Infinite
Variety: The Life and Legend of the Marchesa
Casati
by Scot
D. Ryersson and Michael Orlando Yaccarino
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
2004
264 pp., illus. 32 b/w. Paper, $18.95
ISBN: 0-8166-4520-5
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be
Every age and place has its icons, its
stars, and its weirdos. Some of them last
a few weeks or years, others never get
really forgotten and continue speaking
to the imagination across space and time.
The difference between the short-lived
and the longer lasting variants is probably
due to the effect the person in question
has or had on art, science, religion,
politics or lifestyle rather than the
measure of their extravagance in itself.
If the traces they leave become visible
over and over again through the continuing
interest in the works of their contemporaries,
chances are that they come into the spotlight
again. Of course, sometimes one or the
other is dug up by historians and chroniclers,
but that gives them only a small advantage.
It is not the science of historiography
that keeps people alive; it is their synchronic
relevance in a wider field than just the
one they were doing their thing in. Someones
rating on the Sitwell Scale of Eccentricitynamed
after that most delightful collector of
colourful characters, Edith Sitwell, a
notable weirdo in her own rightdoesnt
suffice for lasting fame. One needs to
leave an imprint in both popular media
and highbrow art.
Such is the case with Luisa, Marchesa
Casati, the daughter of a wealthy Milanese
industrialist who married the Marquis
Casati at a very early age, as was the
aristocratic custom in the last quarter
of the 19th Century. Bored with the life
of an obedient catholic mother and wife
with no other pastimes than embroidery
and amateur music making, she quickly
develops an interest in the fine arts,
men, and exotic petswe are
not certain in what order of importance.
She soon became the mistress and muse
of Gabriele dAnnunzio, keeping him
enthralled with her whims and her ability
to reinvent herself over and over again.
After the First World War, when romanticism
waned and the haute bourgeoisie had long
lost its role of a cultural avant-garde,
she turned to the futurists. Marinetti
and Balla are among her friends, and she
is seen in Venice, London, and Paris in
the company of the fine fleur of artists
in the interbellum. Numerous painters,
sculptors and photographers became inspired
by this red-haired woman who painted black
circles round her eyes and who dressed
out of fashion but always in the grandest
of styles. With her pearl necklaces and
her pet cheetahs or snakes, she must have
been in a class of her own, and she was
certainly recognised for it by the contemporary
boulevard press. Impoverished and in dept
since 1930, she kept in contact with the
likes of Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, Ezra Pound,
and even Jack Kerouac. She died in 1957,
aged seventy-six, poor but remembered.
Ryersson and Yaccarino have done their
best to paint a vivid and well-researched
portrait of this extraordinary woman and
her times, but at times one wishes they
had kept a bit more distance from their
subject. It is clear that they have fallen
victim to her mystery just like many of
her contemporaries. And truthfully, I
dont think they are to blame for
that.