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The Contessa

The Contessa

by Benedetta Craveri, translated from the Italian by Alex Andriesse

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Virginia Verasis, Countess of Castiglione—the nineteenth-century aristocrat, socialite, and beauty—has become famous for the enigmatic and operatic photographs of herself that she choreographed and staged, now seen as masterworks of the art. But her life story is no less extraordinary than her artistic vision, as Benedetta Craveri shows us in this groundbreaking new biography, which draws on archival material and the countess's own diaries to piece together the puzzle that was Virginia.

Eighteen years old when Victor Emmanuel I sent her to Paris on a special assignment, and already renowned as a beauty in her native Italy, Virginia was tapped to persuade Napoleon III to support the cause of Italian unification. Her entrance into the haut monde of Paris was unlike anything anyone had ever seen—a performance by a performer who made the world her stage. When Italy became a kingdom with the emperor's backing in 1861, it was in no small part thanks to the role that Virginia had played. But it was not a role that she necessarily wished to play. She wanted to be free at all costs—sexually, financially, artistically—and she resented men's weaponization of her beauty.

The Contessa reveals a woman of many facets and at least as many contradictions, vain and visionary, charming and monstrous, impossible to know and impossible to ignore.

Additional Book Information

Series: New York Review Books
ISBN: 9798896230465
Pages: 520
Publication Date:

Praise

Lo sono io — I am me — this statement would not be surprising if uttered by a feminist today, but it was spoken, in the nineteenth century, by a young Italian aristocrat, Virginia Oldoini, countess Castiglione. Born in Florence, she moved swiftly to Paris where she gained celebrity as the flamboyant mistress of Napoleon III. She is the fascinating subject of Benedetta Craveri’s latest book. It is a hugely entertaining study of the power of beauty in politics. With her usual brio and thanks to her deep knowledge of French and Italian culture, she follows the improbable career of the countess, whose hallmarks were freedom, irreverence, originality and a passionate belief in the power of the image made possible by the very new art of photography.
—Anka Begley

To succeed in seducing both the Emperor of the French and the King of Italy, while carrying on secret diplomatic negotiations between the two of them, was only one of the Contessa di Castiglione's spectacular accomplishments. Hailed as the most beautiful woman of her time, she mixed sex and politics in a heady brew. And managed her image for posterity through remarkable photographs of her costumed self. Benedetta Craveri's biography offers the broadest account so far of a life that was pure theater.
—Peter Brooks

Craveri follows Virginia’s fortunes amid political upheaval, revolution, war, and intrigue. With a large network of lovers, friends, and acquaintances, and with a talent for manipulation, she proved to be valuable in procuring and transmitting information. Craveri candidly portrays her hedonism, coldness, and arrogance . . . A richly detailed portrait of a scandalous woman.
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

This book not only allows us to understand Donna Virginia's vitality, but also helps us understand the political stage set of Europe as a whole between the 1850s and 1880s, centered on Napoleon III's imperial France. There is no shortage of unexpected revelations, shedding new light on a delicate historical transition and on the role of Castiglione as a "Nicchia," a professional serial seduction artist, in contemporary society in various countries.
—Cesare Cunaccia, Lampoon Magazine

Craveri . . . is a master at engaging with history and tracing the threads of individual stories that inform its major episodes and events. Thus, the thousand lives of the Countess of Castiglione seem to take shape and color under the infrared light of the darkroom where they incubated for over a century, and Benedetta Craveri develops the themes and lines of an irreducibly modern figure with rigor and passion.
—Maremosso

The discovery of new, reliable sources allowed Craveri to reconstruct a truthful, scathing… portrait of [Virginia Verasis di Castiglione], giving life to a book that is indeed a biography, but so rich in plot twists, narrative skill, and extraordinary adventures that it almost approaches a fantasy novel.
—Chiara Giacobelli, Affaritaliani

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