September 13, 2017 • 36 mins
While many have admired heiress Casati over the years for her life led entirely based on her aesthetics, when you examine her biography, you find a woman who was incredibly selfish and was even described by close friends as megalomaniacal.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody. Before we get started today, we want to
make sure everyone knows about our upcoming live shows. First up,
Holly will be at Salt Lake Comic Con September one, three.
I won't be able to make it to that one,
so past guest and friend of the show, Brian Young
will be talking with her about laun Cheney. Then on
(00:23):
October six pm, we will be appearing as part of
New York Comic Con Presents and we'll be talking about
the first comic book. You can find out more information
on all of this ticket links everything like that if
you go to Missed in History dot com and click
the link that says live shows. Welcome to Steph you
(00:45):
missed in History class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frying and I'm
Tracy V. Wilson, and today we're doing a podcast on
one of those people that come up in history who's
kind of larger than life. I'm actually shocked that a
(01:06):
lot of people don't know who she is, um just
because she was really like h tastemaker as well as
being the source of much gossip and discussion in her time.
She's not she's not a name that I recognized when
you sent the outline over. But if so as I
saw a picture, I would that person. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(01:30):
She is really unique in that while many people admired
her over the years for her life, which was led
entirely based on her aesthetics and this idea of creating oneself,
when you really start to examine her biography and look
at her life story, you also find a woman who
was incredibly selfish, and she was even described by close
friends as megalomaniacal, so clearly a very flawed person. So
(01:54):
I think that's why it is so startling to me
that she is so lauded as this amazing icon of style,
when the same people who do that are like, oh, yes,
but she was in many ways terrible. But even when
taking into account her really irresponsible and utterly self centered behavior,
it is also easy in some ways to see how
she charmed European high society in the early nineteen hundreds
(02:17):
simply by being such an outlandish creature and really something
of a caricature of her own design. And this very
complex woman that we're talking about today is Marquesa Louisa Casati.
She was born Louisa Adele Rosa Maria Aman on January
one and Milan, Italy. Her parents were Alberto Aman and
(02:38):
Lucia Bressi. The family was quite wealthy thanks to a
successful cotton mill, and Alberto was granted the title of
count by Italy's King Umberto the First. As a child,
Luisa was interested in art. She taught herself how to draw,
first copying images that she had seen in print and
then applying her skill to creating portrait of her family.
(03:01):
Luisa was considered a lot less attractive than her older
sister Francesca, and living a rather isolated life. As a
child of wealth, she was rather shy. In April of
eighteen ninety four, Count Amman and his wife were traveling
in Florence for business, and so they didn't have their
daughters with them on the trip, and the Countess, who
(03:22):
was only thirty seven at the time, became quite ill
suddenly and she died, although it is still unknown what
exactly caused her illness. And in the two years following
Luccia's death, Alberto tried to raise his daughters, but his
business really required more and more of his time, and
keep in mind also he was grieving his wife at
this point Uh. He died on July eleven, two years
(03:45):
after his wife, leaving his then teenage daughters with an
immense fortune. The girls lived with their paternal uncle, Eduardo
Ahman and his wife Fanny for a while after their
father's death, but naturally they were restless teenagers. They were
eager to engage with the modern world, and their new
home was in a small community that was about twenty
(04:06):
five miles away from Milan. Yeah, they were very restless.
They wanted to go to the city all the time,
which is something that they had done with their mother
a lot. So there's that two factor in as well. Uh.
And eventually in nineteen hundred, Luisa made her debut and
soon after, on June twenty two of that same year,
she married Camilo Casati Stampa Diconcino, three years her senior,
(04:30):
and she became a Marquesa in the process. And this
match was really a good one, at least on paper.
What Kasati lacked in liquid wealth, he made up for
in noble heritage, and while Luisa had no nobility in
her family line, she had a great deal of money.
So they kind of complimented each other in that regard,
and the newlywed's actually went to the Paris Exposition on
(04:51):
their honeymoon. A year into their marriage, on July fifteenth,
nine one, the Casati has had a daughter, Christina, and
at the point it seemed like Louisa was on track
for a fairly conventional life that would be expected for
a wealthy married heiress. She had an interest in the
occult in a supernatural, which were pretty popular topics at
(05:12):
the time, but she was leading a pretty typical, though
very lavish life. Yeah, we really cannot stress how rich
she was. She was often touted as the richest woman
in Italy, the richest woman in Europe. Some people called
her the richest woman in the world during her heyday.
But then in nineteen o three, Louisa met the Italian
(05:33):
poet and playwright Gabrielle de Nunzio, and her life took
on a very different course. For a little background on
de Nunzio, he was famous already at this point for
his romantic exploits with actresses and socialites throughout Europe. He
is sometimes credited as the inventor of fascism, and an
Atlas Obscure article written about him in late described a
(05:55):
Nunzio as quote, across between the Marquis, Assad Aaron Burr,
i'm and and Madonna. So that gives you an idea
of what he may have been like as a person.
Uh De Nunzio wrote in his novel Il Piacere in
nine quote, it's necessary that the life of an intellectual
be artwork with him as the subject. The Nunzio first
(06:17):
saw the Marquesa, as she wrote, on horseback one day
during a fox hunt. He wasn't participating in this fox hunt,
he was just watching. When he saw the woman, who
he later likened to quote a slender Amazon. He was
immediately taken with her, and from that moment on he
made sure to attend many of the same hunting parties
as the Casadis did, just so he could get close
(06:38):
to her. When he did at first start by flirting
with her sister, he remained fixated on the Marquesa. Yeah.
There are many theories as to whether he was just
lavishing attention on her sister is a way to get
Louise's attention, or if he was just maybe playing the
odds hoping either of these heiresses would be into him.
(06:59):
But for Luisa's part, At this point, she was already
growing really frustrated with the role of wife. She felt
like she was confined by the expectations of it, and
she was progressively less and less shy. As it seems,
she looked to others for social stimulation, and slowly, throughout
the course of a series of hunts and events where
de Nunzio made sure he was there, she became aware
(07:22):
of him. And he was nearly twenty years older than
she was, and his jouis davive and his adventurous spirit
eventually captivated her, though he was far from being an
especially handsome man. But it wasn't long before Luisa and
de Nunzio began a sexual relationship, so the affair that
the two of them had was intense. Casati became de
Nunzio's muse and Cassarti's husband seemed to just ignore the
(07:45):
whole situation. Soon, Louisa, who do Nunzio had called quote
destroyer of mediocrity in one of his book dedications, had
become the toast of Europe's avant garde set. Uh yeah,
we'll talk a little bit more about uh Camillo Kasati
and why he seemed to be okay with ignoring this
situation in a bit. Uh, But we should say that
(08:07):
while Luisa and de Nunzio were sort of gallivanting around Europe,
it was not as though everyone immediately accepted the pair.
While mistresses were certainly common for wealthy men, for a
wealthy married woman to fairly openly pursue a romance with
a man who was not her husband was still considered
quite scandalous, and Luisa often found herself the subject of gossip,
(08:30):
both whispered and in print. Although it did not seem
to bother her, she actually seemed to kind of like it.
She also started to gather a list of very high
profile friends and admirers. As their list of high profile
friends and admirers got longer and longer, make Kasa Luisa
Kasati continued to evolve. She constantly up to the bar
on her own outlandishness to basically keep people interested in
(08:53):
her and feed all the stories in the gossip columns.
