1. Canaletto, Bacino di San Marco, Venice

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
We begin our journey through “Casanova’s Europe” in Venice with curator Frederick Ilchman.

Frederick Ilchman:
This large painting is one of the most important and glorious views by Canaletto of Venice. This is the Venice that Casanova would have grown up in, and from the energy, the details, the people on different kinds of boats, you have a great sense of how international, cosmopolitan, Venice was. At the far left the tall steeple is the main bell tower of St. Mark's Church. There’s a large pink building several over to the right, which is the Doge's Palace, the seat of government.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
It was also the setting for Casanova’s imprisonment, which you’ll find out about later. I’m Courtney Harris, research fellow for the exhibition. We’ve set up this first room to give you a sense of entering the city. Explore the different sweeping views around you.

Frederick Ilchman:
Casanova was born in Venice. He spent about a quarter of his life in Venice. It always brought him home and really defined him. Being from Venice opened lots of doors. It was known as a sophisticated place.

This exhibition is loosely structured by the biography and geography of Giacomo Casanova. But it's not about his life per se. More, it’s about his world. And he wrote one of the longest autobiographies ever written, full of amazing detail about social customs and places he went and people he met. It provided a great starting point to bring the 21st-century viewer into the world of the 18th century.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
That autobiography is also the basis for Casanova’s reputation as a seducer, and a libertine who disregarded sexual norms. Many of his sexual misdeeds were scandalous in his own time, and some would now be criminal. He was a womanizer; he broke promises, perpetrated frauds, and skipped out on creditors. The exhibition is not intended as a glorification of his behavior. By using Casanova’s life as a framework for the exhibition, we invite you to consider aspects of power—including social, economic, and sexual power—both then and now.

2. Nattier, Thalia, Muse of Comedy

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
Thalia, the Greek goddess of comedy, peeks at us from under a curtain. Behind her, we get a glimpse of actors on a stage set.

Ian Kelly:
You see this slightly wicked, glinting smile on Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, holding here her theatrical mask itself, also smirking.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
That’s Ian Kelly, an actor who also wrote a recent biography of Casanova.

Ian Kelly:
And central, quite literally to this painting, her right breast exposed. And another proper understanding, of course, of Casanova’s 18th century was its ease with some aspects of sexuality and indeed of seduction, a game played theatrically, it’s sometimes said, a game not necessarily with serious or romantic intent. And one of the joys of Jean Marc Nattier’s Thalia, Muse of Comedy is its depiction, if you will, of a backstage view, the ill-lit wings from which one sees reality. Which is, it’s sometimes argued, how Casanova himself looks at the world. His mother, Zanetta Farussi, was a huge comedy star.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
The mask in the painting is the classical mask of comedy—but, as you can see in other paintings in this room, in 18th-century Venice, masquerading was a part of everyday life. Wearing a mask in public allowed for an otherwise forbidden mixing of people from different social classes.

Ian Kelly:
The masquerade becomes a symbol of 18th-century Venice. And for that reason maybe the whole world of mask and masquerade is key to an understanding of this man, this period.

3. Venice Vignette

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
Here’s the MFA’s curator of Decorative Arts, Thomas Michie.

Thomas Michie:
We selected a group of furniture for this gallery to convey a sense of the interior world of Venice, inside of a Venetian palazzo. So, in front of us is the most elaborate table. There's hardly a straight line. It's carved and gilded. Gilding can be applied in thin sheets of gold. It then coats the wood and becomes a reflective surface.

The chairs are perhaps more about architectural grandeur than comfort. They would have stood against a wall, on either side of a table like this one. These are highly expressive, curvaceous forms. They celebrate a kind of asymmetry; swelling, tapering forms. It's meant to look alive. The upholstery is a modern recreation of a period fabric. But I think you can see, through metallic threads and its color, that it too is contributing to the richness of the interior design.

Throughout the exhibition you'll see various kinds of gilded objects, and the visual effect was to reflect light. Candlelight is so different from conventional modern gallery lighting that it's hard to imagine flickering light where these reflective objects would go in and out of focus, and their outlines would fade and reappear. The design and fabrication of these objects is intended to celebrate that effect.

