#cristina trivulzio principessa di belgioioso

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La commédienne exits from here and I hurry to tell you my impressions without retinence or diplomacy. I found her with a devastated face, almost ugly, of a thin and emaciated appearence, not at all a great lady, less intellectual than I thought. She's remained a hour and hasn't said a word of even little significance, she rotates her eyes in a very unpleasant and affected manner and besides this diffuses around herself a je ne sais quoi air of falsehood and malignity. I believe to have conducted myself naturally and in any way more intellectually than her. She was at first quite inihibited, then more and more loose: in short I have to praise myself for my course of action, but I have of her a most detestable opinion (did you know that she does communion?).

Marie d'Agoult's totally unbiased account of Cristina di Belgioioso's first and only visit to her. From a letter to Franz Liszt, 11 May 1840

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A rare intelligence, a passionate and domineering spirit, a powerful gaze, a notable cold-blooded courage, and most importantly the art of pleasing as essential part of her need to be adored.

Caroline Jaubert on Cristina di Belgioioso. From Souvenirs de Caroline Jaubert

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Records show that in 1834 Liszt accompanied Princess Cristina Belgiojoso on a visit to the House of Erard to purchase a new piano. The piano was a 240-centimeter Concert Grand piano made by Erard, being made in solid rosewood and carved in the princess’s favorite style: gothic, delivered to the princess’s salon in 1835. The register reveals the presence of Liszt during the purchase, as well as the name of the purchaser, “Madame Le Princess Belgiojoso,” the instrument’s serial number, and when it was made and dispatched. For decades, the instrument’s history was shrouded in mystery, as the House of Erard passed from one owner to another before closing. Amazingly, in 2001, this piano, used for the famous duel [the 1837 Thalberg-Liszt duel], was discovered in a private home.

Monica Chiyoung Yoo (2014, thesis). Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso: Her Passion for Music and Politics

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I'm impatient to present you Maria who, apart from her own virtues, also has that of resembling a person who to us, dear Ernesta, was very dear [probably Vittoria Gherardini, Cristina's mother as well as Ernesta's friend, who died in 1836]. This child is becoming so beautiful that anyone here stops to admire her; yet she doesn't have that which is called here éclat, since she is pale and has feautures so delicate that they aren't evident. It's impossible to tell you how much I love her.

Cristina di Belgioioso to her friend and former drawing teacher Ernesta Bisi regarding her daughter, Maria. Not dated.

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Portrait of Cristina Barbiano née Trivulzio, principessa di Belgioioso, by Henri Lehman. (image's source: cristinabelgiojoso.it)

Belgioioso commissioned Lehman the portrait for 4000 francs in 1843. When it was exposed at the Louvre for the first time, the painting received mixed reviews.

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Miniature portrait of young Cristina Trivulzio by George Emmanuel Optiz. (image's source: cristinabelgiojoso.it)

The exact date of the painting is unknown, however it seems to precede her marriage to Emilio Barbiano principe di Belgioioso in 1824, meaning that Cristina Trivulzio would have been sixteen years old at most when Optiz took her likeness.

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When returning from England, Cristina must have truly been in one of the brightest moments of her life. Arrivabene and Confalonieri both felt the need to point that out in their letters. The former wrote to the marquise [Costanza] Arconati: «Today, lunch with Confalonieri at la Belgioioso's, I have never seen her more beautiful, more lovely, and in better health.» And the count to Margherita [di Collegno]: «La Belgioioso has returned from the Isle of Wright fresher than she was before the illness.»

Pier Luigi Vercesi (2021). La donna che decise il suo destino

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On this day in history, September 24, 1824, Emilio Barbiano, principe di Belgioioso, and Cristina Trivulzio married.

Born to seduce, [Emilio] pursued his career without scruple or remorse. Around him was a group of jovial companions imitating his vices, artists, musicians, madamines, ballerinas, sexually liberated women, a whole world completely estranged to virtue. His health resisted the excesses, but the same could not be said of his fortune; his paternal inheritance risked being undermined when the ease of a marriage, such as one a mother dreams of for her beloved son, disrupted the course of his pleasures. Nothing could have been more unexpected: a young girl in her bloom, with a strict upbringing, devout, well-educated, but curious and superb, Cristina, the last descendant of the Trivulzios, the one whom they called la belle héritière, disdaining a host of suitors, began desiring the only one who didn't look at her. The prince's troubles, repeated and magnified by a thousand complacent echoes, her parents' disapproval, the perils of an indissoluble bond between an aspiring saint and a rake had no other effect than to change her desire into will: she had seen the monster and engaged her pride into taming him.

– Edmond d'Alton-Shée (1869). Mes Mémoires

The date of the wedding was set for the 24th of September 1824 in the church San Fedele, built on the orders of saint Carlo Borromeo in the first half of the fifteenth century behind Palazzo Marino, where Marianna de Leyva, the Nun of Monza, was raised, before being forcedly sent to a convent.