So not only was she not bothered by the gossip,
she was encouraging it. Yeah, that goes on throughout her life. Um,
and she was such an unusual character that she became
almost mythical. Her extreme appearance, which we'll talk about in
a bit, uh fostered all manner of gossip and speculation
that was both tied to and reaching beyond any that
(09:15):
had circulated about her affair with De Nunzio, and she seems,
as Tracy just said, to have consciously nurtured the more
outlandish stories that were told about her in social circles
and society pages. Living in the vast luxurious homes that
she stared with her husband, because they did have several homes,
often left the Marquisa feeling lonely, isolated and bored. She
(09:37):
countered this problem by throwing really lavish balls and parties,
often for charity. She was often outfitted in the most
extreme and showy ensembles for these themed events. And we're
gonna talk more about how Kasati started to morph into
an almost entirely different person after she met De Nunzio
in just a moment, But first we're gonna pause for
(09:58):
a word from one of our spawn swerves. Throughout the
years following nineteen o three, when she first met de Nunzio,
the Marquesa changed dramatically. Uh Do Nunzio's idea of self
creation is art which we mentioned a moment ago really
struck a chord with Luisa, and Kasati was naturally a
(10:22):
very striking figure. You'll remember that he saw her riding
on horseback and was completely taken with her. She was
six ft tall, and she was very very thin. But
she actually chose to accentuate these physical traits rather than
minimizing them, and she created a sort of character in
the way that she chose to present herself. So her hair,
which was naturally sort of a dark brown color, slowly
(10:44):
shifted in shades to become a brighter and brighter shade
of red. She's powdered her skin so it would be
as pale as possible, and she took on the habit
of maintaining a constant smoky eye appearance by applying plenty
and plenty of coal eyeliner. She was really dedicated to
maintaining a very heavy, dark eyed look. Sometimes she would
(11:05):
go so far as to glue strips of black velvet
around her eyes in addition to always wearing these very
heavy fake lashes. Sometimes she would have several layers of
lashes on at a time. I have hard enough time
with one. On the rare occasion that I have reason
to wear eyelashes. She's even said to have taken Bella
(11:28):
Donna and regular doses to try to keep her pupils
dilated for the aesthetic effect, which also sounds very difficult.
All of this artifice was because she wanted, in her
own words, to become quote a living work of art,
and the sentiment was very clearly in line with De
Nunzio's ideology as an artist like you, I can't imagine
(11:50):
that that much heaviness. At times, she allegedly wore false
eyelashes that were like two inches long and then layered
it would feel like chandelier. But it did make her
quite striking and memorable. I remember at my wedding, my
lashes were really two different lashes, but one of them
(12:11):
was like a half set m hm. And even then
that was a lot of eyelash too much. I wonder
about the strength of her eyelids, like they were constantly
getting a workout. Um all of these changes in her appearance,
because up to this point she really had kind of
looked like the classic well dressed, almost Gibson girl esque image.
(12:33):
But these changes did not go unnoticed by Kasati's friends
and acquaintances, and so as she stepped farther and farther
out of her demure appearance as a wife of nobility,
people actually began to speculate that there may be some
occult influence it was being exerted by de Nunzio that
was causing this shift in her appearance and behavior, because
it was so dramatic. When I went to find artwork
(12:54):
to go with this episode, uh, my first thought after
oh yeah, was is it Halloween already? It's always Halloween, Tracy.
So for his part, do Nunzio was equally under her spell.
So he had seduced a lot of women in his time,
(13:14):
and he would eventually move on when either his interest
in them or their money ran out. But Luisa really
kept his attention in part because she just stayed really
obsessed with herself and her transformation. She was more obsessed
with that than she was with him, and that and
their shared love of aesthetics and decadence really fueled their romance.
(13:37):
Neither of them was tethered to the other, but they
stayed involved romantically for decades. Yeah. I was reading in
in one account that part of the reason was that
she always met him as an equal like. She never
fell into the the traditional role of a woman is
subservient when she was with him, and so he sort
of was very intoxicated by that. In nineteen o six,
(14:01):
Camillo Casati, her husband, commissioned another home, this one in Rome,
and Luisa was given complete control over its decor and
the move, at least for part of her time to Rome, remember,
she lived in many houses, facilitated Luisa meeting some new
friends who were as obsessed with art as she was,
including the painter and sculptor Albetto Martini and the futurist
(14:23):
Felippo Tomaso Marinetti. Through De Nunzio, she also met with
the celebrated portrait painter Giovanni Bordini. This artist was instantly
fascinated with Luisa and he wanted to paint her in
his studio in Paris. So without hesitation, she moved immediately
and temporarily to France. She left her husband, her child,
(14:44):
and many many households behind. When Baldini's painting, which features
the marquesa clad almost entirely in black with accents of purple,
accompanied by a greyhound and sort of gazing directly out
from the campus. When this was unveiled as part of
a show of portraits Bibaldini, it got a lot of attention,
and it was both praised as the apex of Baldini's
(15:07):
work and criticized as having a vaguely demonic air about it.
And that controversial assortment of attention to the work completely
delighted Luisa Kasati, but her delight quickly turned to anger
when she discovered that Baldini had denied magazines the right
to print reproductions of the portrait. She really wanted that press,
(15:27):
and after the artist and his subject bickered over the matter,
primarily through a series of letters back and forth, Boldini
finally consented, although he was convinced it would lead to
a degradation of his reputation because of the bad Prince
that would be produced. Meanwhile, De Nunzio was obsessed with Venice,
and that sparked Cassatti's own love affair with that city,
(15:48):
so the Marquesa decided she needed a home there too.
She had actually set the wheels in motion before this
portrait trip to Paris, but it wasn't until after the
painting had been shown that a lease was found that
would suit her needs. In nineteen Marquesa Louisa Casati moved
into the Palazzo Vignier de Leoni, and construction on this
(16:09):
unfinished Venice palace was likely begun in the mid seventeen hundreds.
The luxurious home, which sits right on the canal, was
never completed by its architect, Lorenzo Boschetti, but even unfinished,
it was the perfect place from Marquesa Casati to indulge
her every flamboyant whim So first she had the structure
restored and decorated, but she insisted that this restoration still
(16:33):
retained the sense of deterioration that the building had had.
She just wanted it to be structurally sound so that
it would not literally deteriorate around her. She also hired
a permanent gondolier who was always dressed in eighteenth century clothing,
complete with a powdered wig. There are stories about how
the the people who owned the other homes in the
(16:54):
area were really excited initially that it was being renovated,
because it had gotten a little delap dated and was
something of an eyesore, and then they realized there was
nothing being done on the outside. They're like, oh, it's
it's still gonna look like a mess um, but she
loved it that way. And then setting up her new home,
Luisa had her greyhounds transported to Venice, and then she
(17:16):
purchased two cheetahs as pets as well. She would eventually
start taking the cheetahs out in her gondola and walking
them through Venice on jeweled leashes. To complete her image
in her new city, Marquesa, Casati turned to the designer
Mariano Fortuny. Long lean lines and rich colors and luxurious
(17:37):
fabrics that for Tunia is famous for made the already
tall and then Marquesa look even more extreme, so she
became a really devoted customer. By this point, Luisa and Camillo,
who preferred rome, we're living almost entirely separate lives. Their daughter, Christina,
who was nine when Louisa moved into her Venetian palace,
was sent to boarding school. In effect, Louis Sa had
(18:00):
completely rid herself of any of her familial obligations, and
Camillo Kasati was dependent enough on his estranged wife's wealth
that he really didn't make a fuss about her essentially
abandoning him and her daughter. The pair did eventually legally separate,
but that was several years into Luisa's carefully cultivated life
on the canal in nineteen fourteen, and it was another
(18:22):
decade before they would actually be divorced. Luisa incidentally insisted
that she get to keep the title of Marquesa in
that divorce settlement. The Marquesa, who the residence of Venice
started to call La Kasati, became famous for the parties
that she both threw and attended. She became the ultimate
party girl. She spent massive sums of money on drinks
(18:43):
as well as opium, and at one soire, a Russian
ballet dancer named Vaslav Najinski and an American dancer being
Isadora Duncan gave an impromptu performance for the other lucky
attendees who were there. That sounds amazing. She also had
a wax version of herself made and at times she
(19:03):
would do things like sit in a dimly lit room
with it during her parties to see how guests would
behave when they wandered in and discovered this odd duo
and this waxen doppelganger would sometimes accompany her to dress fittings,
or it would be seated at the dining table as
though it was a guest, and at one point De
Nuncio even planned to include the wax figure in a
(19:24):
narrative that he was writing, although it appears at that project,
which was a short story, never really came to fruition,
or if it did, it was lost to time. A
key part of her image, particularly at all these parties,
was Laka Sati's wardrobe. There are descriptions on top of
descriptions about her dresses and her jewels and her accessories.