4. Fragonard, The Useless Resistance

Courtney Harris:
I’m Courtney Harris, research fellow for the exhibition. The title of this painting, The Useless Resistance, is something that reads very differently today. As it should: we’re highlighting this painting as a particular example of how this exhibition gives us, here at the MFA, a platform to address important issues of our time through interpretation and public programs. Be sure to pick up a programming guide during your visit.

Here in the painting, she is fighting him off: we see her hand pulling on his hair, as he grasps her arm and reaches across her body. But, in the 18th century, the scene was understood as sexual playacting. It includes intentional ambiguity as to whether she is actually “resisting” him, or if she’s pretending to do so, to save her honor.

We are meant to see the pillows—especially the one at the far right and the one underneath her arm at the far left—as body parts, almost. You can't tell where her leg starts and ends and where the pillow begins. And we can't tell whether it's his body or her body. We’re meant to see the whole picture as flesh. And the shape of the painting—an oval—is meant to make us think of looking at them through a peephole. It’s a reference to voyeurism, which Casanova and others wrote about at this time.

This painting is by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and other paintings in this room are by him as well. And you'll notice another artist, François Boucher, is represented here. Both Fragonard and Boucher are well known for their amorous depictions. Between Boucher and Fragonard, we're seeing the best of the best of French painting in the early and mid-18th century. And they're really the people that promote the Rococo style, which is this kind of curving, luscious approach to painting, furniture, decorative arts—something that you’ll see throughout the exhibition.

When you enter the next room, you’ll see a tableau—a kind of stage set—evoking 18th-century Venice. Take off your headphones to enjoy the soundscape that accompanies it, before exploring other audio stops in that room.

5. Guardi, The Parlatorio

Frederick Ilchman:
Francesco Guardi painted this picture to show a uniquely Venetian institution. This is the parlatorio, or the conversation room, of a Venetian convent.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
Again, curator Frederick Ilchman.

Frederick Ilchman:
It's visiting hour, and you have very well-dressed Venetians on the outside of the grill talking with nuns on the inside.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
The girl sitting in the central window, wearing a yellow dress, isn’t a nun, however. It was a Venetian tradition for wealthy families to board daughters, such as this young lady, at convents until they were ready for marriage.

Frederick Ilchman:
They are receiving visitors, catching up with their friends, gossiping. There's a real sense of an event going on here. You see children watching a puppet show. So this is an elegant setting and a mixing of people who normally were supposed to be kept separate.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
The MFA’s curator of textiles, Pamela Parmal, sees that social mixing in their clothing.

Pamela Parmal:
On the far left of the painting you see a beggar, who is wearing clothes that look like they're in tatters. And that quite possibly is the only garment he owns. Most people did not own more than two or three garments because of the expense of textiles during the period.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
The woman at the very center, in white, however, is at the other extreme of society.

Pamela Parmal:
During the 18th century, fabric was extraordinarily expensive and only the very wealthy could afford the amount of silk that would have been needed to wear a dress like that. And that style of dress is actually called a pannier, and “pannier” means a basket. And underneath the white of her skirt, she's wearing two cages, which give it that very large feel. The lace too, like the silk of the dress, is also a very important symbol of her wealth because lace was an incredibly expensive fashion accessory.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
You can see a pannier dress in the flesh, so to speak, on one of the mannequins in this room, in a tableau of a parlatorio. It’s the garment made of green and white silk.

6. Longhi, The Fortune Teller

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
The woman in the center—clearly wealthy—in that fabulous white dress, and black lace neckpiece, is visiting a fortune teller. The woman behind her, with the simple head covering, looks out at us. It makes us somehow feel part of the shady dealings. Here’s Casanova’s biographer Ian Kelly.

