Résumé

This is the biography of Marquise Luisa Casati.Luisa Amman was born in Milan in 1881 to a wealthy family who had made its fortune in cotton. After marrying Marquis Camillo Casati, and the birth of their only daughter, Luisa undergoes a transformation and quickly becomes one of the most eccentric women of her time. She wants to shock, to make herself into a living work of art. She befriends the beautiful people of her time, artists and celebrities: Giovanni Boldini, Augustus John, Ida Rubinstein, Jean Cocteau and Man Ray just to name a few. She lives in Rome, Venice and Paris, attending masquerade balls and living through extraordinary adventures. A lavish spender, in a few short years she manages to squander the immense fortune belonging to her late father. Among her memorable feats, were her nocturnal appearances in the streets of Venice, completely naked under her fur coat, accompanied by a Cheetah on a leash. She became a muse to a number of artists, who were fascinated by her famous androgynous persona. However, in the end, her terrible ego and her tendancy for self-centredness dragged her into an abyss of loneliness and absurdity...