Giacomo Girolamo Casanova

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Giacomo Girolamo Casanova : biography

But Casanova could walk inside the fort practically freely and that’s why he soon met a young pretty Greek woman. Three years later he was ill. The prison doctor couldn’t understand the reasons of this strange illness – its diagnosing was conducted only in 1789 and the illness was named “gonorrhea”. Prescribing six weeks of strict diet and mercurial lotions helped – the patient recovered although during the treatment he didn’t neglect companies of pretty women.

At the earliest opportunity Casanova escaped from the island and went to the south of Italy. But he didn’t like life in the provinces and he decided to go to Rome. He also wasn’t impressed by the Coliseum but he was enraptured by labyrinths of Aldobrandini and Borghese gardens where a lot of young girls and women walked and favoured him with their endearment in wine cellars and secret grottos. Casanova also visited Monte Cavallo, the summer residence of the Rome Pontiff. There he met Benedict XIV and so toughly pressed himself to the cross on His Holiness’ shoe and so artistically told him a couple of jokes that Benedict was laughing to helpless hiccough. As a gratitude to this pleasure the Pontiff allowed Casanova to return to Venice and at the same time relieved him from the prohibition to eat food forbidden to eat during a fast during fast-days.

At the age of twenty one Giacomo Casanova finally understood that pleasure could bring excellent income and wholly gave himself to pretty women’s embrace and card games. Certainly some troubles also occurred. Once Casanova led away a pretty housemaid under the nose of greengrocery keeper who in retort filed a planked footway under the side gutter. Giacomo fell from the bridge to stinking slush with two girlfriends. With the help of selfless passerby he managed to come out of dirt. Casanova decided to get even with the offender – he stole though to the cemetery at night, dag out a dead body and cut off its hand, then he managed to push this trophy under the offender’s blanket. For this nice joke he was sentenced to imprisonment but he managed to leave Venice before the announcement of the sentence.

When he arrived in Milan he got acquainted with the actress named Henriette and made her a present – a lynx fur coat. To answer the question why one needed a fur coat in Milan Casanova suggested the actress moving to Geneva where it may snow. The lovers hit the road through Turin and arrived in Geneva where Henriette disappeared without leaving a trace with all the money, she only left the inscription “Forget Henriette” with the diamond on the window pane. But Casanova didn’t forget his lover at once as he had to cut down expenses on the way to Parma and even ride a ragged mule instead of a horse prescribed for a noble person. Moreover it was his first failure in love.

At the age of twenty five Casanova arrived in Paris, rented a room in Hotel de Bourgogne, where Moliere used to live once, and immediately went hunting. He was on the ball as always – ladies as usual loved him. Casanova decided to have a painting of one of his passions – a Flemish juvenile girl Murphy. He arranged with an artist who agreed to paint a picture where Murphy was lying on the belly demonstrating not only her charming face but also her tempting butt. The painter exhibited the picture in Versailles before giving it to the client, and when Louis XV became familiar with the canvas he wanted to see the original. When the ingenuous girl met the King she laughed and laughed because the real king was looking almost like his picture on coins. Louis liked Murphy very much and settled her in his shooting box of Parc-aux-Cerfs.

Giacomo Casanova’s brothers Francesco and Giovanni were also famous. Francesco became a landscape painter and Giovanni drew portraits and was an archeologist. Giacomo met Francesco in Paris when brother’s paintings were estimated as impoverished potboiler by Parisians. Only later Francesco became famous and his paintings were exhibited in every big museums of the world.

Francesco anв Giacomo went to Austria but they didn’t like Vienna – all the more the Austrian Empress Maria Theresia hated women who were unfaithful to their husbands. Undercover agents darted about Vienna and inquired about purposes of ladies’ walking, and Casanova found very difficult to live in such conditions. Modest behavior and smart talks firstly caused Maria Theresia’s and her husband King favour Francis Stephen’s favour. But his nature was creeping over him and soon Casanova led astray a thirteen year old girl. This incident became known and the womanizer was deported from Austria.