The writer prevails with the biography of Virginia Verasis di Castiglione edited by Adelphi. Opera prima to Bernardo Zannoni (Sellerio)
Like a festive return to Italy for the Countess of Castiglione, like this Benedetta Craveri welcomes the Premio Bagutta 2022 that was assigned to her for The Countess. Virginia Verasis of Castiglione (Adelphi, 2021). Also this year the jury, chaired by Isabella Bossi Fedrigotti, secretary Andrea Kerbaker (and composed of Rosellina Archinto, Silvia Ballestra, Eva Cantarella, Elio Franzini, Umberto Galimberti, Davide Mosca, Elena Pontiggia, Enzo Restagno, Mario Santagostini, Alessandra Tedesco, Valeria V Advantages and Orio Vergani) opened the awards season by announcing the winner of the Bagutta (while the Opera Prima Award went to My stupid intentions from Bernardo Zannoni, Sellerio): the date of the ceremony will be decided in the coming months.
Craveri’s book, of which the jury notes the “precise, direct style, always supported by a capacity for investigation that allowed the author to find conspicuous unpublished material “, is the biography of Castiglione, Cavour’s cousin, who at twenty was the lover of Napoleon III and brought France closer to the interests of the Savoy, favoring the Italian unitary project, and finally announcing a sensational personal “retreat”. A story of lights and shadows, which Benedetta Craveri (Rome, 1942), well-known essayist and scholar who lives between Italy and France, dedicated the book: an essay that continues his research on the modern French and feminine age between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from Madame du Deffand and her world (1982) a Marie Antoinette and the scandal of the necklace (2006, again Adelphi). Lights, because the “divine countess” was one celebrity, a star ante litteram; shadows, since he attracted the hatred of the court for the scandalous conquests. “An authentic enigma – explains Craveri -: he used the resonance of his beauty to create a character, since his survival was entrusted to his ability to impose himself, but he certainly showed political intelligence”.
Even the withdrawal, the retirement, attributed to the fear of the fading of beauty, continues the author, was instead something else: «It is not only beauty that fades, its world is over, Cavour, Napoleon III, Prince Poniatowski are dead. And the retirement it is such that it raises curiosity about her, the ex beautiful of the Second Empire: there the myth is born ». A myth that Craveri has fathomed among documents, letters and autographed writings: «I did not expect to find such an immense amount of unpublished material in the archives, and I expect to find others. The countess is a constant source of surprises ».
January 26, 2022 (change January 26, 2022 | 12:24)
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