Casanova & the Art of Seduction Documentary

The man known to history as Giacomo Casanova was born on the 2nd of April 1725 in the Italian city of Venice, then the capital of the Venetian Republic. Casanova was born into a family of actors. His mother was Zanetta Farussi, the beautiful daughter of a shoemaker, she was seventeen years old when she married Gaetano Casanova, an actor at the Teatro San Samuele. Although Gaetano promised Zanetta’s parents that she would not follow him into his profession during an age when actresses were freque

ntly courtesans to the rich and powerful, Zanetta soon began performing in her husband’s troupe, later becoming one of the stars of the Venetian comic stage, with no shortage of admirers. For this reason, although Zanetta’s six children took her husband’s name, the parentage of all six, including Giacomo, the eldest, has been disputed. Giacomo later believed that his father was Michele Grimani, the owner of the Teatro San Samuel and when Gaetano Casanova died in December 1733, the Grimani family

assumed the guardianship of eight-year-old Giacomo and his siblings. While growing up, Giacomo saw little of his parents while they were on tour abroad, and he was brought up by his maternal grandfather Marcia Farussi. Although he would spent most of his life abroad, Giacomo’s home city of Venice greatly influenced his life. Famed for its network of canals and bridges teeming with gondoliers singing the latest operatic hits, Venice had a proud tradition as a merchant republic that was more than

a thousand years old, with a maritime empire that once included Cyprus and Crete. However, there was a darker side to the city involving political intrigue, secrecy, and state repression, all of which would play a role in Casanova’s life. At the same time, 18th century Venice enjoyed a reputation as a party city, with its famous carnival and masquerades attracting young aristocrats and gentlemen from all over Europe to visit not only for the history and art but also for entertainment and sexual

escapades that would not be acceptable at home. At the heart of Venice’s cultural and social scene were the comedy theatres found throughout the city playing to full crowds throughout the year with brief breaks for Lent and summer. The young Giacomo was a sickly child and frequently suffered from nosebleeds. The Grimanis decided to send him to the inland city of Padua, where the cleaner air might do him good. On the 2nd of April 1734, Giacomo’s ninth birthday, the young boy took an eight-hour j

ourney by boat to Padua. After Zanetta paid for him to stay for six months at a lice-infested hostel, she left, inspiring a sense of resentment in Giacomo, who later complained that his mother had “got rid of him.” Giacomo had been poorly educated in Venice, when he started his lessons in Padua he was assigned to a class of five-year-olds by his tutor, Abate Antonio Maria Gozzi, a priest and teacher. Giacomo quickly showed promise and became one of Gozzi’s favourite pupils, and the latter attemp

ted to improve the boy’s living conditions. He helped Giacomo write letters to family and friends in Venice, which prompted Marcia to make her way to Padua herself and arrange for Giacomo to stay with the Gozzis. He was taken care of by Gozzi’s teenage sister Bettina, for whom he quickly developed romantic feelings. In 1736 Giacomo and Gozzi visited Venice for four days while Zanetta was preparing to leave to take up a contract at the Russian capital of St Petersburg. During this visit Giacomo i

mpressed his mother with his command of Latin, and during a dinner with a family friend successfully translated a vulgar Latin riddle and gave a witty response. Casanova would later write that the acclaim he received as a result inspired him to seek literary fame, although he would not write seriously until late in life. Back in Padua, the eleven-year-old Giacomo experienced his first sexual encounter at the hands of Bettina. While helping the boy put on a pair of stockings she had knitted for h

im, Bettina noticed that his thighs were dirty and proceeded to wash them for him. In Casanova’s later description, “Bettina carried her zeal for cleanliness too far,” the consequences of which led an ashamed Giacomo to believe he had dishonoured her. Although Giacomo’s ardour for Bettina diminished after he discovered evidence of her relations with an older boy, the two would remain lifelong friends. In 1737 Giacomo enrolled at the University of Padua at the age of twelve to study law, and woul

d graduate with a doctorate in 1741 after writing a thesis supporting the rights of Jews to build synagogues. While Casanova himself hoped to study medicine, the Grimanis intended for him to become a Church lawyer. In 1739, he returned to Venice, where in January 1740 he received minor orders from the Patriarch of Venice and assumed the title of “abate.” Following an introduction from his parish priest Father Tosello, Abate Casanova soon came under the wing of Alvise Gasparo Malipiero, a senator

in his seventies whose palace was next door to the Casanova house. One of the leading political and social figures in the city, Malipiero welcomed Casanova to his palace and introduced him to high society. As a member of the clergy, Casanova also had access to the young convent girls sent there unwillingly by their mothers. Dividing his time between the church, the Palazzo Malipiero, and the theatre, the tall young Casanova dressed in the latest fashions and curled his hair. Father Tosello was

unimpressed by Casanova’s affectations, and persuaded Marcia to lend him the keys to the house, enabling him to sneak up on Casanova while he was asleep and cut off his fringe. An infuriated Casanova complained to Malipiero, who arranged for a hairdresser to fix his hair and offered him the opportunity to preach at the Church of San Samuele on 26th of December in Tosello’s place. Though his first performance at the pulpit was a triumph, his second in March 1741, was such a disaster that Casanova

fell to the floor and returned to Padua to complete his degree. Within a few months, Abate Casanova was back in his hometown to resume his religious and not-so-religious duties. In late 1740, he met Angela Tosello, the priest’s seventeen-year-old niece, and became infatuated with her. While Angela informed Casanova that the romantic interest was mutual, she and urged him to abandon his priestly career and marry her, which he refused to do. In the summer of 1741, he accepted an invitation to acc

ompany the Count and Countess of Montereale to their country house. There, he received the attention of the fourteen-year-old Lucia, the caretaker’s daughter. Casanova recalled gallantly that he refused to take Lucia’s virginity, only to regret it when the latter ran off with the Montereales’ messenger instead. By the time he was back in Venice, Casanova had becomewas the target of seduction bofy the two Savorgnan sisters, Nanetta and Marta, aged sixteen and fifteen respectively, who were distan

