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