She said to have adopted the habit of shopping in
(19:47):
Venice with her cheetahs wearing nothing but an incredibly luxurious
dressing gown. She's even been described at times as wearing
more perfume than clothing. This was also the period of
her life where she regular patronized another one of our
past podcast subjects, designer Paul Poor A. Yeah, she definitely
liked to draw the eye, which was sometimes in a
(20:10):
wild outfit. There's an image if you if you do
an Internet search for her, you'll find an image of
her in this wonderfully bizarre looking dress that's made of
light bulbs. But then she would also just kind of
count on using a bit of nudity to try to
get the same attention if the clothes weren't doing the trick.
There's one story of her at a party where she
insisted she couldn't breathe and she just cut her dress
(20:31):
off of herself. So she definitely was into the exhibitionism.
She would also have outfits made by Balletus costume designer
Leon Boxed as well, and increasingly the difference between her
fancy dress ensembles and her everyday clothes became kind of indiscernible.
And at the same time, she felt her wardrobe had
to be constantly augmented to top what had come before,
(20:52):
so uh she was always adding to that and the
amusement park that her palace had become, she just kept
more and more and more of everything. In addition to
the dogs and the cheetahs, there were monkeys, birds, and
other wild cats. She then became obsessed with snakes. She
started with small snakes and eventually worked her way up
(21:13):
to a boa constrictor. She also wanted the snakes to
travel with her, and she commissioned expensive boxes from jewelers
that she could carry them with her when she ventured
away from Venice. She's also alleged to have convinced a
zoo in Rome to lend her a lion so that
she could have it tethered to the throne that she
(21:34):
kept in her home. So, while Casati was, by all
accounts a lover of animals, comes up over and over
that she loved them, the manners we have to say
in which she kept them were obviously not kind by
today's standards. Keeping primates, confining cages, taking wildcats out on leashes,
making leopards pull her in a chariot, and sedating snakes
(21:57):
so that she could wear them as jewelry are obviously
all very very problematic. Uh. In short, keeping exotic animals
as pets is generally a bad idea, and especially so
when they are considered fashion accessories. But for all that
extreme extravagance, Livisa always wanted more, So we're going to
dive into some of the ways that she pursued it
(22:17):
after we pause for another quick sponsor break. When even
her home wasn't an exciting enough space for her decadent
masked balls and costume parties, Cassati actually managed to get
permission to use Venice's Piazza San Marco as her own
private party space. She hosted a grand ball there in September,
(22:42):
which was an eighteenth century themed masquerade ball, and the
Marquesa made a grand entrance by boat after the rest
of the guests had arrived, heralded by trumpet and accompanied
by her cheetahs. Cassati also became increasingly interested in the
occult while living in Venice, and she would seek out
seances and other gatherings of like minded people all through Europe.
(23:06):
She would also invite people who seemed to have connections
to the spirit world to live in her home as Venice.
In Venice as guests for long periods of time. Yeah,
she had people that lived there for years. And, perhaps
in line with her complete indulgence in her own fantasy world,
is the unrest of World War One began, Luisa was
(23:26):
almost indifferent to it. She was actually in Paris on
August third, nineteen fourteen, when Germany declared war on France,
and the next day, in her suite at the Ritz,
she rang her bell for breakfast service, which was incidentally
in the afternoon for her, and she was irritated when
no one came to bring her food. She allegedly ran
down into the the hotel lobby and discovered a bunch
(23:48):
of soldiers there, and that same day Great Britain declared
war on Germany. Kasati really weathered the war in relative ease.
She took advantage of that time to patronize new artists
and basically continue her lavish lifestyle. In nine Cassati's sister
Francesca died during the Spanish flu epidemic. Francesca had been
(24:11):
the one family member that Louisa had retained a relationship with.
Although there's no real account of how the loss affected
the Marquesa, that's something that comes up over and over.
There's not much recorded about her like emotional state at
some of these times, so whether that's just because she
kept it private because it did not add to the
(24:31):
exterior mystique that she was working to cultivate or not
is unclear. She continued to travel the world, amazing, amusing,
and sometimes dismaying her hosts in various measures with her
outlandish attire, which sometimes included a walking stick that was
almost as tall as she was, which was actually a
flask from which she would serve herself absinthe. During a
(24:54):
lengthy stay on the island of Capri, she wore only black,
and she dyed her hair bright green, but then eventually
dar candit black as well, and her sort of bizarre
behavior and appearance led to rumors spreading among the locals
there in Capri that she actually slept in a coffin.
Though she remained her same self, the post war world
(25:14):
was less and less her oyster. A lot of her
rich friends that she had been partying with for years
were struggling financially after World War One. They couldn't keep
up with her anymore, and then, to make matters worse,
ready to wear clothing was becoming stylish, which is something
we've talked about in past episodes. Ready to wear clothes
were utter anathema to her. The custom closet of expensive
(25:38):
garments that she was used to having became difficult to
maintain when many designers making those garments were closing up shop.
Her trademark white skin and red lip, which she maintained,
started to look dated instead of glamorous. And at the
same time, Louisa was tiring of her homes in Italy,
and so she purchased the Grand Tree and a and
(25:59):
there I, which was known as the Palais Rose because
of its pink marble exterior, and just as she had
done in Venice, Casati spared no expense in creating another
spectacle of decor and indulgence. It was in the Palais
Rose at the end of June seven, which was deep
in the decade known as n a Fool or Crazy
(26:20):
Years in France. Casati, through a massive party called soire
Magi the Marquesa, was costumed as the Count Cagliostro, who
had been an Italian magician and a cultist in the
late seventeen hundreds. Casati Is ensemble for the event included
a crystal sword and a suit made of silver and gold.
A photographer from Vogue magazine was actually on hand to
(26:43):
capture the event, but this lavish, primarily outdoor party was
upstaged by the weather when a storm rolled in as
the costume guests were conducting a parade. Everyone had to
make a run for it, and as that storm whipped in, Cassati,
who literally her clothes were being whipped off of her
by this weather, brandished her sword to try to rally
(27:04):
the revelers, but then she fainted and the evening came
to a rapid and unpleasant clothes there were a lot
of other things that happened that night that did not
go well. Allegedly, one attendee even spent the night locked
in a closet for having committed this sin of wearing
an outfit similar to the hostess. All of this lavish living,
the costumes, the animals, the drinks, and the houses, obviously
(27:28):
they were expensive. Luisa soon blazed through the fortune she
had inherited as a teenager. Byties, she had also taken
on massive debt, alleged to be as high as twenty
five million dollars in modern worth. Desperate to try to
settle some of those debts, Kasati traded many of her
priceless pieces of art away, and she sold items from
(27:49):
her home. She also started to borrow money from shady
people to try to make up gaps in her finances,
which only created worse problems. Additionally, she still could managed
to control her spending habits after a lifetime of just
throwing money around without a care. An auction was held
at the Palais Rose in December, and almost all of
(28:12):
the Marquesa's personal possessions were up for grabs. The Palais
Rose itself was mortgaged several months later. And passed to
one of Cassatti's creditors. Luisa initially moved into an apartment
in Paris, but after just six months there she had
no permanent address in the city. She basically moved from
hotel to hotel. She depended on the generosity of friends
(28:34):
to cover her expenses. In the person who Luisa had
been closest to for the longest length of time in
her life, Gabrielle de Nunzio, died, just as with her sister.
