Monday, August 31, 2020

Italian Aristocrats--

Muzio Attendolo Sforza

(1369-1424) 
Italian condottiero & aristocrat. 

Grand Constable of Naples 
Lord of Benevento 
Lord of Manfredonia (given by Giovanna II of Naples) 

Son of: Giovanni Attendolo & Elisa Muzio

Husband of: 
1. Antonia Salimbeni (d.1411), mar 1409, dau of Francesco Salimbeni, Patrician of Siena & Lord of Chiusi
2. Caterina Piscopo (d.1418), mar 1414, sister of Pandolfello Piscopo, a.k.a. Alopo, mar 1413
3. Maria da Marzano (d.1440), Countess of Celano, mar 1419; daughter of Giacomo da Marzano, 1st Duke of Sessa, widow of Nicola de Berardi

"Contemporary historians describe the first Sforza as a man of great height and enormous strength, with a dark skin and deep-set blue eyes, half-hidden by his bushy, black eyebrows. His harsh voice and rough manners served to emphasise the general ferocity of his appearance. Iron discipline. All gambling and swearing were forbidden; a soldier who appeared in rusty armour was flogged; treachery and stealing were punished by death. . . ." (A History of Milan Under the Sforza)
Muzio Attendolo Sforza 
Muzio's lovers  were:
1) Lucia Terzani (1380-1461).

Wife of Marco da Fogliano, Muzio's companion-in-arms, mar 1411.

"Muzio Sforza spent upward of roughly fifteen years in the service of Panicale learning the art of war alongside another soon-to-be famous condottiere, Muze's future rival and sometimes friend Braccio da Montone. At the age of twenty-seven, Sforza was hired by the duke of Milan (ironically from the future seat of his dynasty) Gian Galeazzo Visconti. After a coupe years, the duke released Muzio from his service due to jealous impugning of the latter's character by rival soldiers. He next served for Florence in its effort to recapture Pisa. It was during this employment with the Florentines Muzio began to have a relationship with the most significant of his mistresses Lucia Tregani. At the time it was believed the condottiere seduced the young woman by guaranteeing a marriage between the two later, if she would consent to advances now. The product of this liaison was the son and heir of his father's name and career, Francesco, born July 23, 1401. Although well bred, Lucia was neither wealthy nor well born enough to satisfy the ambitions of her illiterate lover. After giving him seven children in all, Muzio compensated Lucia for her fidelity to him by arranging for her to wed a prominent captain in his employ, Mario Fogligno of Ferrara, who was a member of the gentry there. As for himself, Muzio arranged during the course of is life to procure suitable wives from the nobility. As expected they brought lucrative dowries and titles with them." (The Color Line: A History: 342) 

2) Tamira di Cagli

Natural offspring
a. Mansueto Sforza (1400-1467), Abbot of San Lorenzo of Cremona 

b. Onestina Sforza (1402-1422), Benedictine nun

Costanzo I Sforza
(1446-1483)
Signore di Pesaro
His lover was:
Fiora Boni (c1450-?)

Natural Offspring:
1. Giovanni Sforza d'Aragona, Principe di Pesaro
2. Galeazzo Sforza
3. Carlo Sforza
4. Ercole Sforza.

(1310?-1348)

Natural daughter of Roberto di Napoli & Sibila Sabran.

Personal & family background.
"Boccaccio wrote about Maria d'Aquino and their relationship in several of his literary works. She is traditionally identified as Fiammetta. According to him, Maria's mother was a Provençal noblewoman, Sibila Sabran, wife of Count Thomas IV of Aquino. She was born after Countess Sibila and King Robert committed adultery at his coronation festivities in 1310, but was given the family name of her mother's husband. Her putative father placed her in a convent." (Wikipedia)

" . . . The whole of the royal family inhabited the Castel Novo at Naples, which, with the strength of a fortress, united the magnificence of a palace. It contained at this time the finest library then existin gin Europe, and its walls had been decorated by the paintings of Giotto, one of the first restorers of the art in Italy. Under the same roof resided the Princess Maria, the younger sister of Joanna, and Maria of Sicily, a natural daughter of King Robert, remarkable for her beauty, her accomplishments, and her gallantries. She was the mistress of Boccaccio, and his too celebrated Fiammetta, at whose comman he wrote the Decameron." (Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns: 72)

"Maria of Sicily became the wife of Robert, Count of Artois. An old French writer is of opinion that this princess loved Boccaccio. . . Assuredly, the king of immortality which Boccaccio has bestowed on the Princess Maria is not exactly that which she anticipated. The Fiannetta, notwithstanding the reality, force, and beauty of the picture which her lover has left of her (considered as a portrait), will never bear a comparison with her contemporary, Laura. . . ." (Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns: 72)

Her lover was:
Boccaccio.
Lover in 1336
Italian poet.

