By Meagan Wilson

Please visit the Marchesa website at www.marchesacasati.com.

“I want to be a living work of art!”

And that she was – as a muse to hundreds of of artists, including Salvador Dali, she was one of the most unabashedly glamorous women to have ever lived. Marchesa Casati lead the kind of life most can barely begin to even fathom. Almost mythical in her exploits, Marchesa’s life almost seems to serve as a lesson to the rest of us in living boldly.

A celebrity and femme fatale, the Marchesa's famous eccentricities dominated and delighted European society for nearly three decades. She captivated artists and literary figures such as Robert de Montesquiou, Erté, Jean Cocteau, Cecil Beaton, and Jack Kerouac. She had a long term affair with the author Gabriele D'Annunzio. The character of Isabella Inghirami from D'Annunzio's Forse che si forse che no (Maybe yes, maybe no) (1910) was said to have been inspired by her, as well as the character of La Casinelle, who appeared in two novels by Michel Georges-Michel, Dans la fete de Venise (1922) and Nouvelle Riviera (1924).

Born in Milan to a large fortune made in the cotton and textile industries, Marchesa’s parents died when she was just 15 – making her and her sister, Francesca, the wealthiest women in Italy.

Just about everyone who was someone stayed at any one of her homes across Europe. Despite marrying at 18, the Marchesa had many lovers, both male and female – her husband was too busy spending her fortune to notice, or care. She held masquerades, massive parties and galas all on a regular basis. Her favorite nightly activities included walking her pack of cheetahs on diamond studded leashes, around the streets of Venice, wearing nothing but a fur coat, and wearing live snakes as accessories.

Besides fine clothing and jewelry, and animals, Casati was known for collecting all kinds of exotic paintings and sculptures, as well as beautifully designed furniture to decorate her many residences. At her palace along the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, she decorated her lavish gardens with tiny Chinese lanterns and imported albino blackbirds to fly about.

Her home in France, a modest palace near Paris, housed her beloved art collection – mainly consisting of paintings, sculptures and photographs of one subject: herself. She hired various artists to capture her image in every medium possible. She also owned a villa in Capri, where she often stayed during the summer, and stirred up trouble with even the most radical of the locals there.