There is no record of her reaction to this passing,
and she did not attend his funeral. Meanwhile, Camilo Casati
had remarried and settled into a quiet life. Christina Casati
(28:56):
had married Frances Hastings, the sixteenth Earl of Huntington, and
and Marquesa. Casati would sometimes visit them in their home
in Britain. In nineteen thirty four, Hastings painted a portrait
of Luisa. Yeah, so she had a relationship with her daughter,
but it seems like it was to my reading, it
feels almost like um here is my odd distant relative
(29:20):
than than like the closeness that a mother and daughter
would normally share. Uh And eventually to escape her debts
in France and Italy, and a reputation that had been
built on a lifetime of invited gossip that then at
this point made her basically a pariah in high society.
Cassati moved permanently to Great Britain, although it's unclear exactly
(29:40):
when this move happened. By two she was destitute, and
by the late nineteen fifties be Satti was living in
London in a series of small flats. She never stayed
in one for very long. Over the intervening years, she
had subsisted on small, regular donations of money from her friends.
They wanted to keep her from having to bet, but
they knew that if they gave her lump sums, she
(30:02):
would just spend it all and then be back to
asking for help. The ones exquisitely outfited. Marquesa was sometimes
seem rummaging and trash bins for bits of velvet or
lace to adorn herself, and there are numerous accounts, even
from the people who loved her dearly, of her ongoing
substance abuse. She could be at turns her most charming
(30:24):
and delightful self, or an angry and unpredictable specter of
her former glory. Her daughter Christina, who had divorced and
remarried at this point, helped her mother as she could,
but then Christina died of breast cancer in nineteen fifty three,
and her later years, Marquesa Louisa Casati was largely cut
off for most of the society that had once celebrated her,
(30:47):
she no longer corresponded. She had started believing she was telepathic.
She engaged in seances with a handful of friends and
acquaintances who were making up her social circle by the
end of her life. She died of a stroke on
June one, nineteen fifty seven, at the age of seventy six.
A friend and frequent seance participant named Sydney Farmer snuck
(31:09):
into her home after learning that she had died, and
took her Pekinese dog, which was taxidermy in a pair
of false eyelashes, which he then spruced up. This was
not to steal them, but to make sure that someone
who knew and cared about her preserved them for her funeral.
Marchesa Casati was buried five days after she died, with
the taxidermy dog and the false eyelashes dressed in black
(31:31):
and Leopard at Brompton Cemetery, one of the oldest garden
cemeteries in London. Among those in attendance, which was a
very small number, was Emilio Vasodila, who was Kasati's gondolier
from Venice. Luisa's Venice home was purchased in nineteen forty
nine by Peggy Guggenheim. Was Guggenheim's home for thirty years,
(31:53):
and beginning in nineteen fifty one, the American socialite would
open her Venice home, which was filled with art, to
the public. In nine eighty one, year after Guggenheim died,
it was open to the public for good as the
Guggenheim Museum, which it remains today. So if you wish
to walk in Marquesa Luisa Casati's decadent footsteps, you can
(32:13):
still visit her former residence in Venice. Yeah. As I
was talking about her to a number of people, particularly
over the weekend, I saw a lot of friends and
several of them have traveled throughout Italy and I was saying, oh,
you know, have you been to the Guggenheim in Venice.
They would go, yes, it's amazing, and I'm like, that
is where she lived, and they would go Holy Moses,
(32:36):
because it's an impressive structure. If you have ever heard
of the fashion brand Marquesa, it is named after her.
Many many designers have used Luisa Kasati as inspiration for
their collections, and there has been speculation that her unique look,
tall and gaunt, was a big part of what drove
the fashion industry to seek out models exclusively of that
(32:56):
body type for many years. Writer Quentin crisp To described
Cassatti in the forward to her biography as quote a
picturesque ruin of a woman. They also made a really
insightful observation that goes a long way and examining how
a woman who in her youth seemed set to live
a secure, conventional life ended up taking such a dramatically
different path. Chris wrote, quote without question, the Marquesa Casati
(33:20):
was an exhibitionist, but exhibitionism is a potent drug. After
a short time, a dose strong enough to kill a
novice no longer works. And in a similar sentiment, painter
and illustrator Alberto Martini, who of course we mentioned in
the episode, she knew he was one of the many
artists that she became friends with, and he actually worked
as Cassati's personal painter for a time. Wrote in his
(33:42):
autobiography that the Marquesa quote lived partly as a slave
to her dream world. And finally, Jean Cocteau once wrote
of Marquesa Luisa Casati, she astonished, she did not please.
So that's the Marquesa Louisa Cassatti who is a mind
bender for me. She's very fascinating. It's one of those
(34:04):
things where you kind of want to love her, but
then you're like, oof, it's difficult. I think probably many
people in her life felt the same way. Um. I
am an assortment of postcards for listener mails, so we're
not going to read them all. I just want to
make sure people know we're getting them. We can't always
acknowledge all of them, but I want people to at
least a handful of people to know we got their postcards.
(34:25):
So first, we got a lovely postcard from Taylor from
the Dallas Museum of Art, which is all the submarines
of the United States of America. It's a really cool display.
We love the Dallas Museum of Art. We did a
live show there and it was absolute heaven. So thank you,
Thank you for that Taylor. Uh. We got a postcard
from the Freemantle Prison, which we've talked about before on
(34:46):
the show. Uh from our listener page, so thank you,
thank you for that as well. Uh. We love a
little international mail. This one, of course is from Western Australia. Uh.
Next up, what do I have? I have a hilaria
this image of a sheep that is waiting for a
letter from U E W E UM and it just
(35:07):
made me chuckle and was delightful. That is from our
listener Lily. Lily, thank you so so much. It is
really terribly cute. I I love a cookie animal postcard
for sure. We also got a really beautiful postcard from
Stockholm from our listener Mads, which is a fabulous image
of ships, the Royal ship Vassa and a little bit
(35:28):
of a sinking situation. I mean, I'll know that everybody
loves a little maritime drama. And then we got a
cool thing in the mail that I am actually going
to hand off to Tracy. Our listener Sarah sent us
uh pass for a free visit visit to the Strawberry
Bonk Museum which is good until the thirty one, and
that is in New Hampshire, which is much closer to
(35:49):
Tracy than is to me. So I'm going to hand
it off to her when I see her in a
couple of days, because the likelihood is greater that she
will get there than I will. Thank you, Thank you,
thank you to everyone who sends us postcards. I wish
we could read them all all, or even just acknowledge
them all, but that is literally impossible. We would literally
have a podcast called here are Postcards. Uh. It would
go for seventeen seasons and eventually it would become a
(36:12):
little bit difficult to track. So we can't do it,
but we try our best. If you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History Podcast
at House to Work dot com. You can also find
us across the spectrum of social media as Missed in History.
You can also visit us in our little home on
the web, which is Missed in History dot com, where
we have show notes for all of the episodes Tracy
(36:32):
and I have worked on, as well as the entire
back catalog of the show from its inception many many
years ago. So we encourage you come and hang out
with us at missed in History dot com For more
on this and thousands of other topics visit housetop works
dot com.