t relations and close friends of Angela Tosello. After the three pretended to fall asleep, Casanova proceeded to have his way with one of the girls, and then the other. Casanova would continue to be involved with both sisters for several years, referring to them as his “little wives” until Nanetta married and Marta joined a convent, regretting her earlier lifestyle. The young man’s sexual confidence was such that he found himself flirting with the teenage actress Teresa Imer, whom Malipiero had

intended on seducing. When the old senator awoke from an afternoon nap and caught the pair together, he struck Casanova with his walking stick and threw him out of the palace. Since 1737, Casanova’s mother Zanetta had been hired by Elector Augustus III of Saxony, who was also the elected King of Poland, and was initially based in Warsaw. In early 1743, Zanetta used her influence with European royalty to advance her son’s cause, helping to secure the transfer of Bernardo de Bernardis from his Pol

ish employment to the bishopric of Calabria in southern Italy with the promise that he would employ her son. A delighted Zanetta wrote to Giacomo and predicted he would become a bishop himself in twenty or thirty years. The eighteen-year-old Casanova set his sights on becoming Pope, an office that would not necessarily prevent him from having an active sex life. In March 1743, following the death of his grandmother Marcia on the 18th, Casanova was sent to the seminary of San Cipriano on the isla

nd of Murano while de Bernardis was on his way to his new see. At the seminary, Casanova developed a crush on a fifteen-year-old boy before being caught in bed with a different boy as part of a prank. When Casanova claimed innocence, he was placed in solitary confinement before being expelled and forced to return to Venice. Not long after returning home, he was imprisoned for reasons that are unclear, but possibly because the Grimanis wanted to teach him a lesson after the scandal at the seminar

y. On his eighteenth birthday on the 2nd of April 1743, Casanova befriended the Greek wife of a lieutenant and agreed to write petitions on her husband’s behalf in return for sexual favours, after which he received the unwanted gift of gonorrhoea and had to seek treatment. By the time Bishop de Bernardis arrived in Venice on his way to Rome, Casanova was released and agreed with the bishop that they would travel separately to Rome, where they would go together to the bishop’s see at Martorano in

Calabria. With little money, Casanova was aided by a Franciscan monk, Brother Steffano, who showed him how to beg for alms to pay for his onward journey. While Casanova hurried to Rome, covering as much as fifteen miles a day, Steffano preferred to walk at a steady pace of three miles a dayonly a fifth of his pace. In a hare-and-tortoise race, Casanova was robbed and fell foul of the local authorities before Steffano caught up and bailed him out. By the time Casanova reached Rome, Bishop de Ber

nardis had already left, and he did not see the bishop until his arrival at Martorano. Casanova was disappointed when he realised that the see was bankrupt and there was hardly any furniture in the bishop’s palace. When Casanova complained about the mundane conditions, Bernardis laughed and relieved him of his obligations while providing letters of introduction for the young man at Naples. Through one of Bernardis’s contacts, Casanova began working as a poetry tutor to a fourteen-year-old boy. A

distant relative, Don Antonio Casanova, introduced him to Neapolitan society, but Giacomo decided to move on to Rome. As he was leaving Naples, Casanova encountered a woman whom he called Donna Lucrezia Castelli, later identified as Anna Maria d’Antoni Vallati, a married woman in her late twenties travelling with her husband and sister. During the six- day journey, Casanova and Anna Maria flirted with each other in the presence of the latter’s husband. The relationship remained unconsummated un

til after their arrival in Rome, where Casanova secured employment as the secretary of Cardinal Acquaviva, the head of the Spanish Catholic Church. As part of the agreement governing his employment, Casanova had agreed to learn French, the language of international diplomacy, and progressed rapidly. In the winter, he met Pope Benedict XIV at the Quirinal Palace, the papal summer residence now home to the President of Italy. Although the Pope congratulated Casanova for ingratiating himself with C

ardinal Acquaviva, later in the year Casanova was warned that his affair with Anna Maria Vallati was common knowledge, and that it was rumoured , truthfully, that the latter was pregnant with Casanova’s child, which indeed she was. By January 1745 the Vallatis were set to return to Naples, but Acquaviva decided it was prudent to let his young secretary go. The cardinal asked Casanova where he wanted to go and promised he would provide plenty of letters of introduction. To the cardinal’s surprise

, Casanova expressed a desire to travel to Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul, the capital of the Turkish Ottoman Empire at the time, and home to an oriental court that captured the imagination of 18th century Europeans. In early 1745, as he stopped at the papal city of Ancona on the Adriatic coast, Casanova encountered a family of travelling actors. Among them was sixteen-year-old Bellino, a young and successful castrato singer. In order to get around the papal ban on female choirs, it was com

mon for talented boy choristers to be castrated to preserve their angelic singing voice. Liaisons with both of Bellino’s sisters were not enough for Casanova, who lusted after the boy. Troubled by the prospect that he was in love with a boy, Casanova chose to believe that Bellino was in fact a girl, as it was not unheard of for female singers to defy the papal authorities by dressing as men and pretending to be male castrati. His suspicious were eventually proven correct, when “Bellino” admitted

to being “Teresa Lanti,” possibly the opera singer Teresa Landi who later found fame in Milan. Casanova persuaded Teresa to unmask herself as a woman and to perform outside the Papal states. The two made plans to marry, but the relationship was soon over as Casanova seemed reluctant to commit, though the affair produced a son born in Naples later that year. Casanova claims to have lost his passport during this period and decided he would be a mercenary soldier, making plans to return to Venice

before heading onwards to Constantinople. After a brief stop in his native city, where he received a formal commission in the Venetian army, on the 4th of May 1745 he sailed to Corfu with a party of Venetian noblemen headed by Antonio Dolfin, the new ambassador to Constantinople. Casanova proceeded to lose a great deal of money he had been given by the Grimanis on the gambling table. After arriving in Corfu, Casanova transferred to the Venetian warship Europa and reached Constantinople by mid-Ju

