The Countess in a photo by Pierre-Louise Pierson (c1863/66)

Countess de Castiglione (1837–1899) was a famous beauty and a significant figure in the early history of photography as a model and a collaborator of photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson. ImageMetadata File history File links Pierson_castiglione. ... ImageMetadata File history File links Pierson_castiglione. ... | Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom (1837 - 1901) 1837 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... 1899 (MDCCCXCIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Photography is the process of making pictures by means of the action of light. ...

Born Virginia Oldoini in 1837 in Florence, Tuscany, she married the Count Francisco Verasis de Castiglione at a young age. They had a son named Giorgio. Florences skyline Florence (Italian: ) is the capital city of the region of Tuscany, Italy. ... A flowered corn field in Tuscany. ...

Her cousin, Count di Cavour, was a minister to Victor Emmanuel II, king of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia. When the Castigliones traveled to Paris in 1855, the Countess was under her cousin's instructions to plead the cause of Italian unity with Napoleon III of France. She achieved notoriety by becoming Napoleon III's mistress, a scandal that led her husband to demand a marital separation. King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy Victor Emmanuel II (Italian: Vittorio Emanuele II; March 14, 1820—January 9, 1878) was the King of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia from 1849–1861, and King of Italy from 1861 until his death in 1878. ... Piedmont (Italian: Piemonte) is a region of northwestern Italy. ... This article is about the historical region of Savoy. ... Sardinia (Sardegna in Italian, Sardigna or Sardinna in the Sardinian language), is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (Sicily is the largest), between Italy, Spain and Tunisia, south of Corsica. ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Location Coordinates Time Zone CET (GMT +1) Administration Country France Région ÃŽle-de-France Département Paris (75) Subdivisions 20 arrondissements Mayor Bertrand Delanoë  (PS) (since 2001) City Statistics Land... Napoléon III Emperor of the French (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte) (20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was President of France from 1849 to 1852, and then Emperor of the French under the name Napoléon III from 1852 to 1870. ...

The Countess was known for her "divine beauty" and flamboyant entrances in elaborate dress at the imperial court. One of her most infamous outfits was a Queen of Hearts costume [1].

In 1856 she began sitting for Mayer and Pierson, the favored photographers of the imperial court. Over the next four decades she would collaborate with Pierre-Louis Pierson on over 400 photographs in which she re-created the signature moments of her life for the camera. Most of the photographs depicted the Countess in her theatrical outfits, such as the Queen of Hearts dress. A number of photographs depicted the Countess in ways that were undoubtedly risqué for the era -- notably, images that expose her bare legs or feet [2]. In these photos, her head has been cropped out.

The Legs of the Countess de Castiglione (c1861/67)

By 1857 the brief affair with Napoleon III was over, and she returned to Italy. ImageMetadata File history File links Castiglione_legs. ... ImageMetadata File history File links Castiglione_legs. ...

In 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, perhaps partly due to the influence that the Countess had exerted on Napoleon III. That same year, she returned to France, moving to Passy. Passy is an exclusive suburb on the Right Bank of Paris, France and traditional home to many of the citys wealthiest residents. ...

In the last years of her life she lived in an apartment on the Place Vendôme, where she had the rooms decorated in funereal black, the blinds kept drawn, and mirrors banished -- apparently so she would not have to confront her advancing age and loss of beauty. She would only leave the apartment at night. In 1899, she died in Paris at the age of sixty-two. Communards pose with the statue from the toppled Vendôme column, 1871 Place Vendôme is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. ...

Robert de Montesquiou, the Symbolist writer and poet, and avid art collector, was fascinated by the Countess de Castiglione. He spent thirteen years writing her biography, La Divine Comtesse, published in 1913. After her death, he collected the majority of her photographs, of which 275 were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1975. Robert, comte de Montesquiou-Fezensac (March 7th 1855, Paris - December 11th 1921, Menton), was a French Symbolist poet and art collector. ... The Metropolitan Museum of Art, often referred to simply as The Met, is one of the worlds largest and most important art museums. ...

La Divine Comtesse : Photographs of the Countess de Castiglione (ISBN 0-300-08509-5) by Pierre Apraxine is a catalog for a 2000 exhibition of the Countess de Castiglione photos at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A portrait of the Countess [3] was painted by George Frederic Watts in 1857. George Frederic Watts, as depicted in a biography available from Project Gutenberg Hope painted in 1885 and given to the nation in 1897 George Frederic Watts (23 February 1817 - 1 July 1904; sometimes spelt George Frederick Watts) was a popular English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. ...

The Countess's life was depicted in a 1955 French film, La Contessa di Castiglione [4], that starred Yvonne de Carlo. Yvonne De Carlo Yvonne De Carlo (born September 1, 1922) is a Canadian-born American film and television actress. ...

References

• Bowles, Hamish (Aug 2000). "Vain Glory". Vogue, pp. 242-45, 270-71.

• Henry, Max. Gotham Dispatch. Retrieved Mar. 30, 2005.

• Indepth Art News. Retrieved Mar. 30, 2005.

• Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "The Legs of the Countess." October 39 (Winter 1986): 65-108. Reprinted in Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, Emily Apter and William Pletz, eds. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993):266-306.

• Heather McPherson, "La Divine Comtesse: (Re)presenting the Anatomy of a Countess," in The Modern Portrait in Nineteenth Century France (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 38-75.

External links

• Metropolitan Museum of Art: "La Divine Comtesse" (with sample photos)

• Short article in Artnet about the Countess de Castiglione (with sample photos)

• Review of "La Divine Comtesse": Photographs of the Countess de Castiglione (book review)

• Virginia Countess Castiglione: A Professional Beauty (essay)

• Five Countess de Castiglione photos can be found here (scroll down to the middle)