Thursday, December 3, 2015

La Divine Comtesse I

James McNeill Whistler
Count Robert de Montesquiou, No. 2
1894
transfer lithograph
Metropolitan Museum

The Parisian dandy Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921) became fascinated at an early age with a society beauty who arrived in Paris the same year he was born. Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione (1837-1899) grew up in Florence, where she entered into an arranged aristocratic marriage at age 17. In 1856 at age 19 she became the mistress of Emperor Napoleon III and turned her prominent position into a platform for fashion and fantasy (while incidentally bankrupting her husband). The photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson (1822-1913) was soon drawn into a collaboration with La Castiglione. Together they produced more than 700 images. Montesquiou later made it his business to obtain as many of these photographs as he could during the research and writing for his 1913 biography, La Divine Comtesse. A collection of 275 Castiglione-Pierson-Montesquiou photographs is now preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  

Pierre-Louis Pierson
The Gaze
1856-57
Metropolitan Museum

Pierre-Louis Pierson
Le beau décolleté
1860s
Metropolitan Museum

Pierre-Louis Pierson
L'accoudée
1856-57
Metropolitan Museum

Pierre-Louis Pierson
Portrait in White
1856-57
Metropolitan Museum

Pierre-Louis Pierson
Profile
1859
Metropolitan Museum
 
Pierre-Louis Pierson
Opera Ball
1861-67
Metropolitan Museum

Pierre-Louis Pierson
 from Les Chiens
1860s
Metropolitan Museum

Pierre-Louis Pierson
from Sèriè à la Ristori
1860s
Metropolitan Museum

Pierre-Louis Pierson
Sculptural Shoulders
1861-67
Metropolitan Museum

Pierre-Louis Pierson
La robe bouffante
1860s
Metropolitan Museum

Pierre-Louis Pierson
La cape
1860s
Metropolitan Museum