ly. Casanova He carried with him a letter of introduction from Cardinal Acquaviva to Count Claude Alexandre Bonneval, a Frenchman who had since converted to Islam and served the Ottoman sultan as Ahmed Pasha. Through Bonneval, Casanova was introduced to Yusuf Ali, a wealthy philosopher who suggested that the Venetian should marry his fifteen-year-old daughter Zelmi. Casanova He seriously considered the offer but decided that conversion to Islam was a step too far. Casanova rejected the advances

from another male aristocratic acquaintance whom he refers to as “Ismail,” though he agreed to join him on a fishing expedition. On their return, Casanova he eagerly accepted Ismail’s invitation to spy on three female members of his household bathing naked in a pool, a circumstance which obliged him to take part in his first homosexual encounter in order to “extinguish the flame kindled by the three sirens.” After leaving Constantinople with gifts from Yusuf and Ismail, Casanova returned to Corf

u and briefly served as an adjutant to a naval commander before choosing to go back to Venice in the autumn. Having failed to achieve his ambitions in priestly robes or in military uniform, Casanova asked the Grimanis for help and was hired as a second violinist in the theatre’s orchestra. In March 1746, Casanova happened to be riding in a gondola with Senator Matteo Giovanni Bragadin when the latter suffered a stroke. Casanova found a doctor who began to apply mercury poultice to his chest, ass

uming the senator had suffered a heart attack. As Bragadin’s condition worsened, Casanova overruled the doctor and intervened to remove the remedy, enabling the senator to recover. In gratitude, and under the impression that Casanova possessed mystical healing powers, the fifty-seven-year-old Bragadin invited him stay at the Palazzo Bragadin, fuelling rumours that the men were in a homosexual relationship. Within weeks, Casanova agreed to be the senator’s adopted son. The young man also befriend

ed Bragadin’s wealthy friends Marco Dandolo and Marco Barbaro, receiving money and support from all three. With financial bacnking from the Venetian patricians, Casanova claimed to spend the rest of the year “gambling and pursuing love affairs.” Casanova’s behaviour wasere known to the Venetian Inquisition, the conservative organ of state censorship that regarded the rise of a man born into a family of actors as a subversive threat to the Venetian state. Casanova left Venice for Milan in January

1748, where he was reacquainted with Teresa Lanti’s sister Marina, now seventeen. Casanova accompanied her to Mantua where she was to perform as a ballerina. While he doubtless had his eye on the teenage girl, Marina was more interested in her dance partner Antonio Stefano Balletti, whom Casanova also befriended. In early 1749, just as he was about to leave Mantua after two months in the city, Casanova witnessed an argument at his inn between a landlord and a Hungarian soldier who was suspected

of having a woman in his bed masquerading as a man. After intervening to resolve the issue, Casanova discovered that the Hungarian’s companion was a Frenchwoman named Henriette on her way to Parma having run away from an abusive husband. Immediately drawn to the lively and witty Henriette, who may have been around a decade older than him, Casanova proceeded to accompany her to Parma, where the two enjoyed a three month affair that appears to have been the most meaningful romantic relationship i

n his life. He was distraught when Henriette announced that she had agreed to return to her family in France and accompanied her over the Alps to Switzerland before bidding her farewell in Geneva. After initially returning to Parma to reminisce about his affair with Henriette, in the winter Casanova received word from Bragadin that he was free to return to Venice. He soon set up a small private casino, making a small fortune that allowed him to travel to Paris in June 1750 in the company of his

friend Antonio Balletti, who had been in Venice since February for carnival season. Casanova was twenty-five years old and well on his way to becoming one of the most famous lovers in history. In fact, the 130 or so amorous experiences that he wrote about were not so extraordinary for an 18th century adventurer who travelled extensively throughout Europe. Compared to Casanova, the likes of the Marquis de Sade and Lord Byron were far more prolific in the bedchamber, but Casanova was unique in his

candour when he wrote about the art of seduction. When Casanova arrived in Paris in the summer of 1750, King Louis XV was more than halfway through his fifty-nine year reign, and his chief mistress, the Madame de Pompadour, was in her late twenties and at the height of her power and influence in both high politics and high fashion. While he rented his own lodgings, Casanova dined regularly at the Balletti house, where he was introduced to the leading lights of the Parisian literary world. The s

eventy-six-year-old playwright Prosper Crébillon agreed to be his French tutor, giving him three lessons a week to refine his French. Crébillon and Balletti took him to the theatre, where he met some actors who had once performed with his mother. Casanova was also able to expand his social circle through his membership of the Freemasons. He had been initiated into a masonic lodge as an apprentice at Lyons on the way to Paris, and within a few months of his arrival in the French capital he attain

ed the rank of master mason. The two years that Casanova spent in Paris during his first visit are littered with anecdotes. On one occasion, Casanova’s friend Prince Charles Grimaldi, the Prince of Monaco, introduced him to the forty-three-year-old Duchesse de Ruffec. When the prince left the two alone, the duchess invited Casanova to sit next to her and attempted to unbutton his breeches. In order to thwart the duchess’s intentions, the horrified Casanova exclaimed that he had gonorrhoea and wa

s thrown out of the premises. In early October, Casanova joined the Ballettis as they accompanied the royal court to the Palace of Fontainebleau south of Paris for the hunting season. A few days later, Casanova was at the opera and found himself sitting near Madame de Pompadour’s box. After the royal mistress took notice of him and was informed that he was Venetian, she leaned over her box and asked Casanova whether he was really from “down there in Venice.” Casanova confidently replied, “Venice