" . . . The whole of the royal family inhabited the Castel Novo at Naples, which, with the strength of a fortress, united the magnificence of a palace. . . Under the same roof resided the Princess Maria, the younger of Joanna, and Maria of Sicily, a natural daughter of King Robert, remarkable for her beauty, her accomplishments, and her gallantries. She was the mistress of Boccaccio, and his too celebrated Fiammetta, at whose command he wrote the Decamerone (sic)." (Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns: 72)

"Maria of Sicily became the wife of Robert, Count of Artois. An old French writer is of the opinion that this princess loved Boccaccio merely 'pour son beau dire et sa belle plume, pour la rendre excellence et imortelle par son rapport a tout le monde de ses belles vertual; male le galant n'en fit rien; et la laissa trompee, et s'en alla ecrire ces deux livres menteurs, qui l'ont plus scandlisee qu'edifice.' Assuredly, the kind of immortality which Boccaccio has bestowed on the Princess Maria is not exactly that which she anticipated. The Fiammetta, not withstanding the reality, force, and beauty of the picture which her lover has left of her (considered a portrait), will never bear a comparison with her contemporary, Laura. . . ." (Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns: 72)
Agostino Chigi
@Wikipedia
(1466-1520)
Italian banker & Renaissance patron.

Son of: Mariano Chigi, Italian banker & Margarita Baldi.

Husband of:
1. Margherita Sarracini (d.1508), a.k.a. Margherita Saraceni.

2. Francesca Ordeaschi, mar 1519.

"He typified a new group in Rome: rich merchants or bankers, usually of non-Roman origin, whose wealth put the old Roman nobility in the shade, and whose generosity to artists and writers was exceeded only by that of popes and cardinals. By the age of forty-three he was chief Italian moneylender to republics and kingdoms, Christian or infidel. He financed trade with a dozen countries including Turkey, and by lease from Julius II acquired a monopoly in alum and salt. . . ." (The Renaissance: A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D.: 507)

His lovers were:
1) Francesca Ordeaschi.
Lover in 1511.
Italian courtesan

a.k.a Francesca Ardeasca.

Natural offspring:
a. Lorenzo
b. Leone
c. Alessandro
d. Giovanni
e. Margherita
f. Camilla.

" . . . His (Chigi) Venetian mistress Francesca Ordeaschi was the toast of Rome. . . . " (Wikipedia)

" . . . These frescoes created a perfect setting for entertainments such as the festivities of August 1519 attended by Pope Leo X and by twelve cardinals, on the occasion of the marriage of Agostino Chigi with his Venetian mistress, Francesca Ordeaschi, and of the legitimisation of their two sons. . . ." (Tinagli: 129)

" . . . (T)he work was fairly certainly completed to coincide with Chigi's marriage on 28 August 1519, under pressure from Pope Leo X, to his Venetian mistress, Francesca Ordeaschi, whom he had brought to Rome in 1511. . . ." (Ames-Lewis: 189)

" . . . It was here, in 1519, that Agostino Chigi wed his considerably younger Venetian mistress, Francesca Ordeaschi (then pregnant with their fifth child), with whom he had taken up after the death of a prior paramour, the courtesan Imperia. The lavish marriage ceremony was attended by a retinue of cardinals and conducted by the epicurean Pope Leo X (an occasional, if rather dull, guest at Chigi's legendary banquets), who had insisted on the nuptials. . . ." (Art and Love in Renaissance Italy: 44)

2) Imperia de Cognati (1486-1512)
Roman courtesan.

Natural offspring:
a. Lucrezia.

" . . . The banker Agostino Chigi was the regular and main client of Imperia, at this point called the richest banker in the world. He financed Imperia to maintain what was called a royal standard of living, and she kept both a palace in Rome and a country villa outside the city." (Wikipedia)
Filippo Strozzi

(1489-1538)
Italian condottiero & banker.

His lovers were:
1) Camilla Pisana.
Florentine poet & courtesan.

