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 frequently
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 journey 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 attempted 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 impressed 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 him, 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 would 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 accompany 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 distant 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 Polish 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
island 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 seminary. 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 Bernardis 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 until
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 Cardinal 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 common 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-July. 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 Corfu 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, assuming 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 befriended 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 in 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 seventy-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 attained 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 was 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 enhanced 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, he 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 duchess, 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 form 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 Theban 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, Casanova 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 upturned 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 fallen 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 Caterina 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. While 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, Caterina 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
poetry. 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 spike 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 neighbour, 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 serving 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 five 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-François 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 of 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 journey 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 as 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. Casanova 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
the 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 the 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 tried 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. Unsurprisingly, 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, Berne, 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 widowed 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 time 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 invitation 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 on 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 lottery 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 King 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
Millionnaya 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 dancers 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 and 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 the 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 sightseeing 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 second 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 Eastern 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 indebted. 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, who 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
he 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 same 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
exchange 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 Confutazione. 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
and 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 Anna
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 solicited 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 while 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 lived 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 September, 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. Casanova 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 the 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 earlier. 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. Although 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 making
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 close. 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? Please let us know in the comment section
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
