Giovanni Boldini

Italian, 1842 - 1931

Portrait of the Marchesa Luisa Casati, with a Greyhound

Date: 1908

The Marchesa Luisa Casati, who was born into a wealthy family of Lombard textile manufacturers, was renowned for her extravagence. The poet Gabriele d'Annunzio once claimed that she was the only woman capable of suprising him. Boldini is supposed to have first met her in Venice, when he helped her retrieve pearls from a seven-metre long necklace that had broken. She would parade though Venice dressed as a gondolier and accompanied by a cheetah on a leash.
(Source: 'Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters: The Andrew Lloyd-Webber Collection')

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