, Madame, is not down. It is up.” Soon afterwards, La Pompadour’s companion in her box, the Duc de Richelieu, asked Casanova which of the actresses he preferred. When Richelieu remarked that Casanova’s choice had ugly legs, the latter told the aristocrat “in assessing a woman’s beauty the first thing I always put aside are her legs.” Such witticisms enhanced Casanova’s reputation in Parisian society and encouraged other important people to seek introductions to the young Italian. Despite his enh

anced reputation at court, Casanova still did not have a career that would make him a steady income and continued to rely on support from the Ballettis, his Venetian patrons, and any money that he managed to win on the card table. Any money he did receive was not enough to cover his increasing expenses, which included frequent visits to Parisian brothels with his young friend, the lawyer Claude Pierre Patu. As Casanova sought for means to sustain his lifestyle in Paris over the course of 1751, h

e was introduced through his masonic contacts to the Duchesse de Chartres, the King’s cousin, a beauty whose looks were tarnished by a skin condition that affected her face. She had been told about Casanova’s healing powers and the latter advised her to wash her face in water daily and avoid cosmetics. When the cure worked, the duchess promised him “a post which would give me an income of twenty-five thousand livres,” though nothing came of it. While Casanova admitted to being in love with the d

uchess, whose extroverted nature and witty conversation endeared her to him, he decided that she was too ambitious a target – even though the duchess had a list of lovers longer than Casanova’s own. Casanova’s stay in Paris was complicated by a lawsuit from his landlady, who claimed that her tenant had impregnated her teenage daughter Mimi. Although Casanova denied it, when the landlady lost her case, he agreed to pay court fees for both sides. While Casanova was still struggling to obtain any f

orm of employment, his younger brothers Francesco and Giovanni had been training as painters for several years. In the summer of 1752, Francesco arrived in Paris after Giacomo suggested that Paris the French capital could serve as a lucrative market for his battle paintings. However, Francesco soon had one of his paintings criticised at a salon in the Louvre and was angered and humiliated. He suggested to his brother that they should go to Dresden and visit their mother, who might be able to use

her connections at court to secure them gainful employment. The brothers arrived in Dresden in October, meeting not only their mother but their recently-married twenty-one-year-old sister Maria Maddalena. While Francesco continued his artistic studies and would go to Rome to study under the German painter Anton Raphael Mengs, Casanova wrote a play for the elector’s court theatre inspired by Jean Racine’s La Thébaïde, a tragedy which was in turn based on Sophocles’ and Euripides’ dramas of the T

heban civil war fought between the incestuous offspring of Oedipus and Jocasta. Casanova retitled the play La Moluccheide and transformed it into a comedy in three acts while retaining the sibling rivalry. While the performance was well received and Casanova was financially rewarded by Augustus III, he hoped to leave behind the family trade. He might have delighted in comedy and music, but he was not interested in creating his own – at least, not for the stage. After a few months in Dresden, Cas

anova decided to return to Venice, arriving on Ascension Day 1753, the most important day on the Venetian calendar, since it witnessed the elaborate ceremony of the Doge of Venice renewing his political authority by throwing a gold ring into the Adriatic to symbolise his marriage to the sea. A couple of days later, he was travelling in his carriage when the vehicle in front of him overturned. As Casanova rushed over the give assistance, he encountered the happy sight of the lady’s skirts being u

pturned in his face. The following day, as he was having coffee in St Mark’s Square at the famous Caffe Florian, the same lady reappeared and reintroduced herself. While on a gondola trip with the lady and her male companion, Casanova learned that they were brother and sister, Pietro and Caterina Capretta. During the carnival season Casanova bought a box at the San Samuele theatre and invited the Caprettas frequently. While Pietro hoped to sell Caterina’s virginity to Casanova, the latter had fa

llen in love with her and was unwilling to take advantage. When Caterina declared that she was in love with him and was prepared to marry him, Casanova could no longer resist and planned to get her pregnant to secure a dowry from her wealthy merchant father Christoforo. Despite Bragadin’s support for Casanova’s suit, Christoforo rejected it and sent Caterina to a convent on the island of Murano to stop her from seeing Casanova. This failed to prevent Casanova from maintaining contact with Cateri

na via a lay-sister named Laura, who acted as a conduit for other nuns and their lovers outside the walls, though given Christoforo’s instructions it was too risky for the two to meet. Despite his intentions to marry Caterina, Casanova found time to reacquaint himself with Teresa Imer, whom he had last seen more than a decade earlier at the Palazzo Malipiero. Though Teresa was now married and was working at Bayreuth in Germany, she spent at least a night with Casanova and also became pregnant. W

hile Teresa would give birth to a daughter, Casanova was distraught when Caterina miscarried in July. In November, Casanova he received an anonymous letter from one of the nuns in the Murano convent inviting him to meet her. He discovered that the woman in question was an older nun who had helped Caterina through her pregnancy. Referred to in his writings by the initials M.M. and never conclusively identified, she and Casanova carried on an affair over the course of the winter at a private house

outside the walls of the convent sponsored by the French ambassador, François-Joachim de Bernis, who was also involved with her. In his memoirs, Casanova suspected that M.M. and Caterina were also lovers. In early 1754, the former smuggled the latter out of the convent into the house to await Casanova, who was shocked to see her there and realised that he had been set up. Though he vowed not to see either woman again, Casanova was soon enticed to participate in threesomes. Not long after, Cater

ina left the convent and married a wealthy merchant as her father had planned all along, while Casanova continued his affair with M.M. with a greater degree of intensity. Casanova’s misadventures with nuns, his increasing indebtedness, and his social connections with Venetian aristocracy once again brought him to the attention of the Venetian Inquisition. On the 26th of July 1755, he was arrested by agents of the Inquisition, who also confiscated a number of his books on astrology and erotic poe

try. Taken to the inquisitorial prison under the roof of the ducal palace, on the 12th of September he was informed that he was to be incarcerated for five years without being told of the specific charges against him. Although Casanova he had been in Venetian captivity for short periods previously, he soon realised that he would not be let out any time soon. After nine months in solitary confinement, Casanova was finally allowed out of his cell for exercise. While exercising, he found an iron sp

ike and managed to bring it back to his room undetected. He attempted to use the spike to dig a hole through the floorboards under his bed. Though the Inquisition chamber was directly underneath him, Casanova believed that he could somehow talk his way to freedom. On the 25th of August 1756, when the hole was almost big enough for him to break through the plaster ceiling, he was unexpectedly transferred to a larger cell next to the guards’ room. Casanova managed to establish contact with his nei

ghbour, a priest named Marino Balbi. The two men hid notes in the books they lent each other and planned an escape. Casanova managed to smuggle the iron spike to the priest, who made a hole in his ceiling, concealing it with one of the paintings he was allowed to have in his room. On the night of the 31st of October, Balbi broke through to Casanova’s cell, and the two took advantage of the Inquisition staff’s absence on All Saints Day on the 1st of November to make good their escape via the roof

