bio
Luisa married, in 1900, Camillo Casati Stampa di Soncino, Marchese di Roma (1877-1946). A year later, their only child, Cristina, was born.
After the early years of their marriage and the birth of their daughter, the Casatis maintained separate residences for the duration of their marriage. They were legally separated in 1914, with the marriage ending upon the marchese's death.
The couple's daughter, Cristina Casati Stampa di Soncino (1901-1953), married, as her first husband, Francis John Clarence Westenra Plantagenet Hastings, known as Viscount Hastings (later 16th Earl of Huntingdon), in 1925; they had one child, Lady Moorea Hastings (b. 1928, who became the third wife of Labour politician Woodrow Wyatt and later wed Brinsley Graham Black), and divorced in 1943. As her second husband, Cristina, Viscountess Hastings married, in 1944, the Hon. Wogan Philipps.
Marchesa Casati presently has three descendants, Lady Moorea Hastings and her sons:
femme fatale, the marchesa's famous eccentricities dominated and delighted European society for nearly three decades. She captivated artists and literati 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).
In 1910 Casati took up residence at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on Grand Canal in Venice (now the home of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection). Her soirées there would become legendary. Casati collected a menagerie of exotic animals, and patronized fashion designers such as Fortuny and Poiret. Later, when she had lost her immense wealth, the marchesa retired to England, spending her last years in London, where she died at the age of seventy-six. Characters based on Casati were played by Vivien Leigh in La Contessa (1965) and by Ingrid Bergman in the movie A Matter of Time (1976).
The beautiful and extravagant hostess to the Ballets Russes was something of a legend among her contemporaries. She astonished Venetian society by parading with a pair of leashed cheetahs and wearing live snakes as jewellery. Her numerous portraits were painted and sculpted by artists as various as Giovanni Boldini, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Romaine Brooks, Kees van Dongen, Man Ray and Augustus John; many of them she paid for, as a wish to "commission her own immortality".
She was muse to F. T. Marinetti, Fortunato Depero, Umberto Boccioni and, more recently, to Dita Von Teese. John Galliano based the 1998 Spring/Summer Christian Dior collection on her. Gowns from this collection have been displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Fashion Institute. And Casati served as inspiration for one of Galliano's ensembles created for his autumn/winter 2007/2008 Bal des Artistes haute couture collection for Dior.
As the concept of dandy was expanded in the twentieth century to include women, the marchesa Casati fitted the utmost female example by saying: "I want to be a living work of art".
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