" . . . Relevant here is the fact that during Festa's tenure in the Cappella Sistina he had intimate dealings with the wealthy Florentine Nobleman Filippo Strozzi, who was often in Rome on business. Strozzi helped Festa find a publisher for his music and was also godfather to his son. . . Furthermore, Strozzi kept his own villino with live-in courtesans before the Porta San Gallo in Florence 'for his own use and for the use of his friends, among them Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the father of the Catherine de Medici who later became Queen of France,' as Einstein notes, continuing: 'its occupants were some of the most celebrated courtesans of the day: Camilla Pisana, Alessandra Florentina, a certain Beatrice, and one Brigida. Camilla, Filippo's mistress, was also able to write poetry in the style of Bembo and Cassola for which we may assume that Verdelot and Festa supplied the music. When we consider Strozzi's letters together with Einstein's claim . . . that Festa was among those furnishing music for verse of the famed courtesan-poet, there is strong reason to believe that a feminine-voiced madrigal text set by Festa was penned by her in the Strozzi villino." (The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives: 137-138)

End of affair & aftermath: " . . . In the end Filippo tired of Camilla, and she departed for Rime. . . Camilla was registered in Rome as a tenant in the house of Giovanni Battista Candellataro during the papacies of Leo X and Clement VII (1517-26). . . She went on to become a muse of sorts to the young Piero Aretino, who immortalizes her beauty in La cortigiana (II. xi) and in a 1541 letter to Angelo Firenzuola recalls a rather wild adventure he had at her house years earlier." (The Courtesan's Arts: 140)

2) Marina.
"In 1464 and 1465, Filippo lived with a slave mistress, Marina. Men often treated slaves as concubines, but in this case the slave seems to have been fond of Filippo, and perhaps he was of her, too. At first, Alessandra wrote to Filippo that she did not know whether to believe gossip about a slave who 'knows how to take care of you well.' A short time later, she no longer doubted the stories about Marina's solicitude for Filippo and wrote: 'hearing such things, I do not marvel that you wish to delay marrying for still another year You are like someone who wants to put-off death and payment as long as he can" (The Strozzi of Florence: Widowhood and Family Solidarity in the Renaissance: 182)

3) Tullia d'Aragona.

Francesco Lorenzo Morosini
(1714-1793)
Venetian patrician and diplomat.
Procuratore di San Marco
1755
Venetian Ambassador in Paris
1748-1751.

His lover was:
Marianne de Charpillon.

"It was at Vauxhall Gardens in the summer of 1762 that Marianne de Charpillon was spotted by Francesco Lorenzo Morosini, the new Venetian ambassador to the Court of St James, and former ambassador to France.  In her mid-teens, perfectly-formed, stunningly beautiful and no doubt with the highly-prized commodity of her virginity still intact, Mademoiselle de Charpillon appeared to be just what Morosini was looking for to amuse him during his one-year sojourn in London...."  (Summers, 2012, p. 277)

Casanova 
(1725-1798).

Personal & Family Background: Giacomo was the son of Gaetano Giacomo Casanova, an actor-dancer, and Giovanna Maria ("Zanetta") Farussi, a Venetian actress known as "La Buranella".

A Portrait by the Prince de Ligne: "It was about this time (i.e., 1786) that the Prince (de Ligne) became friendly with the adventurer, the devil turned hermit, Jacques Casanova de Seingalt. He is the portrait which Ligne has traced, with the title Aventuros, of the famous Italian:

"He would have been a fine man if he were not ugly. He is tall, and built like a Hercules; but an African complexion, animated eyes, full of wit and truth, but constantly indicating susceptibility, restlessness, and vindictiveness, make him look rather ferocious, easier to move to anger than to gaiety. He laughs little, but he makes others laugh. He has a way of saying things which remind one of the clown or of Figaro, and makes him very agreeable. The only things he does not know are those which he pretends to know: the rules of dancing, of the French language, of taste, of etiquette and worldly wisdom. The only things about him that are not comic are his comedies; and his philosophic works are the only ones with no philosophy in them, for all the others are full of it. He is always original, arresting, profound. He is a well of science; but he quotes Homer and Horace until you get disgusted. His turn of mind and his sallies are an extract of Attic wit. He is sensitive and grateful; but, when one offends him, he is malignant and detestable. A million would not redeem some little joke that you made at his expense." (The Prince de Ligne: A Gay Marshal of the Old Regime:154)

Physical Appearance & Personality: "Jacques Casanova de Seingalt as he called himself in his memoirs was tall, good looking with bright dark eyes and a beaked nose. He was, you might say, the Valentino of his day. He was also an intellectual who could hold his own against Voltaire...." (Blythe).