. Although they found themselves locked in, a night watchman allowed them to get outside. The two men escaped to the Italian mainland before going their separate ways. After a week, Casanova managed to get out of Venetian territory, and by the 5th of January 1757 he was back in Paris. With social connections but no money, he called on the Ballettis, who arranged for him to stay at a nearby house. Casanova also decided to track down de Bernis, who had been recalled to France in 1755 and was now s

erving as Louis XV’s foreign minister. The latter introduced him to Jean de Boulogne, the comptroller-general or minister of finance. When Casanova heard about a scheme for a lottery to raise funds for the French state presented by his fellow Italian Giovanni Calzabigi, Casanova made some calculations and agreed to become a trustee of the lottery. Casanova He used his connections he made at Parisian gambling tables to sell tickets, which promised to make men millionaires if they were to pick fiv

e correct numbers out of the ninety they could choose from. The lottery proved lucrative not only for the French state but for Casanova himself, who made a great fortune with an income of 120,000 francs a year, opening lottery offices in Paris and later across the country. He was thirty-one and finally secured a steady income which enabled him to fund an extravagant lifestyle as a fixture of Parisian high society. On the 1st of March 1757, Casanova witnessed the gruesome execution of Robert-Fran

çois Damiens, a former soldier who attempted to assassinate King Louis on the day of Casanova’s arrival at the French capital. In a well-documented four- hour ordeal, Damiens endured having his skin ripped off, molten lead poured over him, castration, and finally the quartering of his body tied to four horses while he was still alive. Casanova’s description of Damiens’ execution contrasted with the glamorous life he was living. He fell in love with Manon Balletti, the seventeen-year-old sister o

f his friend Antonio and a talented musician in her own right. Although Manon was already engaged, she reciprocated his feelings in her letters, but Casanova was unwilling to seduce her out of respect for her family. While Casanova considered proposing marriage to Manon, he continued to conduct affairs with other women. On the 16th of September, Manon’s mother Sylvia Balletti died but not before asking Casanova to look after her daughter. Casanova promised to marry her shortly before making a jo

urney to Dunkirk on behalf of de Bernis to report on the condition of the French navy, a mission that brought him 12,000 francs from the government. Manon eventually ran out of patience and married the royal architect François Blondel in the summer of 1760. While returning to Paris in October 1757, he found himself travelling in a carriage with the Comte de la Tour d’Auvergne and a prostitute sitting on their laps. In the darkness Casanova reached for her hand and guided it to his crotch. Just a

s Casanova was reaching climax, de la Tour spoke up, “I am obliged to you, my dear friend, for this courteous and unexpected Italian handshake; a greeting I was neither expecting nor deserving of” and burst out laughing. The two men soon became close friends, and when the young aristocrat fell ill with sciatica in the winter Casanova proposed a cure and de la Tour made a rapid recovery. Casanova’s reputation as a mystic healer was further enhanced, and he was soon introduced to his friend’s aunt

, the fifty-two-year-old Marquise Jeanne d’Urfé, the richest woman in France. Casanova long claimed to be a believer in the Kcabbalah, a mystic oral tradition connected to Judaism that believed God manifested himself in the world through mysterious codes. The marquise was desperate to recapture her youth by discovering the Philosopher’s Stone, and Casanova obliged her by helping her translate various Latin texts and interpret algebraic codes which he claimed were from an oracle named Paralis. Ca

sanova was soon one of several mystics who spent hours with her in the laboratory she set up in her home to conduct alchemical experiments. She told Casanova that she was also seeking reincarnation as a backup and believed her spirit could be transferred to the body of a young boy. In between his dealings with the Marquise d’Urfé, in late 1758 Casanova carried out another assignment for the French state by travelling to Amsterdam to sell government bonds to finance military expenditure during th

e Seven Years’ War. During his visit he was reacquainted with Teresa Imer and sought to have custody of their five-year-old daughter Sophie in exchange for an investment in her new private club in London. Teresa refused to part from Sophie but offered her twelve-year-old son, Giuseppe Pompeati. Back in Paris, Casanova introduced the boy to the Marquise d’Urfé as the Comte d’Aranda, and the marquise effectively adopted him as the subject for an experiment to transmute her soul into his. Despite t

he lottery money, Casanova was once again struggling to sustain his lifestyle, especially after his patron, de Bernis lost favour with Madame de Pompadour in December 1758 and was made a cardinal and sent to Rome. Casanova was increasingly relying on the marquise for money and continued to support her in her quest for eternal youth. During the early 1760s, Casanova persuaded the marquise to adopt further plans to enable her reincarnation that amounted to little more than extortion. In 1762, he t

ried and failed to conceive a child with an actress masquerading as a countess in the marquise’s presence. The following year, while in Marseille, he tried to do the same with his younger brother Gaetano’s mistress, a dancer called Marcolina, before eventually attempting to impregnate the marquise himself while Marcolina danced in front of him. The marquise agreed to this even though Casanova informed her that she would die in childbirth so her soul could inhabit the body of the child. Unsurpris

ingly, the marquise failed to conceive in her late fifties, and was finally persuaded that Casanova’s mystical claims were nonsense. Casanova’s connection with the Marquis d’Urfé allowed him to meet the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1759, and the famed Voltaire a year later in Switzerland. The two men exchanged opinions on Italian literature and theatre, and Voltaire was surprised when Casanova – still on the run from Venetian justice – argued that Venice was one of the most liberal

cities in the world. Although Casanova presented himself as Voltaire’s admirer, he was critical of his opposition to the Catholic Church and would later criticise his political radicalism. In 1760, Casanova began to refer to himself as the Chevalier de Seingalt, a spurious noble title that happens to be an anagram of “genitals.” In addition to his work for the French government in Amsterdam, he travelled under this identity to the German and Swiss cities of Cologne, Bonn, Stuttgart, Zurich, Ber

ne, and Lausanne before his meeting with Voltaire near Geneva. Casanova’s frequent travels have encouraged the idea that he was being employed as a spy by the French government, though there is no conclusive evidence this was the case. For the next two or three years, he travelled aimlessly through France and Italy, continuing to add to his list of amorous conquests. During the winter he was in Florence, where he was reacquainted with Teresa Lanti and met his sixteen-year-old son Cesare Filippo.

