Inspired by the Marchesa

Throughout the ages there have always been particular photographs that have become well known classics for one reason or another. They record a snapshot of posterity for the subject and any personage that is included.

Here we have a photo that transcends time and includes several icons of the 20th Century artistic, social and fashion worlds! Although of different times they all come together in perfect harmony.

The photo in question appeared in Life Magazine in September 1960 and pictures Norman Norell with his 1960 Fall "van Dongen Collection".

The collection was inspired by the portrait of the Marchesa Luisa Casati The Quai Venice by Kees van Dongen owned by Norell. Norell originally acquired the van Dongen portrait of Casati at auction for $125 US dollars from Parke-Bernet, New York, in the 1940s.

Norell was perhaps one of the greatest American designers and it is fitting that for inspiration he chose Casati to inspire a collection. Casati was one of the most talked about and painted woman of her age.

The portrait now belongs to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

The inspiration has kept on flowing until it reached Tom Ford and the photograph below shot by Stephen Meisel. Eerily similar to the portrait of Norell, in styling and mood, it seems that we are still being inspired by the Marchesa Casati.

Even More Savoir Faire with the Contessa!

“I want to be a living work of art” so proclaimed to the masses, Luisa Casati, and so she was! Like Rubinstein her contemporary she was represented by more artists than any other female of her time. However, there are two distinct differences between the Rubinstein portraits (see http://david-toms.blogspot.com/2009/08/helena-rubinstein-portraits.html) and those of Casati. Even though Rubinstein had commissioned some of the most well known artists of her time, the portraits are of a woman, who wanted to be remembered for what she wanted to be. That is, a beautiful, and elegant woman. Casati on the other hand wanted to be remembered for what she was, an exotic creature, ever changing and immortal.

Giovanni Boldini

Artists such as Augustus John, Giovanni Boldini, Kees Van Dongen, and Romaine Brooks immortalised her on canvas.

Augustus John 1919

Augustus John

Kees Von Dongen

De Blaas

Drian and Alberto Martini sketched away to their heart’s content, Man Ray, Cecil Beaton and Aldoph de Meyer clicked their camera shutters with gay abandon.

Alberto Martini 1906

Paget-Fredericks 1920

Man Ray

And not let’s forget the sculptures by Jacob Epstein and Giacomo Balla.

Settings ranged from the canals of Venice to the wild west of America, with Casati in some fantastic garb, a high priestess of the bizarre one minute a knight in shining armour the next.

Alberto Martini 1906

Kees Von Dongen 1921

Ignacio Zuloaga 1922

Alberto Martini

On last year’s trip to Italy, while wondering around the Modern art Museum in Rome I stumbled across the below portrait by Boldini. The wonderful thing about it is that it is sitting in a room all by itself, so that nothing can take anything away from it. I must have sat down for a full 20 minutes just taking it all in, even imagining at some stage that the fabled Marchesa’s own eyes had gazed on this likeness and that she had even touched it.

Giovanni Boldini

She still continues to inspire artists today. Alas poor Madame Rubinstein doesn’t. While we still have Rubinstein’s portraits for posterity, Casati is still being studied and evolving.

More Savoir Faire with The Marchesa

I have just picked up from the Library a copy of Infinite Variety, the definitive biography of the Marchesa Luisa Casati! Previously I had done a posting on this remarkable woman which merely scratched the surface of the great savoir faire that she possessed. Long dead and buried she is still a constant source of inspiration for couturiers and artists alike.

I like biographies with pictures and this one doesn’t disappoint. However what does surprise me is the fact for such a woman who was one of the most painted and photographed of her time, little pictorial evidence exists (same can be said for Misia Sert). As most of you know I love to illustrate my posts, and was continually frustrated in my search of images of these two remarkable women to use.

However do not despair! I have found a photograph of the Marchesa taken around 1940, after she had lost all her considerable wealth and was living in London almost penniless. For someone on reduced circumstances she displays a remarkable presence and savoir faire.

I also can’t resist using the below image of Marisa Berenson (Schiaparelli’s granddaughter) dressed as Casati in the late 60’s. Kudos to Ms. Berenson for capturing the spirit perfectly.

Cant wait to read the biography and am saving it for Italy, so I can get in the true spirit of things!

Marquesa Luisa Casati

I was at the Art Gallery of Ontario the other day, and had forgotten that they possessed a portrait of the fabled Marquesa Luisa Casati, by Augustus John.

At the beginning of the twentieth century right through until the late 1930’s, she was one of the most recognizable and exotic creatures in European society. Like a whirling dervish she rushed headlong into society, inspiring and maybe even frightening all of whom she came into contact with, whether it be couturiers such as Schiaparelli, authors like Proust or artists like Augustus John.

Maybe it was her appearance that left all she encountered quivering in her wake? Tall and thin, with an almost deathlike pallor to her skin, which was topped off with the reddest hair that anyone had ever seen. Large green eyes that bewitched were crowned with immense false eyelashes and the thickest lines of kohl ever seen since Cleopatra. It was even said that she added belladonna to these so that they glittered like emeralds, so that they were even more enticing.

Asked to dine with her and you could have been seated next to a bizarre wax mannequin, said to contain the ashes of a past love, while you were waited upon by nude servants only attired in gold leaf. Animals were an accessory to be worn and paraded around like the panthers and cheetahs she parade around Paris on diamond studded leads, or the live snakes she wore as jewellery.

Like Madame Rubinstein, she is perhaps one of the most artistically represented women of the twentieth century. Painted by artists such as August John, Kees Van Dongen and countless others. If you were a photographer you also didn’t escape her clutches, as Man Ray and Cecil Beaton found out! Today she still inspires the same groups of people sh e did in her lifetime. John Galliano for Dior devoted a whole collection to her.

Unfortunately with all this excess she went from being one of the richest women in Europe to dying in relative obscurity and poverty in London in 1957. It was even said that right up to the end she was sometimes spotted rummaging through garbage bins in search of feathers for her hair.