#luisa casasti

[lamarchesacasati]

1935 Man Ray (1890-1976), Marchesa Luisa Casati dressed as Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Sissi), with “Flick” and “Flock” as a back-ground, at the Beaumont Ball.

She was a force of nature and made her mark on everyone she met, exerting a magnetism on her contemporaries. The marquise used the public realm as a theatre scene of a play where she was very much the star. Her every public appearance was a true show, since she wanted to be, as she said “a living work of art”.

Sotheby’s

[lamarchesacasati]

Portrait of the Marchesa (Marquise) Luisa Casati (1881-1957), by Arturo Martini (1885-1947) in 1912.

For sale: meisterdrucke.uk

Marchesa Luisa Casati, Un lent réveil après bien des metempsychoses by Alberto Martini, 1912.

Un lent réveil après bien des metempsychoses.

“A title derived from Verlaine’s poem “Kaledoscope” Also known as Nocturnal Butterfly, this immense pastel, over nine feet tall, was subsequently displayed at the Esposizione Internazionale of 1914. It shows Marchesa Luisa Casati standing near the edge of a moonlit Venetian lagoon, her slender figure slowly transforming into that of a butterfly. In fact, her right arm has already changed into a brilliantly patterned insect wing.”

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