Ian Kelly:
Venice was becoming a city where potentially you could be duped or scammed, a city though, also, that offered any number of extraordinary pleasures and pursuits. The fortune tellers, the gamblers, the puppeteers, the “little theaters of the world” as they were termed. One can think of it in a sense as a sort of a theme park of the 18th century, a Vegas of the 18th century. It begs a question almost of whether the central character is being scammed, or is enjoying a new experience.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
This painting dates to a couple of years before Casanova was arrested in Venice, on July 26, 1755. The gallery ahead covers his imprisonment. It wasn’t, however, his sexual activities or his moneymaking schemes that got him into trouble. He was brought in front of a tribunal known as the Venetian Inquisition.

Ian Kelly:
It was his interest in fortune telling, his interest in the supposed mystical power of numbers and indeed in the Jewish Kabbalah—that spills out of the Jewish ghetto at exactly this period—that landed him in trouble with the Venetian Inquisition. All they had against him, it should be said, was his forbidden books, his mathematical treatises. What actually it seems they had against him was that he had risen through the strict class structure of 18th-century Venice. And that was the sort of thing that the Venetian state wanted to slap down.

7. Piranesi, The Well

Thomas Michie:
If you're feeling that this room is very different from the one you just left, that was entirely by design.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
Move along this wall of prints as you listen to curator Thomas Michie.

Thomas Michie:
This series of etchings and engravings by Piranesi, a fellow Venetian, are some of the most remarkable visual representations of prison-like spaces ever made. They’re entirely imaginary. They dwarf the figures. They recede in strange ways, there are stairways to nowhere. Some of them are quite dark. So they’re meant to be unsettling.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
Casanova was imprisoned in the upper floors of the notorious prison inside the Doge’s Palace in Venice. He was sentenced to five years, but only served about 18 months. For the first year of his sentence, he was in a cell by himself.

Thomas Michie:
Casanova was probably the most miserable prisoner you can imagine because he was often on the road, forever traveling, highly gregarious in person. So to be in solitary confinement, for him, was a terrible fate. The case in this room contains a copy of the small book that Casanova wrote to recount the story of his escape. And, as it happened, he found a spike that had been holding the ceilings of the rooms above and below, fashioned that into a tool, and was able to pick away at the ceiling of his cell. The roof was of lead sheeting and so the building got the nickname of the Piombi, or “The Leads,” as it’s still known today. And that was the soft metal that Casanova was able to puncture and get out. Having clambered up onto the roof, he then drops down into the public rooms. A guard mistook him for a nobleman who had simply been locked in accidentally overnight. So he walked out the front door, and then made a hasty escape.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
Lest you think this account is just Casanova’s bragging, biographer Ian Kelly did some “digging” of his own.

Ian Kelly:
I’ve seen the files of the Venetian Inquisition in Venice that account, amongst other things, the expense of the repairs to the lead roof of the Doge’s Palace.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
In the next room you’ll be entering the world of 18th-century Paris. You’ll find another tableau there. Remove your headphones to enjoy the soundscape around it. Then choose other audio stops in that room.

8. Nattier, Manon Balletti

Courtney Harris:
Jean Marc Nattier, who painted this portrait, was a very popular painter of portraits in the mid-18th century. He was a favorite of the official mistress of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour, and Manon here being depicted by Nattier, it shows that her family was really operating in the highest artistic circles in Paris.

The time when this painting was painted, in about 1757, was when she was an eligible young woman and her parents were trying to market her for marriage. Manon here would be about 16 or 17 years old. We see the rosy cheeks of youth, and the flower assures us that she's still a youthful maiden. And her hair is powdered.

Manon Balletti is here in this exhibition because she was one of Casanova's many loves. He never married and he only had one engagement, and it was to the young lovely Manon. But they ultimately did not marry due to Casanova's continued romantic interests elsewhere.

You can find a portrait of Manon’s mother, Silvia Balletti, also by Jean Marc Nattier, nearby. It’s an oil sketch, where we see her head and shoulders and she's depicted in soft tones with a green headdress. When Casanova first comes to Paris in 1750, he seeks out fellow Italians. And that's how he falls in with the Balletti family. He stays with them, they take him to Versailles. And it was often speculated that Casanova and Silvia had a relationship, but he never speaks of it in his memoirs, which he certainly would if he did, because she was a well-known actress of her day. She's shown playing one of her roles. That's why she has this ivy crown in her hair.

