?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
(FEMME FATALE & QUEEN OF THE NIGHT) Portrait of the Marchesa Luisa Casati (1881-1957) dressed in a House of Worth costume apparently based on Léon Bakst's design. Silver print, the image measuring 11 7/8x7 inches (30.2x17.8 cm.), fixed with contemporary corners on a paper mount 14x11 inches (35.6x27.9 cm.), with a signature in ink on print recto and a stamp and the notation Casati in ink on mount recto. 1922
Provenance: The Collection of Sheila Metzner, New York
This image appeared in German Vogue, February 2000. The tear sheet accompanies this lot. Here, the Queen of the Night design is attributed to Bakst, but elsewhere the dress itself is credited to House of Worth. The costume is made of a net of diamonds, incorporates a gold feather sun against a diamond tiara, and has a glittering silver fringe.
The original femme fatale, the Marchesa Luisa Casati aspired to be a work of art. And indeed, her eccentricities dominated and delighted European society for nearly three decades. She captivated artists and literati figures such as Giovanni Boldini, Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, Cecil Beaton, Ezra Pound, and Jack Kerouac, commissioning and inspiring numerous works of art. She remains a fashion muse today.
In 1910, Casati took up residence at the Palazzo dei Leoni, on the 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 a host of incredible stories, including walking her cheetahs with jeweled leads wearing nothing but furs. At a time when no respectable women wore makeup, she darkened her eyes with kohl and painted her mouth vermillion, accenting her green eyes with false eyelashes and hennaed hair. She wore live snakes as jewelry, tiger-skin top hats, ornamental eye patches, and once, the blood of a freshly killed chicken.