" . . . The few descriptions and surviving portraits of Casanova confirm that in his prime, he was an imposing presence, over six feet tall, with a swarthy “North African” complexion and a prominent nose....." (Smithsonian Magazine).

"...Unusually tall, as handsome as a prince and as dark-skinned as a North African, Casanova is aware that he has the kind of presence that stops both men and women in their tracks. At the age of thirty, he is a vital predatory animal in his prime. Coupled with his larger-than-life personality he has a surprising sensitivity, and an unquenchable thirst for all that life has to offer, good or bad... As well as good looks he possesses the rare gift of befriending women... Unlike many men of his day, he knows what motivates and pleases women and is in tune with their fears, hopes and desires... In his long career as a womaniser he learned early on that he has only to be s sympathetic listener to worm his way into a heart or underneath a skirt." (Summers, 2007, p. 2).

"Casanova was hardly a handsome man. True, he was tall, slim and well muscled, but his face was swarthy and pock marked, his nose an eagle beak, his chin and forehead receding. His eyes, however, were brilliant black orbs which could melt a woman's heart at 20 paces or flash in Olympian anger, His hair, pomaded, powdered and curled in the height of fashion, his gleaming white teeth and his fashionably tailored clothes, with snowy ruffles at throat and wrist, were care for with all the vanity of the born dandy." (Milwaukee Journal)

Character/Persona: "...He was a con man, a rogue, a thief, a charlatan, an opportunist, a bon vivant -- and a lifelong Roman Catholic." (Bentley)

Casanova the Womanizer: "But by far Casanova's greatest achievement has been as a womaniser. He has had women in almost every city, town and port on his remarkable 64,000-kilometre journey around Europe, and sometimes on the coach journeys in between. He has slept with actresses and opera singers, housekeepers and shopkeepers, a slave and a serf, lawyers' wives and businessmen's daughters, noble women and fallen women, high-class courtesans and common whores. He has made love to experienced married ladies and he has deflowered countless virgins. He has enjoyed sex with women in their late fifties, and -- a particular predilection of his -- girls as young as eleven years old." (Summers, 2007, p. 7)
Casanova
by Francesco Casanova
@ Life in Italy
 
His lovers were:
1) Angela Cattarina Tosello.
"Casanova at 16 was back at Venice, studying in a seminary. There he fell in love with the charming Angela, niece of his confessor, Father Tosello. When Angela failed to keep a rendezvous one night at the home of her girlfriends, Nanette and Marton, Casanova consoled himself in the arms of both." (Milwaukee Journal)

"Angela Cattarina Tosello was the daughter of the priest's brother, painter Iseppo Tosello. Two months younger than Casanova, she was an honest, beautiful girl who had heard the dramatic story of his haircut from her uncle's lips, and, when Casanova came to the house, insisted on hearing it again from his. Casanova soon became as obsessed with Angela as Senator Malapiero was with Teresa Imer. In order to have a valid excuse to see her, he announce his intention of becoming a full-time preacher and roped in her uncle to help him. On his frequent visits to the Tosello household, ostensibly to discuss the subject of writing sermons, Casanova wooed Angela with all the charm he could muster. But whilst she was happy to encourage him to love her, and even promised to marry him if he gave up the Church, she proved a perfect dragon of virtue. None of Casanova's emotive arguments had the slightest effect on her. Angela was adamant that she was going to save her virginity, and all her other sexual favours, for her marriage bed." (Summers, 2007, pp. 67-68) [Ref1:67]

2) Angelica, Lucrezia's sister.

3) Anna Dorothea Kleer.
Lover in 1786.

Daughter of: Dux castle porter

"The 'young girl' referred to in Francesca's letter was Anna-Dorothea Kleer, daughter of the porter of the castle. This young girl became pregnant in 1786 and Casanova was accused of seducing her. The guilty one, however, was a painter named Schottner who married the unfortunate girl in January 1786." (Casanova Memoirs, Vol. 30)

4) Marie-Anne-Louise, Baroness Roll von Emmenholtz.

5) Barbara.

6) Bettina Gozzi (1718-?).

Daughter of: Vincenzo Gozzi & Apollonia Businari.