9. Paris Vignette

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
Again, curator of Decorative Arts, Thomas Michie.

Thomas Michie:
We're standing in front of a wonderful grouping of a chest of drawers; over it hangs a clock which is flanked on either side by quite remarkable pair of wall lights. The wall lights are the largest size that money could buy in the 18th century. And they are the ultimate expression of the Rococo style. The branches are extremely lifelike. The leaves look as if they were modeled from nature. They also have parrots in the entwined branches and parrots, who mate for life, therefore were seen as emblems of fidelity.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
Move around the edges of the platform to see these lights from all sides.

Thomas Michie:
You can see their sculptural form which is unusually animated, the way they do extend and really occupy the space around them.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
And, in between, there’s this marvelous clock.

Thomas Michie:
At the top is a huge burst of light, with Aurora in her chariot, which is pulling across the clouds. And then at the bottom is a figure with a curtain being drawn across, so that is night. It begins with daytime at the top, the burst of sunlight, and then it ends with a curtain drawn at night at the bottom, which is just perfect for a clock and the times of day.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
When you’re ready to move into the next room, you’ll be entering the world of 18th-century London. There’s another tableau there, so remember to remove your headphones to take in the soundscape.

10. Hone, Kitty Fisher

Courtney Harris:
The first thing you're drawn to when you look at this painting is perhaps not the beautiful woman depicted in it, but it’s this fishbowl in the front. And we see a small black cat perched on the edge of the fishbowl, and he's dipping his paw into the water. And this is a cat, fishing, which leads us back to the subject of the painting: Kitty Fisher. And it's a deliberate play on her name. And she is an important courtesan in London in the mid-18th century.

She's wearing a chemise or a negligee, and an elaborate necklace and a dazzling pearl bracelet. So she's showing us that she has the money to live life with the best of them. Kitty Fisher was very consciously creating her own identity and one of the other artists who paints her—Sir Joshua Reynolds—many of his paintings were made into prints and distributed widely, and people would tack them up at their homes. So she's the sort of original pinup girl. She's come to power through sex and pleasure. And we know that Casanova was offered the opportunity to be with her; ten guineas was the price. But he said that he wouldn’t, because she did not speak French, and he didn’t speak English.

Ian Kelly, Casanova’s biographer, will read you what Casanova wrote about her in his memoirs.

Ian Kelly:
“She was charming, but she spoke only English. Accustomed to loving only with all my senses, I could not indulge in love without including my sense of hearing.”

11. Hogarth, The Lady’s Last Stake

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
Again, here’s curator Frederick Ilchman.

Frederick Ilchman:
Across Europe, but particularly England, people were obsessed with gambling, with lotteries; there was an idea that high stakes meant high entertainment. And this painting is called The Lady's Last Stake and it probably takes its name from a comedy, earlier in the century, where a pretty and wealthy young woman has had a losing streak at cards. And she's given the opportunity by the very eager young man in red to win back all her losses, or pay the price and relinquish the one thing she still has—her virtue—and sleep with him. In this picture, the young man, proffering all sorts of jewelry, leans in, and she looks out at us, the viewer, to understand her dilemma. Notice the wonderful details: cards on the floor, a little dog at the lower left. The dog does look out at us, again acknowledging that this is a moment of dilemma or tension and we are supposed to find it maybe sympathetic, but also comic.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
Textiles curator Pamela Parmal notes that the woman’s silk taffeta dress is distinctly English.

Pamela Parmal:
There’s an outer dress and a petticoat that's worn underneath that. And the outer dress is open up the front of the skirt, so you can see the petticoat underneath that. The dress was attached at either side to what was called a stomacher, which is a triangular piece of fabric, often decorated with ribbons and bows and laces and metal trims. I think the artist is really highlighting her high social position with the lace that she wears at her sleeves and around the neck of the dress, and in her collar.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
And looking at him, British military officers could design many elements of their uniform themselves.