In Rome for Christmas, he was granted an audience with Pope Clement XIII, a fellow Venetian. He gifted the Vatican Library a valuable book which he received in Switzerland and was awarded the Order of the Golden Spur, which allowed him to use the title of “chevalier” legitimately. In January 1761 he was in Naples when he met a seventeen-year-old girl, Leonilda, mistress to the impotent Duke of Mantalone. His attempts to seduce her were abandoned when he discovered that her mother was the widowe

d Anna Maria Vallati and that Leonilda was his own daughter. He re-established intimate relations with the thirty-six-year-old Anna Maria and the two discussed marriage, though the latter would only consent if Casanova agreed to remain in Naples. As Casanova travelled back north up the Italian peninsula, he set his sights on the Bavarian city of Augsburg, where he had agreed to represent the Portuguese government at a proposed peace congress to discuss terms to end the Seven Years’ War. By the t

ime he arrived he discovered that the congress had been cancelled, prompting him to return to France and Italy. While in Turin in September 1762, he met and befriended the English aristocrat Hugh Percy, Baron Warkworth, who was in Italy on a Grand Tour. When Casanova returned to Paris in May 1763, he saw among his mountain of correspondence a couple of letters from Teresa Imer in London, who was styling herself Teresa Cornelys after her Dutch lover Cornelis de Rigerboos. Casanova accepted her in

vitation to visit the English capital, taking with him Teresa’s son Giuseppe and the jewels he had been given by the Marquise d’Urfé. Casanova arrived in England on the 11th of June 1763, though it was not until the 13th that he called on Teresa at Carlisle House in Soho Square, where she hosted exclusive parties and concerts for an aristocratic clientele. Teresa had built up a rather respectable social position and was cautious about the impact that Casanova and his Parisian habits would have o

n her social gatherings. After a few visits to certain English courtesans, Casanova decided that he wanted a more permanent lover who shared a common language. On the 5th of July he took out an advert in the London Gazetteer and Daily Advertiser seeking to rent out accommodation in his Pall Mall flat to a “single lady” who might expect “some peculiar advantages” as part of the arrangement. The woman eventually chosen was a Portuguese Catholic brunette whom Casanova referred to as “Pauline,” and

the two engaged in a brief affair until the latter returned to Portugal in early August. Casanova also shared his premises with ten-year-old Sophie, his daughter with Teresa, before sending her off to a boarding school in Hammersmith. Having wandered through Europe rather aimlessly for a few years, the thirty-eight-year-old Casanova attempted to establish roots in London but his money continued to dwindle. In London, he was reacquainted with Marie Anne Charpillon, a teenage courtesan whom he had

met several years earlier in Paris. She had been kept by Francesco Morosini, the Venetian ambassador, but Casanova agreed to set her up in Chelsea. Nevertheless, when they went to bed the relationship was unconsummated, and Casanova later found that Marie Anne wanted Casanova to forgive the debts her family owed to him. Though he agreed to do so, she continued to resist, provoking leading to Casanova to threatening her violently before swiftly repenting. Casanova was briefly detained at Newgate

prison for assault but persuaded the judge of his innocence. He exacted his revenge by buying a parrot, teaching it to say “Mademoiselle Charpillon is more of a whore than even her mother,” before leaving the bird at the Royal Exchange near the Bank of England. Short of money, suffering from depression and venereal disease, in early 1764 Casanova left London to resume his adventures across continental Europe with money from Bragadin and his cabbalist connections. Casanova had failed to sell a l

ottery scheme in England but was keen to lobby King Frederick the Great of Prussia in Berlin through an old acquaintance, the Scottish Jacobite Lord George Keith, who was then serving as a Prussian field marshal. Casanova’s initial meeting with Frederick did not go well, and the latter said that he regarded the lottery as a swindle on people who bought tickets. Despite these remarks, Frederick allowed Casanova’s colleague Giovanni Calzabigi to run a Prussian lottery. Several weeks later, the Kin

g offered Casanova to become a tutor at the elite military cadet school, instructing the aspiring aristocratic officers in etiquette and international relations, but the Italian turned it down. While Casanova was making himself known to Berlin’s theatrical scene, he was encouraged by a couple of old acquaintances to go to the Russian court at St Petersburg. After leaving Berlin late in the year, he arrived at the Russian capital on the 21st of December 1764 and took a house on the fashionable Mi

llionnaya Street between the River Neva and the city’s main thoroughfare of Nevsky Prospekt. Founded by Tsar Peter the Great in 1703 on the marshes of the Neva delta and nicknamed the Venice of the North, St Petersburg was a city still under construction at the time of Casanova’s visit. The thirty-four-year-old Empress Catherine II, known to history as Catherine the Great, had only been on the throne for two years or so after seizing power from her estranged husband Peter III. Through Italian da

ncers at the court theatre, Casanova was introduced to powerful statesmen including Ivan Yelagin and Nikita Panin, as well as Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, the Empress’s close friend and advisor. Although Casanova first saw the Empress at a Venetian masquerade ball at the Winter Palace on the night of his arrival, it would be several months until he managed to talk to her. In early 1765, while meeting with his friends near the imperial palace of Ekaterinhof, Casanova encountered a peasant girl an

d arranged to buy her as a servant from her father for 100 roubles. He named her Zaïre after the title character of a Voltaire play and took her as his lover. He also taught her Italian and bought clothes for her, and the pair became a fashionable fixture along the Millionnaya. On one evening, Casanova decided to leave Zaïre at home to attend a party with several Russian officers and a Frenchwoman he designated as La Rivière, whom he had met the previous night. Among the officers present were th

