression of formidable strength. It was then I was introduced to the Marchesa Luisa Casati for the first and last time. She had made her entrance into that room looking wonderful and saying very little. She wasn’t beautiful-she was spectacular. Here was a woman possessing a presence one would never forget.” - Quentin Crisp

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2003 Karl Lagerfeld, Carine Roitfeld as Marchesa Luisa Casati. Roitfeld in a slashed mink bolero by Rick Owens for Revillon over a brocaded top by Tom Ford for YSL. Costume jewelry by Buccellati; pearls by Chanel.

Tribute to Marchesa Luisa Casati.

“Her contemporaries couldn’t decide if she was a vampire, a bird of paradise, an androgyne, a goddess, an enigma, or a common lunatic. Her clothes were esoteric and memorable––i.e., the suit of armor pierced with hundreds of electric arrows; the iridescent necklace of live snakes; the headdress of peacock tail feathers accessorized with chicken’s blood. When she really wanted to outdo herself, she wore nothing…Venetians were regularly treated to Casati strolling through St. Mark’s Square perfectly nude beneath a fur coat, accompanied by two cheetahs.” (x)

The New Yorker, September 22, 2003, p. 172.

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Mario Natale Biazzi, portrait of Marchesa Luisa Casati, s.d. Olio su tela, 43,40 x 41,40 cm.

Collezione Paolo Schmidlin. 

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1900 Carlo Bugatti, Bench, with painted inscription Casati (Marchesa Luisa Casati). A stained wood, vellum, copper with pewter and brass inlay, and silk bench.

Provenance: Marquise Luisa Casati (Marchesa Luisa Casati).  

Sotheby’s

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Tall and gaunt with heavily made-up eyes, Marchesa Luisa Casati represented a past age of splendour when a few beautiful and wealthy women adopted an almost brutally individualistic way of living and presenting themselfes to the public.

Elsa Schiaparell