VIDEO; A 19th century engraving of Casanova and one of his conquests.

A 19th century engraving of Casanova and one of his conquests. 

12 MARCH 2018 • 3:10PM

Nick Squires, rome 

He was the ultimate rake, the personification of the art of seduction. Now a museum is to be dedicated to the life of Casanova.

A 19th century engraving of Casanova and one of his conquests. CREDIT: GETTY

The “Casanova Museum and Experience”, which is billed as the first of its kind in the world, will open next month in his hometown of Venice.

The museum will recount not only his louche sexual conquests, which numbered around 120 if Casanova’s claims are to be believed, but his encounters with some of the best-known figures of his time, from Mozart and Voltaire to Benjamin Franklin and Madame de Pompadour, mistress to King Louis XV of France.

The opening of the museum on April 2, in Venice’s Palazzo Pesaro Papafava, not far from the Grand Canal, comes 220 years after the libertine’s death in 1798.

There will be six rooms dedicated to the adventurer, who was also a soldier, spy, linguist, philosopher and poet.

It is Casanova’s sexual conquests which garner the most attention – but he was much more than an arch seducer.

“Casanova might be surprised by his reputation in the modern world because he was a fiercely proud intellectual and polymath,” said Ian Kelly, a British historian and the author of “Casanova – Actor, Lover, Priest, Spy”, an acclaimed biography.

“He was a very skilled mathematician and he wrote something like 42 books, including a history of Poland and arguably the world’s first-ever science fiction novel.”

Casanova had a reputation as a seducer but he was also a poet, philosopher, soldier and spy. 

CREDIT: GETTY

Casanova worked variously as a scribe to a cardinal, a violinist and a professional gambler, before securing the patronage of a Venetian nobleman.

“He was from the wrong side of the tracks but rose fast in Venetian society.

“He escaped from the Doge’s prison in Venice after being hauled up for his interest in the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism,” said Mr Kelly.

“He was a genius, in a way, but he was also febrile and restive and could never settle down to one thing.”

Born in Venice in 1725, as a young man Casanova was expelled from a seminary for scandalous behaviour.

He embarked on a life of scandal, intrigue and regular bouts of venereal disease.

“I often had no scruples about deceiving nitwits and scoundrels and fools when I found it necessary. We avenge intelligence when we deceive a fool,” he wrote.

Traveling restlessly from one European country to another, he is thought to have covered more than 40,000 miles during his lifetime and met two popes as well as Rousseau and Catherine the Great.

After returning to Venice, he acted as a spy for the Venetian Inquisition, before spending his final years as a librarian in a castle in Bohemia, in what is today the Czech Republic.

“By that stage of his life he was cursed by depression and loneliness and his doctor suggested that he write his memoirs as a cure for his melancholia,” said Mr Kelly, whose biography of Casanova was last year turned into a ballet.

The 12-volume autobiography, Story of My Life, was only published after his death. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/12/worlds-first-museum-dedicated-casanova-open-venice

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