Hey everybody. Before we get started today, we want to
make sure everyone knows about our upcoming live shows. First up,
Holly will be at Salt Lake Comic Con September one, three.
I won't be able to make it to that one,
so past guest and friend of the show, Brian Young
will be talking with her about laun Cheney. Then on
(00:23):
October six pm, we will be appearing as part of
New York Comic Con Presents and we'll be talking about
the first comic book. You can find out more information
on all of this ticket links everything like that if
you go to Missed in History dot com and click
the link that says live shows. Welcome to Steph you
(00:45):
missed in History class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frying and I'm
Tracy V. Wilson, and today we're doing a podcast on
one of those people that come up in history who's
kind of larger than life. I'm actually shocked that a
(01:06):
lot of people don't know who she is, um just
because she was really like h tastemaker as well as
being the source of much gossip and discussion in her time.
She's not she's not a name that I recognized when
you sent the outline over. But if so as I
saw a picture, I would that person. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(01:30):
She is really unique in that while many people admired
her over the years for her life, which was led
entirely based on her aesthetics and this idea of creating oneself,
when you really start to examine her biography and look
at her life story, you also find a woman who
was incredibly selfish, and she was even described by close
friends as megalomaniacal, so clearly a very flawed person. So
(01:54):
I think that's why it is so startling to me
that she is so lauded as this amazing icon of style,
when the same people who do that are like, oh, yes,
but she was in many ways terrible. But even when
taking into account her really irresponsible and utterly self centered behavior,
it is also easy in some ways to see how
she charmed European high society in the early nineteen hundreds
(02:17):
simply by being such an outlandish creature and really something
of a caricature of her own design. And this very
complex woman that we're talking about today is Marquesa Louisa Casati.
She was born Louisa Adele Rosa Maria Aman on January
one and Milan, Italy. Her parents were Alberto Aman and
(02:38):
Lucia Bressi. The family was quite wealthy thanks to a
successful cotton mill, and Alberto was granted the title of
count by Italy's King Umberto the First. As a child,
Luisa was interested in art. She taught herself how to draw,
first copying images that she had seen in print and
then applying her skill to creating portrait of her family.
(03:01):
Luisa was considered a lot less attractive than her older
sister Francesca, and living a rather isolated life. As a
child of wealth, she was rather shy. In April of
eighteen ninety four, Count Amman and his wife were traveling
in Florence for business, and so they didn't have their
daughters with them on the trip, and the Countess, who
(03:22):
was only thirty seven at the time, became quite ill
suddenly and she died, although it is still unknown what
exactly caused her illness. And in the two years following
Luccia's death, Alberto tried to raise his daughters, but his
business really required more and more of his time, and
keep in mind also he was grieving his wife at
this point Uh. He died on July eleven, two years
(03:45):
after his wife, leaving his then teenage daughters with an
immense fortune. The girls lived with their paternal uncle, Eduardo
Ahman and his wife Fanny for a while after their
father's death, but naturally they were restless teenagers. They were
eager to engage with the modern world, and their new
home was in a small community that was about twenty
(04:06):
five miles away from Milan. Yeah, they were very restless.
They wanted to go to the city all the time,
which is something that they had done with their mother
a lot. So there's that two factor in as well. Uh.
And eventually in nineteen hundred, Luisa made her debut and
soon after, on June twenty two of that same year,
she married Camilo Casati Stampa Diconcino, three years her senior,
(04:30):
and she became a Marquesa in the process. And this
match was really a good one, at least on paper.
What Kasati lacked in liquid wealth, he made up for
in noble heritage, and while Luisa had no nobility in
her family line, she had a great deal of money.
So they kind of complimented each other in that regard,
and the newlywed's actually went to the Paris Exposition on
(04:51):
their honeymoon. A year into their marriage, on July fifteenth,
nine one, the Casati has had a daughter, Christina, and
at the point it seemed like Louisa was on track
for a fairly conventional life that would be expected for
a wealthy married heiress. She had an interest in the
occult in a supernatural, which were pretty popular topics at
(05:12):
the time, but she was leading a pretty typical, though
very lavish life. Yeah, we really cannot stress how rich
she was. She was often touted as the richest woman
in Italy, the richest woman in Europe. Some people called
her the richest woman in the world during her heyday.
But then in nineteen o three, Louisa met the Italian
(05:33):
poet and playwright Gabrielle de Nunzio, and her life took
on a very different course. For a little background on
de Nunzio, he was famous already at this point for
his romantic exploits with actresses and socialites throughout Europe. He
is sometimes credited as the inventor of fascism, and an
Atlas Obscure article written about him in late described a
(05:55):
Nunzio as quote, across between the Marquis, Assad Aaron Burr,
i'm and and Madonna. So that gives you an idea
of what he may have been like as a person.
Uh De Nunzio wrote in his novel Il Piacere in
nine quote, it's necessary that the life of an intellectual
be artwork with him as the subject. The Nunzio first
(06:17):
saw the Marquesa, as she wrote, on horseback one day
during a fox hunt. He wasn't participating in this fox hunt,
he was just watching. When he saw the woman, who
he later likened to quote a slender Amazon. He was
immediately taken with her, and from that moment on he
made sure to attend many of the same hunting parties
as the Casadis did, just so he could get close
(06:38):
to her. When he did at first start by flirting
with her sister, he remained fixated on the Marquesa. Yeah.
There are many theories as to whether he was just
lavishing attention on her sister is a way to get
Louise's attention, or if he was just maybe playing the
odds hoping either of these heiresses would be into him.
(06:59):
But for Luisa's part, At this point, she was already
growing really frustrated with the role of wife. She felt
like she was confined by the expectations of it, and
she was progressively less and less shy. As it seems,
she looked to others for social stimulation, and slowly, throughout
the course of a series of hunts and events where
de Nunzio made sure he was there, she became aware
(07:22):
of him. And he was nearly twenty years older than
she was, and his jouis davive and his adventurous spirit
eventually captivated her, though he was far from being an
especially handsome man. But it wasn't long before Luisa and
de Nunzio began a sexual relationship, so the affair that
the two of them had was intense. Casati became de
Nunzio's muse and Cassarti's husband seemed to just ignore the
(07:45):
whole situation. Soon, Louisa, who do Nunzio had called quote
destroyer of mediocrity in one of his book dedications, had
become the toast of Europe's avant garde set. Uh yeah,
we'll talk a little bit more about uh Camillo Kasati
and why he seemed to be okay with ignoring this
situation in a bit. Uh, But we should say that
(08:07):
while Luisa and de Nunzio were sort of gallivanting around Europe,
it was not as though everyone immediately accepted the pair.
While mistresses were certainly common for wealthy men, for a
wealthy married woman to fairly openly pursue a romance with
a man who was not her husband was still considered
quite scandalous, and Luisa often found herself the subject of gossip,
(08:30):
both whispered and in print. Although it did not seem
to bother her, she actually seemed to kind of like it.
She also started to gather a list of very high
profile friends and admirers. As their list of high profile
friends and admirers got longer and longer, make Kasa Luisa
Kasati continued to evolve. She constantly up to the bar
on her own outlandishness to basically keep people interested in
(08:53):
her and feed all the stories in the gossip columns.