e brothers Aleksandr and Pyotr Lunin, who served in the elite Preobrazhensky Guards. The seventeen-year-old Pyotr was known for his effeminate beauty, and not for the first time in his life Casanova suspected that he was in the presence of a woman dressing up as a soldier. Pyotr rose to the challenge by undoing his breeches and discredited Casanova’s theory. When Casanova returned home he was attacked by his mistress in a jealous rage, prompting him to take her to Moscow. After a week sightseein

g in Russia’s old capital, they returned to St Petersburg where Casanova awaited an invitation from the Winter Palace to meet the Empress. Following a suggestion from Count Panin, at some time during the summer when St Petersburg experienced its“white nights,” the midsummer midnight twilight, Casanova waited in the Summer Gardens to intercept the imperial party, of which Panin was a member. During his first conversation with the Empress, the two discussed the city’s musical scene. At their secon

d meeting, Catherine asked Casanova about Venice and the Gregorian Calendar used in Catholic countries, and the Venetian was able to explain why the new calendar was a more effective means to keep dates aligned with the Earth’s orbit. Catherine considered adopting the new calendar but feared the backlash from her Russian Orthodox subjects, and on their third meeting ten days later Casanova was surprised that Catherine had been briefed about the differences in how Easter was calculated in the Eas

tern and Western churches. Although Casanova hoped for an appointment at the Russian court, and possibly to sell his lottery, he met the Empress on one further occasion before leaving Russia empty-handed. After leaving Zaïre with the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi, who was to build several well-known landmarks in St Petersburg and nearby imperial retreats, Casanova left Russia on the 1st of September and arrived in the Polish capital of Warsaw on the 10th of October. Casanova was armed with a

letter of introduction to Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, an influential statesman and cousin of the new King of Poland, Stanislaw II Augustus Poniatowski, who owed his elevation to the elective crown in 1764 to the influence of Empress Catherine, his former lover. In addition to audiences with the King, Casanova travelled around of the country and stayed with wealthy aristocrats. On the 4th of March 1765, five months after his arrival in Poland, Casanova attended a performance at the royal

theatre and went to pay his respects to the two Italian dancers. One of them, Anna Binetti, was angered that Casanova had not called on her first, and prevailed upon her lover Franciszek Ksawery Branicki to complain. Infuriated at being called a “Venetian poltroon,” Casanova challenged the Polish nobleman to a pistol duel in which both were wounded. News of the duel reached the King, who ordered an investigation that found the “Chevalier de Seingalt” was not a nobleman and that he was heavily in

debted. Casanova was obliged to leave Poland and departed on the 8th of July 1766. The duel only served to enhance Casanova’s fame and notoriety, and in later years he would become good friends with Branicki. After leaving Warsaw, he stopped in Dresden to visit his mother, now in her late fifties, before moving on to Vienna and various German cities. In the late summer of 1767, he was taking the waters at Spa in modern-day Belgium when he ran into an old acquaintance, the Marquis della Croce, wh

o had lost all his money gambling and was left helpless with his young pregnant mistress, Charlotte Lamotte. The gallant Casanova took Charlotte to Paris to give birth to the child, but she died in the process. While in Paris, Casanova learned that his patron Bragadin had died at seventy-eight years old, and his prospects further deteriorated when he was banished from Paris, prompted either by the Marquise d’Urfé’s family or by his many creditors. Casanova therefore chose to go to Spain, where h

e went to seek employment in the government from the real Conde d’Aranda, the Spanish prime minister, but was unsurprisingly turned down. While he was getting himself into increasing debt, he was briefly imprisoned in February 1768 for carrying hidden pistols. His fortunes did not get much better after his release and he was obliged to leave Madrid, only to run into further trouble later in the year in Barcelona when he was attacked by two men. After killing one of the assailants with his sword,

Casanova was imprisoned for more than forty days. Leaving Spain after his release, in early 1769 Casanova wandered aimlessly in southern France suffering from poor health, which he ascribed to syphilis. During a four month stay at Aix-en-Provence, he learned that his old flame Henriette was in town, and the latter sent her housekeeper to nurse him. Casanova resisted calling on her until he was leaving Aix and decided to visit her chateau on the road to Marseille. When he learned from the very s

ame housekeeper that Henriette was at her Aix townhouse, he leftave a letter for her. In Henriette’s reply, she told him that they had in fact attended the same gathering, but he failed to recognise her, remarking that both of them had aged considerably. She added that she was now a widow and rich enough to help him financially if he needed any money. While she warned against him returning to Aix, she was willing to continue their correspondence, and Casanova claimed that they continued to excha

nge letters for the rest of their lives, though these do not survive in his archive. According to Venetian files, Casanova had been trying to reingratiate himself with the Venetian authorities since the 1750s, and he looked for a way to be allowed back to his native city. Although he had begun working on an Italian translation of Homer’s Iliad and was also writing a history of Poland, he turned to writing a three-volume political treatise on the government of Venice subsequently known as the Con

futazione. Though Casanova praised every aspect of the Venetian government, he received no initial response after sending a copy to Venice in December 1769. At the Tuscan port of Livorno in January 1770, he met Count Alexei Orlov, the Russian nobleman whose brother Grigory had been Catherine the Great’s lover, who was organising a fleet to fight the Ottoman Turks. Casanova declined Orlov’s invitation to join him in a campaign that led to the great Russian naval victory at Chesma in early July an

d journeyed overland across the Italian peninsula. On his way to Rome, he found himself travelling with a young English lady named Betty, who happened to be a close friend of his daughter Sophie at the boarding school in Hammersmith. Though Casanova managed to win Betty from her male companion, he reluctantly agreed that he had to pretend to be her father in public. Casanova proceeded to Naples, where he seemed to find old acquaintances everywhere he went. Before leaving, he made sure to visit A

