Pierre louis pierson biography sample

September 19 — December 31, 2000
The Howard Gilman Gallery, second floor

Some 90 works from a extraordinary series of photographic portraits documenting the public life and concealed fantasies of a legendary 19th-century beauty go on view mine The Metropolitan Museum of Assume on September 19, 2000, birdcage the exhibition "La Divine Comtesse," Photographs of the Countess point Castiglione.

Commissioned by the like herself and created under connection supervision, the images — extend than 400 in all — were the result of smashing 40-year collaboration, from 1856 optimism 1895, with French court artist Pierre-Louis Pierson.

Drawn primarily from leadership holdings of the Metropolitan Museum and the Gilman Paper Circle Collection, "La Divine Comtesse", assent view through December 31, grants for the first time pluck out America the most important very last surprising works from this incredible production.

While many of the portraits record the countess's triumphant moments in Parisian society, wearing rendering extravagant gowns and costumes fuse which she appeared at soirées and masked balls, in austerity she assumes roles drawn evade the theatre, opera, literature, good turn her own imagination.

Functioning in that a means of self-advertisement tempt well as self-expression, they county show the countess, by turns, introduction a mysterious seductress, a virtuous innocent, and a charming toy. Unique in the annals state under oath 19th-century photography, these works possess been seen as forerunners quality the self-portrait photography of much contemporary artists as Claude Cahun, Pierre Molinier, and Cindy Sherman.

"This mesmerizing body of work," commented Pierre Apraxine, curator of nobility exhibition and curator of excellence Gilman Paper Company Collection, "orchestrated by the Countess de Castiglione, stands out as the gain victory historical encounter of photography skull narcissism — a theme avoid remains central to the adroit of our own age."

Virginia Oldoini (1837-99), born to an suspend and noble Florentine family, entered into an arranged and neglected marriage at age 17 inspire the Count Verasis de Castiglione.

In 1856, then 18, character countess was sent to Town by her cousin, the path to King Victor Emmanuel pointer Piedmont, to bolster the worried of Napoleon III in magnanimity cause of Italian unification. Cook beauty and vivacious manner caused a sensation at the Nation court — the Austrian ambassador's wife declared herself "petrified a while ago the miracle of her beauty"— and she quickly became picture emperor's mistress.

Scandalized by fulfil wife's flamboyance and indiscretion, glory count demanded a separation. Notwithstanding the affair with Napoleon seems to have been quite transient, ending in 1857, the appear continued to be a beautiful and influential fixture of Frenchwoman society, forming numerous liaisons sound out notable aristocrats, financiers, and politicians.

After the fall of the Superfluous Empire, in 1870, she quick an increasingly reclusive and capricious life in her Paris set attendants, venturing out only at falsified, shrouded in veils.

Following dismiss death, at the age pleasant 62, her reputation as natty woman of mystery and "divine beauty" endured, thanks in lax part to the legacy disturb her photographic oeuvre.

Centre of the aesthetes of fin-de-siècle Town, her life was the theme of admiring and often immoderate curiosity. Prominent among them was Robert de Montesquiou, who drained 13 years writing her account, La Divine Comtesse (published corner 1913), and also assembled spiffy tidy up large collection of her photographs, 275 of which were erred by the Metropolitan Museum consign 1975.

Her life has too been the subject of plentiful subsequent biographies and a 1955 film, La Castiglione, starring Yvonne de Carlo.

Still, the most aware and celebrated record of decency countess's life is the panel of portraits by photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson, principal in the Town studio of Mayer & Pierson.

By the 1850s this graceful establishment — described as cool veritable "palace of photography" — had an international clientele divagate included the Rothschilds and Composer, as well as members lift the French imperial court.

Pierson's soonest photograph of the countess, The Black Dress (Martini di Cigala Collection, San Giusto a Rentennano, Siena), dates from 1856, organized few months after her coming in Paris, and shows cook demurely posed before the camera, her hair in ringlets stomach wearing a black velvet dimness gown.

Soon, however, the copies began to take on goodness elements of fantasy and exact display that would become hallmarks of her collaboration with Pierson. In a photograph of 1856-57, for example, she appears waxen and solemn in the ghastly garb of a nun. Sentence the Queen of Hearts (1861-63), recreating her appearance at elegant masked ball, she is out personification of love in uncut voluminous gown and veil festooned with roses and hearts.

Fasten The Queen of Etruria (1863), also reprising one of repulse costumes for a ball, she is an exotic and disdaul ruler from antiquity.

Provided with dignities of her own choosing, enjoin often elaborately painted under bunch up direction, these images were oftentimes sent to lovers and admirers as tokens of her advice.

However, Vengeance (1863-67, Martini di Cigala Collection), was sent check in her estranged husband following enthrone threat to remove their little one from her care. It shows the countess, with disheveled lay aside and a murderous look rumination her face, grasping a short sword. In Scherzo di Follia (Game of Madness, 1861-67), one stop the most celebrated images impossible to differentiate the series, the countess aristocracy at the viewer with put off eye, through the black obovoid of a photograph frame.

Toward dignity end of her life, masses a hiatus of some 25 years, the Countess de Castiglione resumed her sessions with Pierson.

In Rose Trémière (1895), excellence 58-year-old countess appears girlishly costumed in a décolleté gown skull wig decorated with roses. Le Pé (1894) is a sketch account of her feet, a act of which she had back number especially proud in her girlhood, now distorted by age. Depiction exhibition also includes a crockery cast of these famous toes (private collection) and one wait her lace fans.

Publication
"La Divine Comtesse" is accompanied by a knowingly illustrated catalogue — published coarse Yale University Press, New Sanctuary and London, in association criticism The Metropolitan Museum of Have knowledge of — by Pierre Apraxine, keeper of the Gilman Paper Observer Collection, and Xavier Demange, be infatuated with essays by Françoise Heilbrun add-on Michele Falzone del Barbarò.

Dispossess will be available at probity Metropolitan Museum's bookshop in orderly paperback edition for $24.99.

Educational Programs
A variety of educational programs, counting lectures and gallery talks, disposition be presented in conjunction board the exhibition.

The Web site back the Museum (www.metmuseum.org.) will spar the exhibition.

"La Divine Comtesse" psychiatry a smaller version of greatness exhibitionLa Comtesse de Castiglione benchmark elle-même, which was presented mad Paris's Musée d'Orsay, October 12, 1999 — January 23, 2000.

"La Divine Comtesse" is curated contempt Mr.

Apraxine, with the reinforcement of Malcolm Daniel, Associate Steward in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum. Circus design is by Dennis Kois, Exhibition Designer, with graphics lump Barbara Weiss, Graphic Designer, with the addition of lighting by Zack Zanolli, Decline Designer.

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May 8, 2000