She who gives him his first lessons in sex; younger sister of Dr. Antonio Gozzi (in 1734-1737): ""In Padua, a girl named Bettina, a few years older than young Giacomo, introduced into the boy's heart 'the first sparks of feeling which later became my ruling passion.' He was 10 years old at the time, though he didn't lose his virginity proper...." (Bentley)

"...(I)t was decided to send the boy to board in Padua, where he would be tutored by the priest and Doctor of Civil and Canon Law Antonio Gozzi... The experiment was partly successful: Giacomo became a good scholar, he attended the University (1738--1741), graduated, and later received minor orders. But to a career in the Church he eventually proved recalcitrant. For while Gozzi was trying to lead him toward it, the priest's younger daughter Bettina was teaching him his real bent. In this his first love affair, it was the girl who was the seducer. After that one apprenticeship, he took the role himself. From then on the stages of his life are punctuated by women." (Casanova, 2007, p. 1173)

" . . . [His father] arranged for him, aged nine, to be privately educated in Padua. He spent some miserable months starving in a rat- and flea-infested boardinghouse came to the rescue, traveling to Padua herself, tearing a strip off his sadistic Croatian landlady, and transferring him to the family home of his young tutor, the abbe Gozzi. Giacomo proved himself an excellent student and was soon outpointing his teacher in theological discussions. Extracurricular activities were also on offer. The priest's teenage sister, Bettina, seduced him, inflaming his ardour one morning by washing his thighs, using the flimsy excuse that she wanted him to try on a new pair of white stockings. As Casanova recalled, she 'struck the first sparks of a passion that was to become the dominant one in my heart.' The eleven-year-old Giacomo quickly lost control ('the sweet pleasure her curiosity caused in me did not cease until it could increase no more') and then tormented himself, wondering if, after this terrible crime, he should offer to marry her. But Bettina had already turned her attention elsewhere, to older boys---teaching Giacomo another, less enjoyable lesson: After love comes melancholy." (The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure)

7) Caterina Capretta.
a nun

a.k.a. "C.C.".

Casanova falls in love with her, and whose father puts her in a convent: 

"He goes to Paris, then returns to Venice. There, he meets Caterina Capretta, has an affair with her (naturally) and asks her father for her hand (that is more surprising). The father says HA! and puts Capretta away into a convent...."(everything2.com)

"...Few women could resist. One of his most famous seductions was of a ravishing, noble-born nun he identifies only as 'M.M.' (Historians have identified her as, most likely, Marina Morosini.) Spirited by gondola from her convent on Murano Island to a secret luxury apartment, the young lady 'was astonished to find herself receptive to so much pleasure,' Casanova recalls, 'for I showed her many things she had considered fictions...and I taught her that the slightest constraint spoils the greatest pleasures.; The long-running romance blossomed into a ménage à trois when M.M.’s older lover, the French ambassador, joined their encounters, then to à quatre when they were joined by another young nun, C.C. (most likely Caterina)." (Smithsonian Magazine)

8) Caton.
Lover in 1784.

9) Donna Ignazia.
Lover in 1768.
a gentleman-cobbler's daughter

10) Donna Lucrezia Castelli.
Lover in 1744.

" . . . (H)is 'conquest' of Donna Lucrezia Castelli, the Neopolitan (sic) woman Casanova seduced during the course of a long carriage trip from her hometown to Rome in 1744. . . . " (Damion)

"Casanova's affair with Donna Lucrezia was one of his most torrid and began innocently enough on a carriage ride to Rome. Her husband was far too trusting of the young apprentice priest and did not notice the advances Casanova was making during the trip and later excursions with the family. The cuckolded husband also was oblivious to how Donna Lucrezia was responding to Casanova and seemed to ignore the time the two spent along together. In a boastful tale, Casanova tells of sneaking into bed with Donna Lucrezia and her virgin sister and after making love four times to Lucrezia he turned his attention to the 17 year old Angelica, weeks before her wedding. . . ." (Life in Italy)

11) Esther.
Lover in 1758.

12) Francesca Buschini.
Lover in 1779.

Venetian seamstress.

"She was a seamstress, although often without work... The probabilities are that she was a girl of the most usual sort, but greatly attached to Casanova who, even in his poverty, must have dazzled her as a being from another world. She was his last Venetian love, and remained a faithful correspondent until 1787.... (Casanova, 2004, p. 9). [Ref1:Casanova] [Ref2:Casanova]
13) Giustiniana WynneCountess Rosenberg-Orsini (1737-1791)

Anglo-Venetian author.

