Pierre louis pierson biography of michael
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The Gaze
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Title:The Gaze
Artist:Pierre-Louis Pierson (French, 1822–1913)
Person in Photograph:Countess Virginia Oldoini Verasis di Castiglione (1835–1899)
Date:1856–57
Medium:Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions:Image: 9 x 6.6 cm (3 9/16 x 2 5/8 in.)
Mount: 12.9 x 9.1 cm (5 1/16 x 3 9/16 in.)
Mat: 21.9 x 15.9 cm (8 5/8 x 6 1/4 in.)
Classification:Photographs
Credit Line:Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Object Number:2005.100.119
Inscription: Inscribed in pencil on mount, verso TL to TR: "Cadre marquetterie // de Haas // marge bois svin // bevau argent"; Engraved metal plaque on frame, verso TC: "[in small caps] Portrait de la Comtesse dem Castliglione // offert à Madame Brooks // par le Comte de Montesquiou"
Virginia Verasis, née Oldoini, Countess de Castiglione, (Estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 26–29, 1901); Count Robert de
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La Frayeur
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Pierre-Louis PiersonFrench
Aquilin SchadAustrian
Person in photograph Countess Virginia Oldoini Verasis di Castiglione
Not on view
In 1856 Virginia Oldoini (1837-1899), Countess of Castiglione, was sent to France in order to persuade Emperor Napoleon III to champion the cause of Italian unification by any means necessary. The unrivaled beauty quickly became notorious not only as his mistress but also for her flamboyant self-presentation. Between 1856 and 1867, and then again toward the end of her life, she collaborated with the photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson to produce some 400 photographs, many of which were enlarged and painted according to her specific directions. Momentous scenes from her life (some merely imagined) were mixed with episodes drawn from the theater, opera, and literature in service of a carefully choreographed personal mythology that is a fixture of today
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The Countess Who Wanted to be the Most Photographed Woman in the World
One July day in 1856, the very young Countess of Castiglione appeared for the first time at Mayer & Pierson, a photographic studio for high society. We know that the studio was luxurious; engravings show its salons, antechambers, vast porticos, enormous bay windows bathing the galleries with light. But the photographs reveal only a rather mediocre parlor that looks like a hotel room (a bourgeois wardrobe in one corner, a rug with big flowers, and, in another corner, the little embossed velvet armchair posed awkwardly). One of the first shots of her is a group portrait with her child and nanny. She, Virginia Oldoïni of Castiglione, very upright, radiant, lacking any imagination except for that inspired by the confidence of her beauty; the child, seated in the center, absent; and the nanny, set slightly back, playing her utilitarian role to perfection, in a way even ensuring, by means of a highly ac