Giacomo Casanova

Giacomo Casanova. AKA Giacomo Girolamo Casanova. World-renowned paramour. Birthplace: Venice, Italy Location of death: Dux Cause of death: unspecified Remains: Buried, Du. Italian adventurer, born at Venice in 1725. His father belonged to an ancient and even noble family, but alienated his friends by embracing the dramatic profession early in. Born to Show and Tell About It. In 1725, a little Giacomo Casanova was born to a Venetian show.

Giacomo Casanova Wiki

The Italian adventurer Giacomo Jacopo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798) is best known for his memoirs, which are a most revealing record of 18th-century European society.

The first child of an actor and actress, Casanova was born in Venice. He set out to play the comedy of life with a short role as an ecclesiastic but was expelled from the seminary in 1743. He found refuge in Rome with Cardinal Acquaviva, the first of his many powerful protectors. By 1745 he had returned to Venice, where he practiced magic. Forced to flee prosecution for engaging in the black arts, Casanova drifted from city to city. In Lyons in 1750 he joined the Free Masons, an allegiance that gave him support in the noble, free thinking circles of cosmopolitan Europe. Gambling, profiteering, and amorous activities marked his first stay in Paris (1750-1753). His luck held until 1755, when he was imprisoned in Venice for 'black magic, licentiousness, and atheism.' His spectacular escape is chronicled in the only portion of his memoirs to appear during his lifetime (1788).

Gaetano Casanova (2 April 1697, Parma – 18 December 1733, Venice) was an Italian actor and ballet dancer.His eldest son was the famous adventurer, Giacomo Casanova. Gaetano Giuseppe Giacomo Casanova was born to Giacomo Casanova (whose family had originally come to Italy from Aragon) and his wife, Anna Roli.His older brother, Giambattista, left home in 1712 and was never heard. Giacomo Casanova was an adventurer. He travelled restlessly throughout Europe his entire life meeting kings, cardinals and philosophers. He repeatedly changed roles like a chameleon, going from priest to orchestra violinist, actor to scientist, con man to civil servant. Casanova was born in Venice in 1725. His mother was an actress and his ostensible father a dancer, but his real father was the wealthy owner of the San Samuele Theatre, where they both appeared and where Giacomo himself would later earn his living playing the violin.

The years 1756-1763 brought Casanova his most brilliant successes in a society dedicated to games of love and chance. Voltaire, whom he met briefly, judged him to be a 'mixture of science and imposture,' a suspect combination which nevertheless brought Casanova in contact with Frederick II and Catherine the Great.

Giacomo Casanova Written Works

Casanova himself divided his life into 'three acts of a comedy.' The second, which he thought of as lasting from 1763 to 1783, was less droll than the first. Protectors were less willing, and as the adventurer's brilliance faded, his charlatanism became more evident. From 1774 to 1782 Casanova added to his repertoire the role of 'secret agent' for the Republic of Venice, but he was less a spy than an informer.

Again obliged to leave Venice, Casanova began the third act of his comedy penniless and on the road. But in 1785 he gained the protection of the Count of Waldstein, in whose château at Dux (Bohemia) he stayed until his death in 1798. There he wrote his celebrated History of My Life, ending with the events of 1774, after which he had 'only sad things to tell.' Written in sometimes imperfect French, this work moves rapidly and frankly through vast amounts of personal and social detail. Besides tales of the 122 women whose favors he claims to have enjoyed, Casanova offers a chronicle of social extravagance and decline and a vision of Europe as complex and colorful as the bawdy, elegant, naively rational, desperately pretentious, and comic figure of 'Seingalt' himself.

Casanova's writings also include miscellaneous gallant verse, several treatises on mathematics, a three-volume refutation of Amelot de la Houssaye's history of Venetian government (1769), a translation of the Iliad (1775), and a five-volume novel of fantastic adventure to the center of the earth, Icosameron (1788).

Further Reading on Giacomo Jacopo Girolamo Casanova de Seinglat

Long limited to bowdlerized editions derived from a first German translation of the manuscript (acquired by Brockhaus in 1821), Casanova's History of My Life may now be read in a faithful translation by Willard R. Trask (4 vols., 1966-1967). The dean of Casanova scholars, James Rives Childes, wrote the definitive Casanova: A Biography (1961). The richly illustrated book by John Masters, Casanova (1969), provides valuable evocations of his life and times.

Additional Biography Sources

Buck, Mitchell S. (Mitchell Starrett), b. 1887., The life of Casanova from 1774 to 1798: a supplement to the Memoirs, Brooklyn: Haskell House, 1977.

Casanova, Giacomo, The life and memoirs of Casanova, New York, N.Y.: Da Capo Press, 1984.

Childs, J. Rives (James Rives), Casanova, a new perspective, New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1988.

Ricci, Seymour de, Jacques Casanova de Seingalt: an address to the Philobiblon Club of Philadelphia, 24 May 1923, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1976.

