Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Painting in Casanova’s Paris

2023; Routledge; Volume: 77; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00397709.2022.2164655

1931-0676

Rori Bloom,

Historical and Literary Analyses

AbstractAlthough Casanova’s memoirs appear to tell the story of his erotic adventures, this article argues that Part 3 Chapter 13 of the Histoire de ma vie is organized around an interrogation of esthetics. Specifically, in the last chapter recounting his first stay in Paris, Casanova evokes different paintings and painters to develop his own ideas on representation. In explaining his relationship to portraits of Louise O’Murphy (a mistress of Louis XV) and the duchesse de Chartres as well as to the painters Sanson and Francesco Casanova (a brother of the author), the writer questions the painter’s goal of producing a realistic representation. Valuing paintings not only for their truth but also for their beauty, Casanova at the same time redefines the aims of writing, offering the reader a way to appreciate his autobiography less as an accurate relation of his life but as an artistic creation.Keywords: Giacomo CasanovaLouise O’Murphyeighteenth centuryFrench literaturepaintingrepresentationautobiography Notes1 In her introduction to Casanova in the Enlightenment, Malina Stefanovska also notes of Casanova: “Today he is finally receiving his due as an author” (7).2 The 2013 Laffont edition of Histoire de ma vie vol. 2 presents two versions of Casanova’s first stay in Paris: an earlier version on even-numbered pages and a later one on odd-numbered pages. The present article examines part 3 chapter 13 (“Départ de Paris, séjour à Dresde”) in the earlier version and the corresponding pages in the later version. For the sake of facility, I will refer to the passage studied as a chapter, although, in the second version, Casanova does not indicate chapter divisions.3 In other passages of his memoirs, Casanova does discuss painting as well as his encounters with a variety of painters including Mengs, Van Loo, Nattier, and art critic Winckelmann. The present article argues, however, that part 3 chapter 13 represents a particularly significant and sustained analysis of mimesis in painting with important implications for Casanova’s writing.4 For more on Casanova and theater see James Johnson, “The Theater of Identity.”5 See part 1 chapter 10 (Casanova at the theater in Paris) and part 3 chapter 11 (Casanova at the theater at Fontainebleau) in Histoire de ma vie.6 Roustang’s original French title, Le Bal masqué de Giacomo Casanova, refers to Casanova’s predilection for masquerade; Jean-Christophe Igalens’s section “Giacomo Casanova, vénitien” in “Casanova, écrivain” further explores the author’s Venetian identity.7 Three essays on the Parisian episodes appearing in Stefanovksa’s recent volume illuminate other aspects of this part of Histoire de ma vie. Pierre Saint-Amand highlights the joyful and educational encounter with the city in the first visit; Chantal Thomas reads three successive visits to Paris as emblematic of three stages in Casanova’s life; Igalens compares two versions of the first visit to highlight the work of composition in the later draft.8 Francès does concede in a later section of his book on Casanova that for this author the image is both “secondaire et capitale” (298). In this section, “Au péril de l’image,” Francès treats a variety of passages on painting in Histoire de ma vie, exploring their erotic power and more generally analyzing the complex presence of painting in Casanova’s writing.9 Igalens identifies this young girl in a note as Marie-Louise dite Louison Morphy (ou Murphy) (1737–1814) (855). Further biography may be found in Camille Pascal, Le Goût du roi: Louis XV et Marie-Louise O’Murphy. On Casanova’s account of his role in the relationship between Louise and Louis XV, Roustang writes: “Casanova has become the king by transferring Morfi from his arms to those of Louis XV” (119).10 Chantal Thomas identifies the portrait of Louise commissioned by Casanova as having been painted by Boucher (Un voyage libertin 34). However, Esther Bell questions the identification, writing: “The sitter in Boucher’s Resting Girl has likely erroneously been identified as O’Murphy” (125). While allowing that Louise may have been painted by Boucher at some point, Igalens proposes to identify Casanova’s “German” painter as the Swede Gustaf Lundberg (858 n.2).11 Or as Francès aptly analyzes this scene: “Deux ressemblances se contemplent au miroir” (318).12 In his essay on Casanova in Paris, Saint-Amand refers to Casanova’s multiple illegitimate children as “portraits” of their father (117).13 Paper money was at this point still a recent invention, dating from the French crown’s relationship with Scottish economist John Law in the Regency period preceding the reign of Louis XV. On Casanova’s money-making schemes, particularly the launching of a lottery in France, see Nina Dubin, “Man of Numbers.”14 Casanova discovers and mocks this French penchant for novelty in the first pages of the Parisian sojourn of 1750 (part 3 chapter 10), writing of Paris: “Les Dieux qu’on adore ici, malgré qu’on ne leur élève pas des autels sont la nouveauté et la mode” (726).15 M.