– Pier Luigi Vercesi (2021). La donna che decise il suo destino: Vita controcorrente di Cristina di Belgioioso

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Online sources for free on Cristina di Belgioioso

Memoirs

Jules Cloquet. Souvenirs sur la vie privée du général Lafayette (translation in English)

Comte d'Alton-Shée. Mes mémoires (1826-1848)

Journal du Comte Rodolphe Apponyi

Charles Monselet. Statues et Statuettes contemporaines

Les salons de Paris et la societé parisienne sous Louis-Philippe Ier

Katherine O'Meara. Un salon à Paris: Madame Mohl et ses intimes

Giovanni Visconti Venosta. Ricordi di gioventù: Cose vedute o sapute 1847-1860

Letters

Franz Liszt et la Princesse de Belgiojoso: Lettres

Nouvelle Revue Des Deux Mondes 1925-09-01: Vol 29 - Nouvelle Revue Des Deux Mondes 1925-09-15: Vol 29 - Nouvelle Revue Des Deux Mondes 1925-10-01: Vol 29 - Nouvelle Revue Des Deux Mondes 1925-10-15: Vol 29 [Cristina di Belgioioso's letters to Augustin Thierry]

Silvia Tatti. La scrittura epistolare di Cristina di Belgiojoso e le lettere inedite a Jules Mohl (1835-1868) in «Franco-italica»

Léon Séché (edited by). Alfred de Musset: Documents inédits

Léon Séché (edited by). Alfred de Musset: Correspondance

Caroline Jaubert. Souvenirs. Lettres et correspondances: Berryer (1847-1848), Alfred de Musset, Pierre Lanfrey, Henri Heine

Honoré de Balzac. Correspondance

Her Writings

MEMOIRS

Ricordi nell'esilio [translation in Italian + text in the original French]

Asie Mineure et Syrie: Souvenirs de voyages (translation in English)

ESSAYS

Essai sur la formation du dogme catholique

Histoire de la maison de Savoie

Studi intorno alla storia della Lombardia (alleged)

Osservazioni sullo stato attuale dell'Italia e sul suo avvenire

FICTION

Scènes de la vie turque [her three novellas] ( Emina [translation in Italian] Un contadino turco [translation in Italian] )

Biographies

Beth Archer Brombert. Cristina: Portraits of a Princess

Charles Nelson Gattey. A bird of curious plumage: The life of Princess Cristina di Belgiojoso, 1808-1871

Henry Remsen Whitehouse. A Revolutionary Princess: Cristina Belgiojoso-Trivulzio

Other

Raffaello Barbiera. Passioni del risorgimento; nuove pagine sulla Principessa Belgiojoso e il suo tempo con documenti inediti e illustrazioni

Angelo Pagliardini. Mappe interculturali della letteratura italiana nel Risorgimento

D.W. Davenport Adams. Celebrated women travellers of the nineteenth century

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The profound friendship that unites Princess Belgiojoso and the author of 'La Conquête d'Angleterre' is one of the most beautiful and noble things we know.

— Charles Monselet (1852). Statues et Statuettes contemporaines

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I went recently to see her [Cristina di Belgioioso] at home. I found her seated on a Renaissance-style sofa in a similarly furnished study. It was in the morning. She was wearing a white dressing-gown. I caught a glimpse of a sort of red velvet bodice which she had on beneath it. On her head was an immense turban which reminded me of that worn by Michael Angelo’s Sibyl.

— Souvenirs de Comte Apponyi (trans. Charles Nelson Gattey)

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A lady as remarkable for her beauty as for her intelligence and the qualities of her heart, the Princess Christine de Belgiojoso, (whose maiden name was Trivulzi), attended Lafayette with assiduous care when the state of his health permitted him to receive her. The General had in a manner adopted her amongst the number of his children, and entertained for her that pure attachment which superior mental qualities always inspire in those who can feel and appreciate them. I often found this excellent woman by his bed-side; and her information, no less solid than varied, and the charms of her conversation, beguiled his fatigues and made him at times forgetful of his sufferings. Lafayette often spoke to me of this lady’s rare merit, of her nobleness of character, and of her benevolence towards her unfortunate compatriots.

— Jules Cloquet, Marquis de Lafayette's physician, Recollections of the private life of General Lafayette

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Deathly pale, chronically ill, but free-spirited, she refused to yield to social or political coercion, thus condemning herself to solitude and persecution—the natural condition of a Romantic hero.

— Beth Archer Brombert, Cristina: Portraits of a Princess

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Portrait of Cristina Trivulzio di Belgioioso. Ernesta Bisi, circa 1824

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I have never seen anything so fabulous, so poetic, so fairy-like, as those black locks that fell in natural waves on the transparent whiteness of your face!

— Heinrich Heine to Cristina di Belgioioso, 18 April 1834

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Cristina [di Belgioioso] went out in her home in Milan on 5 July, 1871. When she sensed that death was nearing, she didn't wish to be caught lying down. Being unable to die while standing on her feet, she rested on an arm-chair. In the afternoon she had received Giovanni Visconti Venosta. «Gino, do we have good news from Italy?» she had asked. «Very good, princess, very good».

— Pier Luigi Vercesi. La donna che decise il suo destino: Vita controcorrente di Cristina di Belgioioso