Persona or Character: ". . . Giustiniana too stood out in those assemblies. Behind that innocent, awestruck gaze was a lovely girl brimming with life. She was bright, alert, and possessed of a quick sense of humor. Andrea was instantly taken with her. She was so different from the other young women of his set---familiar, in a way, for after all she was a Venetian born and raised, yet at the same time very distinctive, even a little exotic, not only on accaount of her English blood but also because of her unique character." (Robilant, 2007, n.p.) [Bio2] [Ref1] [Ref2:Casato Renier] [Ref3:Dicocorate2]

14) Hedwig.
"...the bluestocking daughter of a Protestant minister...":

15) Helena.
Hedwig's cousin.

16) Henriette.
Lover in 1749-1750.

"After a bout of illness and a group of friends who insist on curing him with magic, he meets his most precious love: Henrietta. The affair lasts eight months, July 1749 - February 1750. The dark Frenchwoman is forced to leave him in February, and Casanova becomes the classical lover who has lost, comparing love to a monster and engaging in various depressed things." (everything2.com)

"Henrietta was the pseudonym of Casanova's greatest love and the woman who possibly broke his heart. Running from an angry husband in the guise of a man, Henriette basically used Casanova as well as several other men to escape t the city of Parma in luxury. She was everything that Casanova wanted in a lover: beautiful, intelligent, aristocratic and Henriette wanted no commitment. In the end Casanova was abandoned and virtually bankrupted by Henriette, who returned to her family in France. Decades later Casanova would carry on a correspondence with the now widowed Henriette and although eh would not see her again, he continued to love the woman he could not have." (Life in Italy)

17) Irene Rinaldi
Lover in 1774.

Actress

a.k.a. Irene Balzali,

18) Ismail.
"...Other encounters are documented in Casanova's notes about a man named Ismail during a trip to Constantinople...." (Murphy)

19) Jeanne Camus de Pontcarre, Marquise d'Urfe.

"During his time in Paris, Casanova served as the director of the French lottery and became a millionaire virtually overnight. For years he was a close adviser to the Marquise d'Urfe, one of the richest women in France. Her faith in him finally dissipated when his last attempt to help her reincarnate failed. He told her that the complex ritual required that she give birth to herself, impregnated by him with three consecutive orgasms. Despite the naked dancing girl he had arranged as decor for the ceremony, he admitted to faking two of the orgasms, and the 63-year-old marquise did not succeed in giving birth to anyone, least of all herself. Casanova fled France in disrepute. He was never to be rich again." (Bently, NYT)

"Casanova had better luck with the Marquise d'Urfe, one of the richest women in Paris, who was impressed by his deep knowledge of the Kabbalah. He convinced her that he could help her be reincarnated and that part of the necessary ritual involved his having sex with her. The Marquise was so physically repulsive he had to fake two of his three orgasms. . . ." (The Book of the Dead)

20) Leah.
Lover in 1772.

21) Leonilda.
Casanova's daughter by Lucrezia Castelli.

"Leonilda was the love child of Casanova and Donna Lucrezia, raised as legitimate by her family. Imagine the horror when sixteen years later Leonilda brings home her fiance -- her biological father Giacomo Casanova.The engagement is dropped fortunately, but Casanova still has dark intentions on his daughter and ends up getting Leonilda and her mother Donna Lucrezia in bed. However, Casanova claims that he did not have intercourse with his daughter on this occasion. If his memoirs can be trusted he may have met Leonilda years later, married to an impotent husband and got her pregnant, thereby siring his own grandson." (Life in Italy)

22) Lieutenant Lunin. 
" . . . Other encounters are documented in Casanova's notes about...a dalliance with a Lieutenant Lunin during his time in St. Petersburg...." (Murphy)
23) Lorenza MaddalenaContessa Bonafede.
[Ref]

24) Lucia.

25) Lucrezia.
a lawyer's wife

" . . . In a stagecoach on his way to Rome, he fell in love with the beautiful Lucrezia, a lawyer's wife. She became one of the major mistresses of his long career in seduction and double dealing." (Milwaukee Journal)

26) Madame Dubois.
"He also met, in the same place, his own son by Mme. Dubois, his former housekeeper at Soleure who had married the good M. Lebel...." (Casanova, 2004, p. 14)

27) Mademoiselle de la M-re.
"Mlle de la M-re was an heiress and 'an angel' whose family promised her in marriage to a man she had never met. In order to seduce her, Casanova promised to marry her himself -- a cynical exercise in getting his own way. Although he swore he would not deflower her, he did so anyway... By the following evening he had cease to desire Mlle de la M-re, just as she had predicted he would...." (Casanova's Women: The Great Seducer and the Women He loved: 211)

28) Mademoiselle Morphi.
" . . . One of his favorites in Paris was a grimy little gamin named Mlle. Morphi...." (Milwaukee Journal)

29) Manon Balletti.
Lover in 1757.

