Cecil beaton marchesa casati biography

The fabled Marchesa Luisa Casati (1881-1957) triumphed as the brightest star in European society..

An Ode to the Singular Marchesa Luisa Casati

Fashion & BeautyAnOther Woman

Remembering the ethereal heiress, muse and patron of the arts that Augustus John once claimed should be "shot, stuffed and displayed in a glass case"

TextBillie Muraben

With a gift for malice and a penchant for exhibitionism, Marchesa Luisa Casati is the kind of figure so swathed in myth that she defies definition.

Luisa, Marchesa Casati Stampa di Soncino (born Luisa Adele Rosa Maria Amman; 23 January 1881 – 1 June 1957), was an Italian heiress, muse, and patroness of.

Artists painted, sculpted, and photographed her; poets praised her strange beauty.

The fabled Marchesa Luisa Casati (1881-1957) triumphed as the brightest star in European society.

The Marchesa Luisa Casati was Europe's most notorious celebrity, and its most eccentric.

Over the course of her lifetime she was a muse to Jean Cocteau, Cecil Beaton, F. T. Marinetti and Erté, and modelled for drawings.

In her heyday, she wandered Venice in nothing but a fur coat, accompanied by her pet cheetahs on diamond leashes. She threw parties attended by Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and the dancers from the Ballet Russes, in rooms decorated with Egyptian statuary, crystal balls and lions borrowed from the zoo.

When her jewellery box held nothing suitable, she'd don her boa constrictor, or have white peacocks become an accessory for her elaborate costume.

Casati was born Luisa Adele Rosa Maria Amman in 1881, and grew up near Lake Como in Italy.

She was was one of two daughters of parents who had