Roustang, Francois., The quadrille of gender: Casanova's 'Memoirs,' Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988.

Giacomo Casanova Book

AKA Giacomo Girolamo Casanova

Born:2-Apr-1725
Birthplace:Venice, Italy
Died:4-Jun-1798
Location of death: Dux
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Duchcov Church, Duchcov, Czechia

Gender: Male
Religion: Christian
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Author, Paranormal

Nationality: Italy
Executive summary: World-renowned paramour

Italian adventurer, born at Venice in 1725. His father belonged to an ancient and even noble family, but alienated his friends by embracing the dramatic profession early in life. He made a runaway marriage with Zanetta Farusi, the beautiful daughter of a Venetian shoemaker; and Giovanni was their eldest child. When he was but a year old, his parents, taking a journey to London, left him in charge of his grandmother, who, perceiving his precocious and lively intellect, had him educated far above her means. At sixteen he passed his examination and entered the seminary of St. Cyprian in Venice, from which he was expelled a short time afterwards for some scandalous and immoral conduct, which would have cost him his liberty, had not his mother managed somehow to procure him a situation in the household of the Cardinal Acquaviva. He made but a short stay, however, in that prelate's establishment, all restraint being irksome to his wayward disposition, and took to travelling. Then began that existence of adventure and intrigue which only ended with his death. He visited Rome, Naples, Corfu and Constantinople. By turns journalist, preacher, abbé, diplomat, he was nothing very long, except homme à bonnes fortunes, which profession he cultivated until the end of his days. In 1755, having returned to Venice, he was denounced as a spy and imprisoned. On the 1st of November 1756 he succeeded in escaping, and made his way to Paris. Here he was made director of the state lotteries, gained much financial reputation and a considerable fortune, and frequented the society of the most notable French men and women of the day. In 1759 he set out again on his travels. He visited in turn the Netherlands, South Germany, Switzerland -- where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire -- Savoy, southern France, Florence -- whence he was expelled -- and Rome, where the pope gave him the order of the Golden Spur. In 1761 he returned to Paris, and for the next four or five years lived partly there, partly in England, South Germany and Italy. In 1764 he was in Berlin, where he refused the offer of a post made him by Frederick II. He then travelled by way of Riga and St. Petersburg to Warsaw, where he was favorably received by King Stanislaus Poniatowski. A scandal, followed by a duel, forced him to flee, and he returned by a devious route to Paris, only to find a lettre de cachet awaiting him, which drove him to seek refuge in Spain. Expelled from Madrid in 1769, he went by way of Aix -- where he met Cagliostro -- to Italy once more. From 1774, with which year his memoirs close, he was a police spy in the service of the Venetian inquisitors of state; but in 1782, in consequence of a satirical libel on one of his patrician patrons, he had once more to go into exile. In 1785 he was appointed by Count Waldstein, an old Paris acquaintance, his librarian at the château of Dux in Bohemia. Here he lived until his death, which probably occurred on the 4th of June 1798.

The main authority for Casanova's life is his Mémoires (12 vols., Leipzig, 1826-38), which were written at Dux. They are clever, well written and, above all, cynical, and interesting as a trustworthy picture of the morals and manners of the times. Among Casanova's other works may be mentioned Confutazione della storia del governo Veneto d'Amelot de la Houssaye (Amsterdam, 1769), an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Venetian government; and the Histoire of his escape from prison (Leipzig, 1788).

Father: Gaetano Giuseppe Casanova
Mother: Giovanna Maria Zanetta Farussi
Brother: Gaetano
Girlfriend: Bettina Gozzi
Girlfriend: Teresa Imer
Girlfriend: Nanetta
Girlfriend: Marta Savorgnan
Girlfriend: Donna Lucrezia (1744)
Girlfriend: Angiola Calori ('Bellino')
Girlfriend: Henriette (1749-50)
Girlfriend: Caterina Capretta
Girlfriend: Leonilda (1761)

Law School: University of Padua (1742)

Freemasonry Lyons (1750)
Expelled from School
Forgery (1759), convicted
Fraud Paris (1759), charges dropped
Unlawful Gambling Vienna, Austria (1767), convicted
Witchcraft convicted (1755)
Duel: Pistols Count Xavier Branicki, Warsaw, Poland (1766)
Escaped from Prison 31-Oct-1756
Exiled from Vienna (1767)
Debtor's Prison For-l'Évêque, Paris, France
Assassination Attempt Barcelona, Spain
Risk Factors: Gonorrhea, Smallpox, Gambling

Author of books:
Confutazione della storia del governo Veneto d'Amelot de la Houssaie (1769)
Lana Caprina (1772)
Istoria della turbulenza della Polonia (1774)
Histoire de ma fuite de prisons de la République de Venise (1788)
Isocameron (1788)
Solution du problème déliaque (1790)
Mémoires (1822-28)

Giacomo Casanova Images

Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile

Giacomo Casanova Biography

Copyright ©2019 Soylent Communications