30) Marguerite Astrodi.

31) Marina Morosini.
a.k.a. "M.M."
a nun

"Take Casanova's mysterious 'MM,' who historians now agree was almost certainly Marina Morosini. . . . " (Amidon). 

32) Marianne de Charpillon (1746-1777).

a.k.a.
Marie-Anne-Genevieve Augspurgher
Marianne-Genevieve de Boulainvilliers
Mademoiselle Charpillon
Mademoiselle de Boulainvilliers
La Charpillon
Genevieve de Boulainvilliers.

"This was the first meeting between Casanova and Marianne Genevieve de Boulainvilliers, later known as Marianne de Charpillon. When they met again four years later she thanked him for his generous gesture by becoming his torturer. He wrote of their second meeting in London, 'It was on that fatal day at the beginning of September 1763 that I began to die and I ceased to live.' Casanova was thirty-eight years old, wealthy, successful and, he had presumed until then, highly attractive to women. Sixteen-year-old Marianne de Charpillon would show him otherwise. As a lover, she almost destroyed him." (Summers: 271).

" . . . [O]nly towards the end of 1763 did the scales finally fall from her eyes. It was in London, with a prostitute of Denmark Street known as La Charpollon, that Casanova finally met his match. She robbed him, deceived him and humiliated him at every turn. From this time on, he confessed, his life went downhill all the way." (Casanova)

"Marianne de Charpillon was an innocent-looking courtesan of 16 who was being touted around town by her Swiss-born aunts in the hope of attracting a rich punter who would keep the entire family. Fresh from Paris with money in his pockets and knowing scarcely a word of English Casanova was the perfect victim for the Soho-based, French-speaking prostitute. On their very fist meeting, Charpillon flirtatiously promised to make him suffer for loving her, and she certainly kept her word." (Daily Mail)

33) Marta Savorgnan & Nanetta Savorgnan.
Lovers in 1740.

"...It was also in this neighborhood that Casanova, while studying for a career in the church at the age of 17, lost his virginity to two well-born teenage sisters, Nanetta and Marta Savorgnan. He found himself alone with the adventurous pair one night sharing two bottles of wine and a feast of smoked meat, bread and Parmesan cheese, and innocent adolescent games escalated into a long night of “ever varied skirmishes.” The romantic triangle continued for years, beginning a lifelong devotion to women. “I was born for the sex opposite to mine,” he wrote in the preface of his memoir. “I have always loved it and done all that I could to make myself loved by it..." (Smithsonian Magazine)

"...[H]e didn't lose his virginity proper until two sisters, Nanetta and Marta, ages 16 and 15, conspired to lure the eager 16-year-old into their bed for a kissing game... Apparently, one could handle two quite well...." (Bentley)

34) Pauline.
Lover in 1763.

35) Rosalie Astrodi.

36) Signora Foscari.
Lover in 1745.

37) Teresa.
Teresa Cornelys 
38) Teresa Cornelys (1723-1797).
Italian opera singer, actress &entrepreneur.

a.k.a.
Anna Maria Teresa Imer
Teresa Imer
Madame de Trenti (Trenty)
Pompeati
the Mother of Masquerades, Taste and Elegance (by fashionable society, 1776).

Daughter of: Giuseppe Imer, an opera impressario & Paolina, an actress.

Wife of: Angelo Pompeati, Italian dancer and choreographer, mar mid-1740s

Physical Traits & Personal Qualities: "...Like her short, stout father, the youngest Imer was no great beauty. However, she was pretty, curvaceous and remarkably sexually alluring, and her strong nose and thick arched eyebrows lent her face an amused, coquettish expression which was enhanced by an outspoken manner and a feisty character. Men found Teresa irresistibly attractive. Well aware of this, she already knew how to get what she wanted from them whilst giving little to nothing in return." (Summers, 2007, p. 63)


"Next our hero ingratiated himself with one Messer Malipiero, and dined daily at his house. There he met Teresa, a 17 year old beauty beloved of Malipiero. One night the host returned unexpectedly and found Teresa on Casanova's knee, exchanging ardent kisses. Caned out of the house, Casanova took to the road...." (Milwaukee Journal)