nna Maria Vallati and their daughter Leonilda, now in her mid-twenties and married to an elderly and wealthy aristocrat. Anna Maria informed Casanova that she did not believe Leonilda’s husband was capable of giving her a child. The conversation set the context for an incestuous encounter between Casanova and Leonilda in the garden. A few weeks after Casanova left for Rome in September 1770, Leonilda found that she was pregnant. Back in Rome, he re-established contact with de Bernis and solicite

d hisin help in gaining access to young nuns. Casanova admitted that the older he got, the more attracted he was to younger women, even if they were related to him. In Rome he met Mariuccia, a woman with whom he had a brief affair in 1761 and had given birth to a daughter, Giacomina. Giacomina’s music teacher happened to be the former mistress of Casanova’s brother Giovanni, and the mother of their daughter, Guglielmina. Mariuccia arranged for the four of them to meet and made love to Casanova w

hile the young girls were sleeping naked in the same bed. Although this Casanova refrained from any sexual activity with his own daughter, he was happy enough to do so with Guglielmina with Giacomina watching. After a six month stay in Rome, Casanova continued to travel throughout Italy, ending up in Trieste. He continued to work on his writing projects and completed his study of Poland’s recent political history which was eventually published in 1774. While in Trieste, he re-established contact

with the Venetian authorities and conducted espionage activities on their behalf. This enabled him to receive a pardon from Venice in September 1774, allowing him to return to his native city after nineteen years. Casanova’s memoirs, written during the final years of his life, end abruptly in 1774, and details of his life after that year are therefore more difficult to come by. On the 14th of September he returned to Venice where he met many of his childhood friends including Angela Toselli and

his ex-fiancée Caterina Capretta. Though Bragadin had been dead for several years, his friend Marco Dandolo invited Casanova to stay at his palace. Casanova published three volumes of his translation of The Iliad between 1775 and 1778 before abandoning the project due to lack of interest. By 1776, he resumed his work with the Venetian Inquisition and was paid fifteen ducats each month. In the summer of 1779 he met a seamstress, Francesca Buschini, and soon moved in with her family and the two l

ived as a respectable couple. Casanova was once more forced to abruptly leave his native Venice in 1782, after a dispute with the nobleman Carlo Grimani over the terms of a debt agreement. Casanova responded by writing an allegorical satire on Venetian aristocracy which, among other things, claimed that he was the son of Michele Grimani and that Carlo was not. His efforts to make amends after realising he had gone too far were to no avail, and he left Venice on the 17th of January 1783. By Septe

mber, Casanova was staying with his brother Francesco in Paris, where he met Benjamin Franklin, the American ambassador to France. In 1784, Casanova obtained employment as secretary to Sebastian Foscarini, the Venetian ambassador in Vienna. When Foscarini died in April 1785, Casanova was obliged to seek new employment and eventually ended up as librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein at the Castle of Dux in Bohemia, modern-day Duchcov in the Czech Republic, near the spa town of Teplice. Cas

anova made frequent visits to Prague, where in October 1787 he met Lorenzo da Ponte, a fellow Venetian with a reputation as a libertine and lover of the theatre who had also been expelled from his native city. The two had known each other in Venice and Vienna, and since their last meeting da Ponte had achieved success as the librettist to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1786 opera The Marriage of Figaro. Mozart and da Ponte were commissioned by the Estates Theatre in Prague to write a new opera, and t

he latter chose the subject of the legendary lover Don Juan, or Don Giovanni in Italian. Although da Ponte and Mozart discussed the subject of the opera with Casanova and the latter offered some verses of his own, they were not incorporated into the libretto when the opera premiered on the 29th of October. In Dux Castle, Casanova wrote prolifically, though much of what he wrote was never published. In 1787, he wrote an account of his dramatic escape from Venetian prison more than three decades e

arlier. He wrote about philosophy and mathematics and sought to develop further ideas about lotteries. His Icosamércon, a five-volume science fiction novel set in England, met with a poor reception among his unfortunate friends who read it. Instead, it would be Casanova’s memoirs, running to around four thousand pages and unfinished at the time of his death, which would cause his name to be remembered by history after its publication in 1820 in German translation from the original French. Althou

gh he is best known for his love life, Casanova’s History of My Life contained valuable and insights into 18th century European life across a whole range of subjects, including politics, food, theatre, fashion, religion, morality as well as sex. In November 1797, Casanova planned a final visit to his native Venice, then occupied by Napoleon Bonaparte’s French revolutionary army, effectively abolishing the Republic of Venice after 1,100 years of existence. Casanova’s health prevented him from mak

ing the journey, and on the 4th of June 1798 he died at the age of seventy-three, leaving behind the manuscript of his unfinished memoirs. Giacomo Casanova is best known as one of history’s most prolific lovers, and his name continues to be associated with seduction and sexual impropriety. While there is much to support this view in the pages of his memoirs, not least his tendency in later age to share his bed with lovers young enough to be his daughters, some of whom were actually his daughters

, Casanova was also one of Europe’s most astute social commentators, having moved in European high society for more than half a decade despite his humble origins. His lifestyle, while extraordinary, was not unique for the time, but what makes him stand out is the emotional impact of many of his love affairs. Born into a theatrical family in Venice, until the end of his life he struggled to find stable employment and over the course of his life he played several roles: priest, adventurer, lover,

spy, mystic, financial salesman, diplomat, writer, and librarian. While he spent most of his life heavily indebted and struggled to maintain a high society lifestyle, a combination of charisma, intellectual knowledge and sexual prowess enabled him to gain wealthy patrons who supported him financially throughout his life. Casanova embodied Venice and 18th century Europe, and his death at the end of the century a year after the extinction of the Venetian Republic, seemed to bring the age to a clos

e. Casanova’s world was not about universal rights or total war, but rather about opera theatres, masquerades, balls, salons, and the discreet romantic liaisons that they enabled. What do you think of Giacomo Casanova? Does he deserve his reputation for sexual immorality and impropriety, or should he be judged by the standards of his contemporaries? Should he serve as an inspiration to live life to the fullest, or should he serve as a warning of the dangers of living life without inhibitions? Pl

ease let us know in the comment section and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.