-F. Luna characterizes Casanova’s encounters with other adventurers as characterized by both “fascination” and “mépris” (418), behaviors also displayed in his interaction with Sanon.16 Casanova should be able to verify whether Sanson can create an accurate painted portrait from a good verbal description, since Silvia proposes to describe her daughter (Casanova’s beloved Manon Baletti) to Sanson, but Casanova never informs his reader whether the painting was completed. Interestingly, Casanova seems to have commissioned the portraitist Jean-Marc Nattier, whom he praises for his ability to create a true and beautiful likeness of his models (in a passage from part 5 of Histoire de ma vie discussed later in this article), to paint Manon Balletti. However, Nattier is no more faithful than Sanson to the ideal of painting from life to capture a likeness, for he seems to have copied elements of his portrait of Manon in the portraits of other subjects including Mademoiselle Marsollier and Madame Dupleix de Bacquencourt, as the National Gallery explains: “Several other portraits by Nattier resemble this one. Repetition allowed him to produce portraits quickly and cheaply” (https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jean-marc-nattier-manon-balletti).17 In reading this episode, Francès confirms that “ce qui se perd du côté de la ressemblance est reconquis sur le plan de la création” (321). My analysis of the chapter extends this insight to Casanova’s general understanding of mimesis in both painting and writing.18 Bell’s chapter in Ilchman’s volume provides additional details on Francesco Casanova’s first visit to Paris.19 For Casanova, the rarest artists are those who, like Nattier (known for his portrait of the duchesse de Chartres as Hebe), paint portraits that “ressemblent parfaitement, et en même temps ajoutent un caractère imperceptible de beauté à la figure qu’ils ont tracée sur le tableau” (II: 473). In her analysis of Casanova’s written portraits of women, Luna identifies this same tendency towards idealization (484).20 For example, in this same preface, Casanova evokes his love of “la vérité” and then in the same sentence admits that he is willing to “mentir” as needed (15). In her sections “Dire la verité” and “La crédibilité de l’Histoire de ma vie,” M.-F. Luna notes the tension between the penchant for lying in Casanova’s story (histoire) and the assurance of truthfulness in its telling (récit) to interrogate the credibility of his memoirs, nevertheless admitting that many of the identities and events in Histoire de ma vie have been authenticated by Casanova’s biographers (130–134). In his own analysis, J.-C. Igalens includes a section also entitled “Dire la vérité,” again exploring Casanova’s ambiguous attitude toward truth-telling, noting the evolution of his attitude toward exactitude from the 1791 to the 1797 preface of Histoire de ma vie (310–326).21 The “Avertissement” of the 1925 inaugural issue of the journal Pages casanoviennes exemplifies this reading of Casanova’s Histoire as a true story (even while describing its writing as a sort of painting). The journal’s editor, Joseph Pollio calls the memoir “le tableau le plus vivant, le plus pittoresque du XVIIIe siècle qu’elle nous présente—avec une véracité de jour en jour mieux démontrée—la galerie la plus curieuse de personnages de cette époque” (4). Pollio attributes the value of the Histoire to its historicity, to the presence of “trop d’événements, trop de personnages importants—historiquement parlant—pour pouvoir être négligeable” (5) and based on his belief in the verifiability of Casanova’s text affirms his own editorial aim of establishing “une sorte de dictionnaire casanovien permettant d’identifier les personnages des Mémoires et aussi de suivre le voyageur dans ses multiples déplacements” (6).22 Roustang calls Casanova a “great writer” (xii) and Sollers calls him “one of the great writers of the eighteenth century” (6). In Casanova: l’écrivain en ses fictions, Igalens further identifies Casanova as a creative writer, examining in l’Histoire de ma vie “les relations entre l’autobiographie, le roman, et les fictions théatrales”(15).23 He divides portrait painters into three categories here: “Ceux qui ressemblent et enlaidissent. . . [;] ceux qui ressemblent parfaitement et même à un point qui étonne. . .[;] ceux qui ressemblent parfaitement, et en même temps ajoutent un caractère imperceptible de beauté à la figure qu’ils ont tracée sur le tableau” (473).24 A detailed examination of Casanova’s engagement with Rousseau is beyond the scope of this article. Luna (304–313) and Igalens (Casanova, l’écrivain en ses fictions, 354–369) provide examples of studies on this subject.25 For a close analysis of the difference between these versions, see Igalens, “Rewriting, Revolution, Melancholy: Two Versions of the First Stay in Paris.”26 Roustang is particularly alert to this quality in Histoire de ma vie, writing: “I was struck by the structural similarities of various stories that at first glance would seem to have nothing in common” (1).Additional informationNotes on contributorsRori BloomRori Bloom is associate professor of French at the University of Florida. She is the author of two books: Man of Quality, Man of Letters: The Abbé Prévost between Novel and Newspaper and Making the Marvelous: Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Henriette-Julie de Murat, and the Literary Representation of the Decorative Arts. She has also published articles and essays on various French writers, including Claude Crébillon, Nicolas-Edme Restif de la Bretonne, and Claire de Duras.