"Of all the young women he [Casanova] met through Malipiero, the greatest temptress of all was Teresa, the daughter of Giuseppe Imer, the actor/manager of the San Samnuele theatre and Zanetta Casanova's erstwhile lover. The Imer family had lived around the cormer from the Casanovas in the Corte del Duca Sforza . . . where Teresa and her older sister Marianna were both destine to begin their singing careers. . . ." (Casanova's Women: The Great Seducer and the Women He Loved:63)

". . . A near contemporary of Giacomo Casanova's, their cosmopolitan rambles often intertwined, a first liaison apparently dating from Teresa's early singing years in Venice. Casanova accepted paternity of one of her children, a daughter Sophie, who accompanied her mother to England." (White, 2012, p. 292) References: [Bio2:London Remembers] [Bio3:British History Online] [Ref1:191] [Ref2:292]
Teresa Lanti 

39) Teresa Lanti (1732-1790)
Italian impersonator, castrato.

a.k.a.
Angiola Calori
Bellino
the Castrato.

Lover in 1744.

"Angiola Calori was raised in Bologna, where her mother took in lodgers. According to Giacomo Casanova's memoirs, she had an early affair with the renowned opera castrato Salimbeni, and that Salimbeni suggested that she pass as a castrato (a male soprano who had been gelded before puberty to retain his vocal range) to avoid the attentions of men, and promised that he would get her a job with the Elector of Saxony, but died before he could do so. Nevertheless she became the castrato Bellino, and thus was able to sing on stage in the Papal States. She claimed that she had been able to pass the examination (carried out by an elderly priest) with the aid of an addition taped to her body in the appropriate position. Casanova felt that Bellino could not be a castrato, and seduced him to be sure. He refers to her as Teresa Lanti and claims that she raised his son as her supposed brother. Angiola apparently married Cirello Palesi circa 1760, and became a famous soprano. Some books, following Casanova, refer to her as Teresa Lanti Palesi. Heriot points out that Bellino's meeting with Casanova took place in 1744, but that Salimbeni's death is recorded as 1751. He thinks that Casanova perhaps confused two singers, and that the castrato in question was Giuseppe Appiani, who was born in the same year and place as Salimbeni, and who did die in Bologna in 1742. More to the point, if her birth year was 1732 as given by Willard Trask, it is highly unlikely that Bellino was an established performer in 1744 as she would have been only 12. Nettl assumes that the tale is largely false, but also tells us that a portrait of Teresa may be seen in a Milanese theatrical museum, but does not specify which one. Bellino is a character in the Simon Capet film, Evirati, 2000, and the 2005 Russell T Davies BBC mini-series Casanova, but not in the Hollywood film of 2005, nor in Fellini’s film of 1976." (A Gender Variance Who's Who)

"Casanova's affair with someone named Bellino is certainly one of his most curious since it was believed at the time that Bellino was a man. Bellino was one of the Castrati and so would have been castrated before puberty to keep his high singing voice. Although Casanova was not averse to homosexuality, from the start Casanova was convinced that Bellino was actually a woman and did everything he could to find out. As always Casanova got what he wanted and was to learn that Bellino was actually Teresa Lanti, a beautiful young girl who was posing as a Castrato. To conceal her true sex, Bellino would wear a fake penis and would dress in a masculine fashion when not performing. Unknown to him at the time, Casanova and the false Bellino would end up having a child, a son that she raised as her brother, but with his uncanny resemblance there was no mistaking Casanova's son." (Life in Italy)


" . . . Falling for a castrato singer Bellino, and convinced that she was a woman in disguise, he groped her crouch, only to find an unmistakable bulge. Indefatigable as ever, he reasoned this must be a 'monstrous clitoris,' and his persistence paid off. 'Bellino' was indeed a woman called Teresa, who wore a false phallus to get around the papal ban on women singing in church choirs. Needless to say, she became his mistress. . . ." (The Book of the Dead: n.p.)

40) Giacoma Antonia Veronese.
a.k.a. Camille.

Casanova Gallery.



References.
Dangerous Liaisons @ Salon.
Salimbeni (1712-1751) @ Haendel.
[Ref1:NYT]
[Ref2:Life in Italy]
[Ref3:Sexual Fables]
[Ref4:Memoirs]
[Ref5:Casanova]
[Ref6:Amidon]
[Ref7:billbeuttler]
[Ref8;Casanova]
[Ref9;Casanova]
[Bio1]
[Ref10]
[Ref11]
[Ref12]
[Ref13]
[Ref14:Smithsonian Magazine]

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