Portrait of Virginia Oldoini, Contessa di Castiglione (1894). Alessandro Milesi (Italian, 1856-1945)
Portrait of Virginia Oldoini, Contessa di Castiglione (1894). Alessandro Milesi (Italian, 1856-1945). Oil on board.Born into a noble Tuscan family, Virginia Oldoini married Francesco Verasis, Conte di Castiglione, at the age of 17, with whom she had a son, Giorgio. Known as La Contessa, she was famous for her great beauty, extravagant lifestyle and flamboyant dress. Princess Mettrich, wife of the Austrian ambassador to France, described La Contessa as having ‘wonderful hair, the waist of a nymph, and the complexion the colour of pink marble! In a word, Venus descended from Olympus.’ However, it was her affair with Emperor Napoleon III that catapulted her to notoriety in 1856, when she moved to Paris. -- source link
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