So not only was she not bothered by the gossip,
she was encouraging it. Yeah, that goes on throughout her life. Um,
and she was such an unusual character that she became
almost mythical. Her extreme appearance, which we'll talk about in
a bit, uh fostered all manner of gossip and speculation
that was both tied to and reaching beyond any that
(09:15):
had circulated about her affair with De Nunzio, and she seems,
as Tracy just said, to have consciously nurtured the more
outlandish stories that were told about her in social circles
and society pages. Living in the vast luxurious homes that
she stared with her husband, because they did have several homes,
often left the Marquisa feeling lonely, isolated and bored. She
(09:37):
countered this problem by throwing really lavish balls and parties,
often for charity. She was often outfitted in the most
extreme and showy ensembles for these themed events. And we're
gonna talk more about how Kasati started to morph into
an almost entirely different person after she met De Nunzio
in just a moment, But first we're gonna pause for
(09:58):
a word from one of our spawn swerves. Throughout the
years following nineteen o three, when she first met de Nunzio,
the Marquesa changed dramatically. Uh Do Nunzio's idea of self
creation is art which we mentioned a moment ago really
struck a chord with Luisa, and Kasati was naturally a
(10:22):
very striking figure. You'll remember that he saw her riding
on horseback and was completely taken with her. She was
six ft tall, and she was very very thin. But
she actually chose to accentuate these physical traits rather than
minimizing them, and she created a sort of character in
the way that she chose to present herself. So her hair,
which was naturally sort of a dark brown color, slowly
(10:44):
shifted in shades to become a brighter and brighter shade
of red. She's powdered her skin so it would be
as pale as possible, and she took on the habit
of maintaining a constant smoky eye appearance by applying plenty
and plenty of coal eyeliner. She was really dedicated to
maintaining a very heavy, dark eyed look. Sometimes she would
(11:05):
go so far as to glue strips of black velvet
around her eyes in addition to always wearing these very
heavy fake lashes. Sometimes she would have several layers of
lashes on at a time. I have hard enough time
with one. On the rare occasion that I have reason
to wear eyelashes. She's even said to have taken Bella
(11:28):
Donna and regular doses to try to keep her pupils
dilated for the aesthetic effect, which also sounds very difficult.
All of this artifice was because she wanted, in her
own words, to become quote a living work of art,
and the sentiment was very clearly in line with De
Nunzio's ideology as an artist like you, I can't imagine
(11:50):
that that much heaviness. At times, she allegedly wore false
eyelashes that were like two inches long and then layered
it would feel like chandelier. But it did make her
quite striking and memorable. I remember at my wedding, my
lashes were really two different lashes, but one of them
(12:11):
was like a half set m hm. And even then
that was a lot of eyelash too much. I wonder
about the strength of her eyelids, like they were constantly
getting a workout. Um all of these changes in her appearance,
because up to this point she really had kind of
looked like the classic well dressed, almost Gibson girl esque image.
(12:33):
But these changes did not go unnoticed by Kasati's friends
and acquaintances, and so as she stepped farther and farther
out of her demure appearance as a wife of nobility,
people actually began to speculate that there may be some
occult influence it was being exerted by de Nunzio that
was causing this shift in her appearance and behavior, because
it was so dramatic. When I went to find artwork
(12:54):
to go with this episode, uh, my first thought after
oh yeah, was is it Halloween already? It's always Halloween, Tracy.
So for his part, do Nunzio was equally under her spell.
So he had seduced a lot of women in his time,
(13:14):
and he would eventually move on when either his interest
in them or their money ran out. But Luisa really
kept his attention in part because she just stayed really
obsessed with herself and her transformation. She was more obsessed
with that than she was with him, and that and
their shared love of aesthetics and decadence really fueled their romance.
(13:37):
Neither of them was tethered to the other, but they
stayed involved romantically for decades. Yeah. I was reading in
in one account that part of the reason was that
she always met him as an equal like. She never
fell into the the traditional role of a woman is
subservient when she was with him, and so he sort
of was very intoxicated by that. In nineteen o six,
(14:01):
Camillo Casati, her husband, commissioned another home, this one in Rome,
and Luisa was given complete control over its decor and
the move, at least for part of her time to Rome, remember,
she lived in many houses, facilitated Luisa meeting some new
friends who were as obsessed with art as she was,
including the painter and sculptor Albetto Martini and the futurist
(14:23):
Felippo Tomaso Marinetti. Through De Nunzio, she also met with
the celebrated portrait painter Giovanni Bordini. This artist was instantly
fascinated with Luisa and he wanted to paint her in
his studio in Paris. So without hesitation, she moved immediately
and temporarily to France. She left her husband, her child,
(14:44):
and many many households behind. When Baldini's painting, which features
the marquesa clad almost entirely in black with accents of purple,
accompanied by a greyhound and sort of gazing directly out
from the campus. When this was unveiled as part of
a show of portraits Bibaldini, it got a lot of attention,
and it was both praised as the apex of Baldini's
(15:07):
work and criticized as having a vaguely demonic air about it.
And that controversial assortment of attention to the work completely
delighted Luisa Kasati, but her delight quickly turned to anger
when she discovered that Baldini had denied magazines the right
to print reproductions of the portrait. She really wanted that press,
(15:27):
and after the artist and his subject bickered over the matter,
primarily through a series of letters back and forth, Boldini
finally consented, although he was convinced it would lead to
a degradation of his reputation because of the bad Prince
that would be produced. Meanwhile, De Nunzio was obsessed with Venice,
and that sparked Cassatti's own love affair with that city,
(15:48):
so the Marquesa decided she needed a home there too.
She had actually set the wheels in motion before this
portrait trip to Paris, but it wasn't until after the
painting had been shown that a lease was found that
would suit her needs. In nineteen Marquesa Louisa Casati moved
into the Palazzo Vignier de Leoni, and construction on this
(16:09):
unfinished Venice palace was likely begun in the mid seventeen hundreds.
The luxurious home, which sits right on the canal, was
never completed by its architect, Lorenzo Boschetti, but even unfinished,
it was the perfect place from Marquesa Casati to indulge
her every flamboyant whim So first she had the structure
restored and decorated, but she insisted that this restoration still
(16:33):
retained the sense of deterioration that the building had had.
She just wanted it to be structurally sound so that
it would not literally deteriorate around her. She also hired
a permanent gondolier who was always dressed in eighteenth century clothing,
complete with a powdered wig. There are stories about how
the the people who owned the other homes in the
(16:54):
area were really excited initially that it was being renovated,
because it had gotten a little delap dated and was
something of an eyesore, and then they realized there was
nothing being done on the outside. They're like, oh, it's
it's still gonna look like a mess um, but she
loved it that way. And then setting up her new home,
Luisa had her greyhounds transported to Venice, and then she
(17:16):
purchased two cheetahs as pets as well. She would eventually
start taking the cheetahs out in her gondola and walking
them through Venice on jeweled leashes. To complete her image
in her new city, Marquesa, Casati turned to the designer
Mariano Fortuny. Long lean lines and rich colors and luxurious
(17:37):
fabrics that for Tunia is famous for made the already
tall and then Marquesa look even more extreme, so she
became a really devoted customer. By this point, Luisa and Camillo,
who preferred rome, we're living almost entirely separate lives. Their daughter, Christina,
who was nine when Louisa moved into her Venetian palace,
was sent to boarding school. In effect, Louis Sa had
(18:00):
completely rid herself of any of her familial obligations, and
Camillo Kasati was dependent enough on his estranged wife's wealth
that he really didn't make a fuss about her essentially
abandoning him and her daughter. The pair did eventually legally separate,
but that was several years into Luisa's carefully cultivated life
on the canal in nineteen fourteen, and it was another
(18:22):
decade before they would actually be divorced. Luisa incidentally insisted
that she get to keep the title of Marquesa in
that divorce settlement. The Marquesa, who the residence of Venice
started to call La Kasati, became famous for the parties
that she both threw and attended. She became the ultimate
party girl. She spent massive sums of money on drinks
(18:43):
as well as opium, and at one soire, a Russian
ballet dancer named Vaslav Najinski and an American dancer being
Isadora Duncan gave an impromptu performance for the other lucky
attendees who were there. That sounds amazing. She also had
a wax version of herself made and at times she
(19:03):
would do things like sit in a dimly lit room
with it during her parties to see how guests would
behave when they wandered in and discovered this odd duo
and this waxen doppelganger would sometimes accompany her to dress fittings,
or it would be seated at the dining table as
though it was a guest, and at one point De
Nuncio even planned to include the wax figure in a
(19:24):
narrative that he was writing, although it appears at that project,
which was a short story, never really came to fruition,
or if it did, it was lost to time. A
key part of her image, particularly at all these parties,
was Laka Sati's wardrobe. There are descriptions on top of
descriptions about her dresses and her jewels and her accessories.
