The Exhibition Casanova the Seduction of Europe

We all wear masks. Hiding behind a fake facade is sometimes easier, but behind each mask is a story. Like Rousseau once said, “The man of the world is wholly his mask. What he is, is nothing. What he appears to be, is everything.” Though Casanova seemed to have his life perfectly aligned around wealth, travel, and seduction he did so by abiding to the “fake it until you make it” rule . The ultimate goal of the exhibition Casanova the Seduction of Europe at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco is to unveil Casanova’s life which was full of people, places, and things, and explore his era with keeping our own society in mind.

The museum is offering an exhibition for only three months of the exotic life of Casanova in the eighteenth century. The curator of the exhibition is Barbara A. Wolfe, who displayed a brilliant look into Casanova’s dynamic world. The congregation of paintings, etchings, sculptures, furniture, and costumes give the viewer a sense of how the era really was.

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The exhibition has a simple structure which is laid out on a grid consisting of eight different rooms. It begins in the middle of the grid and works its way around in a counter clock wise flow with each room representing a part of Casanova’s life.

The center of the grid is where Casanova’s story begans, with the place he was born . A deep dive into Venice is where the viewer starts. Surrounded by grand paintings of ionic gondolas, water ways, and embellished facades is a particular oil on canvas by Giovanni Antonio titled View of Molo (1730-1735).

A larger object stands alone on a stage, called a Sedan chair (1750) which is made of a gilded wood frame, glass, and silk upholstered. This once form of transportation that was used to keep Casanova and his fine clothes off the dirty streets becomes our contemporary version of “uber.” With lavish means of transportation come elegant possessions.

Luxurious things such as furniture, clothing, and paintings of music, love, and theater set the stage for Casanova to enter the aristocratic world. As a child of theater, he found that identity could be played as role, for he was a poor man that appeared to be wealthy. As seen in Jean-Marc Nattier’s painting titled Thalia, Muse of Comedy (1739) she takes off her mask and lifts a blue velvet curtain unveiling a stage scene. Her twinkling eyes and sly smile echo a silent mischief, one that Casanova was all too familiar with. A sense of his troublemaking days lurks around the corner.

With the walls painted charcoal grey, holding up Francesco Guardi’s painting of concealed people called The Ridotto of Palazzo Dandolo at San Moisè with Masked Figures Conversing (1750) the mood of the exhibit shifts to a dark mysterious sensation. The love affair with a nun and gambling addiction lead to Casanova’s five-year prison sentence, which he later escaped from. The manikins dressed in a silk satin floral patterned dress and another in a white wig and a velvet embroidered suit display the partaking of the forbidden performance.

The prevailing theme of love and seduction featured in the drawings and paintings revealed a regret in Casanova’s life. Seen on wall painted in a deep sensual red color are Claude-Louis Desrais’s watercolors called Twelve Amorous Drawings (1790) which are a series of very small erotic drawings. The tiny details encourage one to look closer, creating a more intimate relationship with the viewer. More things are scattered about like the tray for gloves, a basin for washing one’s face, and bowls meant for holding powders and creams. The decorated playful Rococo paintings by Francois Boucher titled Six Mythological Paintings (1769) depicts ancient Roman literature of the awe-inspiring power of love. The stories in each painting allude to Casanova’s strategic plan of being charming enough to get what he wanted, but everything. The portrait by Jean-Marc Nattier titled Manon Balletti shows a doll faced, rosy cheeked women with a string of pearls tucked into her dress was the one women that Casanova regretted not taking as his wife.

The display of Casanova’s writings shows that through his travels he enjoyed the people he met and gained knowledge from them. There is a display of manakins playing cards, and one kicking over a chair showing his shady financial dealings during his visit to London. A painting by Joseph Siffred Duplessis of Benjamin Franklin (1779) shows that Casanova was one to seek out the bright minds of people such as Voltaire and Rousseau. Casanova’s visits to Germany, France, London, Spain, and Russia filled his life with people on all different levels of the social ladder leading him to write about history, politics and philosophy . There are hardly any recorded paintings of Casanova himself, but there are many of the famous figures he came across in this gallery. The exhibit contains the world of Casanova’s social ambitions through paintings and sculptors to help our understanding of the time.

Casanova was known for being a womanizer, a fraud, and a conman. But he was also known for being an exceptional intellect and a social guru. From his native home in Venice, to his travels, and the clothes he wore, lastly to the elite people he charmed, he wrote it all down for the whole world to see.

Exploring Casanova’s era, one might ask themselves if he would feel at home in our society today. In our era, Casanova would be on every form of social media. He would be trying to figure out how to maximize his viewers and followers through his posts of his scandalous, secretive, seductive lifestyle. Running through the exhibit like a rip in nylon stockings is our obsession with confessing everything on social media today. We find similar patterns in Casanova’s experiences and his writings seen in the exhibit. Perhaps it makes us realize that we might not be so different after all and history tends to repeat itself whether we realize it or not.