Pamela Parmal:
It almost appears as if there’s an ostentatious amount of braid on his uniform, which may be something that Hogarth is mocking.

12. Casanova, Travelers in a Storm

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
This size of this painting makes it feel like we could step into the action. Here’s curator Thomas Michie.

Thomas Michie:
The sky is in turmoil, so it's a very dramatic scene. And the figure in the middle, it’s almost a kind of religious transformation as lightning has created a halo around him.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
This, and the other large painting next to it, are by Casanova’s younger brother, Francesco. He came to Paris at his brother’s suggestion to advance his painting career.

Thomas Michie:
Casanova's brother was fairly well known. His specialty were battle scenes. Here he is showing travelers, both of them are action-packed and, really, one can almost sense the danger and the excitement of the event. The perils of travel, or at least the discomforts of travel, were everywhere. It wasn't just the modes of transport and sometimes the roads themselves, which were rarely paved. Beds were sometimes shared in wayside inns, and the beds were notoriously uncomfortable.

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
These paintings were bought by the French royal court, and then, perhaps with a certain amount of dark humor, they were hung in particular apartments at Versailles.

Thomas Michie:
These two paintings by Francesco Casanova hung in the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It would be a tongue-in-cheek comment about foreign affairs, or the way that ambassadors reached their destinations.

13. Falconet, Catherine the Great

Courtney Harris:
Here Catherine the Great is depicted after she'd been on the throne of Russia for many years, as a military hero. She has on her chest a blue sash and the star of the Order of St. Andrew, at the top, and the star of the Order of St. George at the bottom. So she's consciously depicting herself not in a fancy dress but with her accolades that she received due to her power. And I think it is just Catherine as she wanted to be seen. Let me read you her own words describing herself:

“If I dare to use such terms, I take the liberty to assert on my own behalf that I was an honest and loyal knight, whose mind was infinitely more male than female. But for all that I was anything but mannish, and in me, others found, joined to the mind and character of a man, the charms of a very attractive woman.”

And there’s an interesting contrast with another painting in this room, displaying a very different kind of female power in the 18th century. Look for the woman with pink ribbons at her bosom and neck. She’s seated at her dressing table. She looks out at us with a very rosy complexion. This is Madame de Pompadour.

She started out life in a bourgeois family in Paris and ultimately rose to receive the King's attention. She was brought to Versailles and installed in the official mistress’s apartments, and she was given a noble title so that she would be able to be at court. She is best known today as a tastemaker. Once she got to the Palace of Versailles, and had access to the best artists of the day, she commissioned many, many works: things like portraits of herself, portraits of the King. And we can see an allusion to that here, where we see the cameo on her wrist of Louis XV. So she's displaying it conspicuously, showing us that she's here in this position of power due to her connection with him.

14. Houdon, Voltaire

Courtney Harris (Narrator):
This wise-looking man is the final stop on our tour—where we’re joined once again by curator Frederick Ilchman.

Frederick Ilchman:
This is one of the great marble portrait busts of the 18th century. The great philosopher here, Voltaire, is seen in the last year of his life, in an absolute masterpiece. It's done in 1778, just after Voltaire's returned from exile in Switzerland. He's an old man, to be sure. And there's a real sense of the papery skin on the bones of his skull. You see the ravages of time. He may indeed be missing teeth. But also a psychological intensity: a sidelong glance, watchful eyes, and a suppressed smile. This is a man totally in control mentally, to the very end of his life.

Voltaire was a whole generation older than Casanova, but they did meet. Casanova was really in awe of Voltaire, who was an incredibly prolific author who worked in all genres of writing. He also was bold and outspoken. He was critical of the church, he believed in the separation of church and state. He was suspicious of institutions, and would be seen as one of the great figures of his age.

Thank you for joining us on this voyage with Casanova through the 18th century. From the glittering views of Venice in the first room of this exhibition, to the portraits of the great worthies that knew Casanova, we hope you've enjoyed this voyage through Casanova's Europe.