She said to have adopted the habit of shopping in
(19:47):
Venice with her cheetahs wearing nothing but an incredibly luxurious
dressing gown. She's even been described at times as wearing
more perfume than clothing. This was also the period of
her life where she regular patronized another one of our
past podcast subjects, designer Paul Poor A. Yeah, she definitely
liked to draw the eye, which was sometimes in a
(20:10):
wild outfit. There's an image if you if you do
an Internet search for her, you'll find an image of
her in this wonderfully bizarre looking dress that's made of
light bulbs. But then she would also just kind of
count on using a bit of nudity to try to
get the same attention if the clothes weren't doing the trick.
There's one story of her at a party where she
insisted she couldn't breathe and she just cut her dress
(20:31):
off of herself. So she definitely was into the exhibitionism.
She would also have outfits made by Balletus costume designer
Leon Boxed as well, and increasingly the difference between her
fancy dress ensembles and her everyday clothes became kind of indiscernible.
And at the same time, she felt her wardrobe had
to be constantly augmented to top what had come before,
(20:52):
so uh she was always adding to that and the
amusement park that her palace had become, she just kept
more and more and more of everything. In addition to
the dogs and the cheetahs, there were monkeys, birds, and
other wild cats. She then became obsessed with snakes. She
started with small snakes and eventually worked her way up
(21:13):
to a boa constrictor. She also wanted the snakes to
travel with her, and she commissioned expensive boxes from jewelers
that she could carry them with her when she ventured
away from Venice. She's also alleged to have convinced a
zoo in Rome to lend her a lion so that
she could have it tethered to the throne that she
(21:34):
kept in her home. So, while Casati was, by all
accounts a lover of animals, comes up over and over
that she loved them, the manners we have to say
in which she kept them were obviously not kind by
today's standards. Keeping primates, confining cages, taking wildcats out on leashes,
making leopards pull her in a chariot, and sedating snakes
(21:57):
so that she could wear them as jewelry are obviously
all very very problematic. Uh. In short, keeping exotic animals
as pets is generally a bad idea, and especially so
when they are considered fashion accessories. But for all that
extreme extravagance, Livisa always wanted more, So we're going to
dive into some of the ways that she pursued it
(22:17):
after we pause for another quick sponsor break. When even
her home wasn't an exciting enough space for her decadent
masked balls and costume parties, Cassati actually managed to get
permission to use Venice's Piazza San Marco as her own
private party space. She hosted a grand ball there in September,
(22:42):
which was an eighteenth century themed masquerade ball, and the
Marquesa made a grand entrance by boat after the rest
of the guests had arrived, heralded by trumpet and accompanied
by her cheetahs. Cassati also became increasingly interested in the
occult while living in Venice, and she would seek out
seances and other gatherings of like minded people all through Europe.
(23:06):
She would also invite people who seemed to have connections
to the spirit world to live in her home as Venice.
In Venice as guests for long periods of time. Yeah,
she had people that lived there for years. And, perhaps
in line with her complete indulgence in her own fantasy world,
is the unrest of World War One began, Luisa was
(23:26):
almost indifferent to it. She was actually in Paris on
August third, nineteen fourteen, when Germany declared war on France,
and the next day, in her suite at the Ritz,
she rang her bell for breakfast service, which was incidentally
in the afternoon for her, and she was irritated when
no one came to bring her food. She allegedly ran
down into the the hotel lobby and discovered a bunch
(23:48):
of soldiers there, and that same day Great Britain declared
war on Germany. Kasati really weathered the war in relative ease.
She took advantage of that time to patronize new artists
and basically continue her lavish lifestyle. In nine Cassati's sister
Francesca died during the Spanish flu epidemic. Francesca had been
(24:11):
the one family member that Louisa had retained a relationship with.
Although there's no real account of how the loss affected
the Marquesa, that's something that comes up over and over.
There's not much recorded about her like emotional state at
some of these times, so whether that's just because she
kept it private because it did not add to the
(24:31):
exterior mystique that she was working to cultivate or not
is unclear. She continued to travel the world, amazing, amusing,
and sometimes dismaying her hosts in various measures with her
outlandish attire, which sometimes included a walking stick that was
almost as tall as she was, which was actually a
flask from which she would serve herself absinthe. During a
(24:54):
lengthy stay on the island of Capri, she wore only black,
and she dyed her hair bright green, but then eventually
dar candit black as well, and her sort of bizarre
behavior and appearance led to rumors spreading among the locals
there in Capri that she actually slept in a coffin.
Though she remained her same self, the post war world
(25:14):
was less and less her oyster. A lot of her
rich friends that she had been partying with for years
were struggling financially after World War One. They couldn't keep
up with her anymore, and then, to make matters worse,
ready to wear clothing was becoming stylish, which is something
we've talked about in past episodes. Ready to wear clothes
were utter anathema to her. The custom closet of expensive
(25:38):
garments that she was used to having became difficult to
maintain when many designers making those garments were closing up shop.
Her trademark white skin and red lip, which she maintained,
started to look dated instead of glamorous. And at the
same time, Louisa was tiring of her homes in Italy,
and so she purchased the Grand Tree and a and
(25:59):
there I, which was known as the Palais Rose because
of its pink marble exterior, and just as she had
done in Venice, Casati spared no expense in creating another
spectacle of decor and indulgence. It was in the Palais
Rose at the end of June seven, which was deep
in the decade known as n a Fool or Crazy
(26:20):
Years in France. Casati, through a massive party called soire
Magi the Marquesa, was costumed as the Count Cagliostro, who
had been an Italian magician and a cultist in the
late seventeen hundreds. Casati Is ensemble for the event included
a crystal sword and a suit made of silver and gold.
A photographer from Vogue magazine was actually on hand to
(26:43):
capture the event, but this lavish, primarily outdoor party was
upstaged by the weather when a storm rolled in as
the costume guests were conducting a parade. Everyone had to
make a run for it, and as that storm whipped in, Cassati,
who literally her clothes were being whipped off of her
by this weather, brandished her sword to try to rally
(27:04):
the revelers, but then she fainted and the evening came
to a rapid and unpleasant clothes there were a lot
of other things that happened that night that did not
go well. Allegedly, one attendee even spent the night locked
in a closet for having committed this sin of wearing
an outfit similar to the hostess. All of this lavish living,
the costumes, the animals, the drinks, and the houses, obviously
(27:28):
they were expensive. Luisa soon blazed through the fortune she
had inherited as a teenager. Byties, she had also taken
on massive debt, alleged to be as high as twenty
five million dollars in modern worth. Desperate to try to
settle some of those debts, Kasati traded many of her
priceless pieces of art away, and she sold items from
(27:49):
her home. She also started to borrow money from shady
people to try to make up gaps in her finances,
which only created worse problems. Additionally, she still could managed
to control her spending habits after a lifetime of just
throwing money around without a care. An auction was held
at the Palais Rose in December, and almost all of
(28:12):
the Marquesa's personal possessions were up for grabs. The Palais
Rose itself was mortgaged several months later. And passed to
one of Cassatti's creditors. Luisa initially moved into an apartment
in Paris, but after just six months there she had
no permanent address in the city. She basically moved from
hotel to hotel. She depended on the generosity of friends
(28:34):
to cover her expenses. In the person who Luisa had
been closest to for the longest length of time in
her life, Gabrielle de Nunzio, died, just as with her sister.
