Achille Lauro brings art history to San Remo again and transforms into the marquise Luisa Casati

More art history on the stage of Sanremo’s Ariston Theater, and always with Achille Lauro, who, after Giotto’ s “Saint Francis” on the first evening, this evening turned into the Marchesa Luisa Casati Stampa (Milan, 1881 - London, 1957). Born Luisa Amman, daughter of wealthy cotton merchant Alberto Amman, she married Marquis Camillo Casati Stampa of Soncino, and is remembered for having posed for numerous artists (from Giovanni Boldini to Alberto Martini, from Giacomo Balla to Fortunato Depero and others) and for her relationship with Gabriele d’Annunzio, who called her “the divine marchesa.” But she was not only an inspirational muse: thanks also to the increasing attention that scholars have devoted to her in recent times (see, for example, the exhibition that between 2014 and 2015 saw her as a protagonist in Venice, at Palazzo Fortuny), her figure has recently been rediscovered as a forerunner of performance and body art.

Her conspicuous collecting activities, her actions (starting with her numerous, spectacular parties) and her masquerades (all activities that, moreover, cost her entire fortune, so much so that she lived the last years of her life in poverty) have been brought back to an aesthetic dimension of their own and entirely in line with the spirit of decadentism: thus, Luisa Casati made herself a work of art, transforming herself into an icon of her time.

Her excessive looks made history: the marquise wore gaudy zoomorphic jewelry, diamond slippers, long dresses of heavy velvet, tiger-skin gloves, panther coats, bizarre headdresses: portraits by Boldini and Martini restore her to us in all her flamboyant beauty. And this evening Achille Lauro chose a costume inspired by the very costumes the marquise wore: “the Divine Marchesa Luisa Casati Stampa,” he wrote on his Instagram profile, “inspirational muse of the greatest artists of her time. Great patron, performer before performing art and living work of art.”

In the images below: Luisa Casati (1922), actress Marisa Berenson playing the marquise in 1971, and Achille Lauro’s performance for Sanremo 2020

Achille Lauro brings art history to San Remo again and transforms into the marquise Luisa Casati

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