There is no record of her reaction to this passing,
and she did not attend his funeral. Meanwhile, Camilo Casati
had remarried and settled into a quiet life. Christina Casati
(28:56):
had married Frances Hastings, the sixteenth Earl of Huntington, and
and Marquesa. Casati would sometimes visit them in their home
in Britain. In nineteen thirty four, Hastings painted a portrait
of Luisa. Yeah, so she had a relationship with her daughter,
but it seems like it was to my reading, it
feels almost like um here is my odd distant relative
(29:20):
than than like the closeness that a mother and daughter
would normally share. Uh And eventually to escape her debts
in France and Italy, and a reputation that had been
built on a lifetime of invited gossip that then at
this point made her basically a pariah in high society.
Cassati moved permanently to Great Britain, although it's unclear exactly
(29:40):
when this move happened. By two she was destitute, and
by the late nineteen fifties be Satti was living in
London in a series of small flats. She never stayed
in one for very long. Over the intervening years, she
had subsisted on small, regular donations of money from her friends.
They wanted to keep her from having to bet, but
they knew that if they gave her lump sums, she
(30:02):
would just spend it all and then be back to
asking for help. The ones exquisitely outfited. Marquesa was sometimes
seem rummaging and trash bins for bits of velvet or
lace to adorn herself, and there are numerous accounts, even
from the people who loved her dearly, of her ongoing
substance abuse. She could be at turns her most charming
(30:24):
and delightful self, or an angry and unpredictable specter of
her former glory. Her daughter Christina, who had divorced and
remarried at this point, helped her mother as she could,
but then Christina died of breast cancer in nineteen fifty three,
and her later years, Marquesa Louisa Casati was largely cut
off for most of the society that had once celebrated her,
(30:47):
she no longer corresponded. She had started believing she was telepathic.
She engaged in seances with a handful of friends and
acquaintances who were making up her social circle by the
end of her life. She died of a stroke on
June one, nineteen fifty seven, at the age of seventy six.
A friend and frequent seance participant named Sydney Farmer snuck
(31:09):
into her home after learning that she had died, and
took her Pekinese dog, which was taxidermy in a pair
of false eyelashes, which he then spruced up. This was
not to steal them, but to make sure that someone
who knew and cared about her preserved them for her funeral.
Marchesa Casati was buried five days after she died, with
the taxidermy dog and the false eyelashes dressed in black
(31:31):
and Leopard at Brompton Cemetery, one of the oldest garden
cemeteries in London. Among those in attendance, which was a
very small number, was Emilio Vasodila, who was Kasati's gondolier
from Venice. Luisa's Venice home was purchased in nineteen forty
nine by Peggy Guggenheim. Was Guggenheim's home for thirty years,
(31:53):
and beginning in nineteen fifty one, the American socialite would
open her Venice home, which was filled with art, to
the public. In nine eighty one, year after Guggenheim died,
it was open to the public for good as the
Guggenheim Museum, which it remains today. So if you wish
to walk in Marquesa Luisa Casati's decadent footsteps, you can
(32:13):
still visit her former residence in Venice. Yeah. As I
was talking about her to a number of people, particularly
over the weekend, I saw a lot of friends and
several of them have traveled throughout Italy and I was saying, oh,
you know, have you been to the Guggenheim in Venice.
They would go, yes, it's amazing, and I'm like, that
is where she lived, and they would go Holy Moses,
(32:36):
because it's an impressive structure. If you have ever heard
of the fashion brand Marquesa, it is named after her.
Many many designers have used Luisa Kasati as inspiration for
their collections, and there has been speculation that her unique look,
tall and gaunt, was a big part of what drove
the fashion industry to seek out models exclusively of that
(32:56):
body type for many years. Writer Quentin crisp To described
Cassatti in the forward to her biography as quote a
picturesque ruin of a woman. They also made a really
insightful observation that goes a long way and examining how
a woman who in her youth seemed set to live
a secure, conventional life ended up taking such a dramatically
different path. Chris wrote, quote without question, the Marquesa Casati
(33:20):
was an exhibitionist, but exhibitionism is a potent drug. After
a short time, a dose strong enough to kill a
novice no longer works. And in a similar sentiment, painter
and illustrator Alberto Martini, who of course we mentioned in
the episode, she knew he was one of the many
artists that she became friends with, and he actually worked
as Cassati's personal painter for a time. Wrote in his
(33:42):
autobiography that the Marquesa quote lived partly as a slave
to her dream world. And finally, Jean Cocteau once wrote
of Marquesa Luisa Casati, she astonished, she did not please.
So that's the Marquesa Louisa Cassatti who is a mind
bender for me. She's very fascinating. It's one of those
(34:04):
things where you kind of want to love her, but
then you're like, oof, it's difficult. I think probably many
people in her life felt the same way. Um. I
am an assortment of postcards for listener mails, so we're
not going to read them all. I just want to
make sure people know we're getting them. We can't always
acknowledge all of them, but I want people to at
least a handful of people to know we got their postcards.
(34:25):
So first, we got a lovely postcard from Taylor from
the Dallas Museum of Art, which is all the submarines
of the United States of America. It's a really cool display.
We love the Dallas Museum of Art. We did a
live show there and it was absolute heaven. So thank you,
Thank you for that Taylor. Uh. We got a postcard
from the Freemantle Prison, which we've talked about before on
(34:46):
the show. Uh from our listener page, so thank you,
thank you for that as well. Uh. We love a
little international mail. This one, of course is from Western Australia. Uh.
Next up, what do I have? I have a hilaria
this image of a sheep that is waiting for a
letter from U E W E UM and it just
(35:07):
made me chuckle and was delightful. That is from our
listener Lily. Lily, thank you so so much. It is
really terribly cute. I I love a cookie animal postcard
for sure. We also got a really beautiful postcard from
Stockholm from our listener Mads, which is a fabulous image
of ships, the Royal ship Vassa and a little bit
(35:28):
of a sinking situation. I mean, I'll know that everybody
loves a little maritime drama. And then we got a
cool thing in the mail that I am actually going
to hand off to Tracy. Our listener Sarah sent us
uh pass for a free visit visit to the Strawberry
Bonk Museum which is good until the thirty one, and
that is in New Hampshire, which is much closer to
(35:49):
Tracy than is to me. So I'm going to hand
it off to her when I see her in a
couple of days, because the likelihood is greater that she
will get there than I will. Thank you, Thank you,
thank you to everyone who sends us postcards. I wish
we could read them all all, or even just acknowledge
them all, but that is literally impossible. We would literally
have a podcast called here are Postcards. Uh. It would
go for seventeen seasons and eventually it would become a
(36:12):
little bit difficult to track. So we can't do it,
but we try our best. If you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History Podcast
at House to Work dot com. You can also find
us across the spectrum of social media as Missed in History.
You can also visit us in our little home on
the web, which is Missed in History dot com, where
we have show notes for all of the episodes Tracy
(36:32):
and I have worked on, as well as the entire
back catalog of the show from its inception many many
years ago. So we encourage you come and hang out
with us at missed in History dot com For more
on this and thousands of other topics visit housetop works
dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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