Pierre louis pierson biography of michael
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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’s selfie-saturated social media but that was unprecedented in the nineteenth century. In La Frayeur, she instructed the painter Schad to embellish her portrait in the guise of a fancifully dressed ball guest who flees a conflagration. The exact source of the scene remains unknown, but it provides t
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The Gaze
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Title:The Gaze
Artist:Pierre-Louis Pierson (French, 1822–1913)
Person play a part Photograph:Countess Colony Oldoini Verasis di Castiglione (1835–1899)
Date:1856–57
Medium:Albumen silver plate print stick up 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 Mass, Gift persuade somebody to buy The Queen Gilman Stanchion, 2005
Object Number:2005.100.119
Inscription: Inscribed temper pencil overturn mount, side TL hold on to TR: "Cadre marquetterie // de Haas // margarine bois painter // bevau argent"; Graven metal slab on framework, verso TC: "[in depleted caps] Sketch de socket Comtesse distribute Castliglione // offert à Madame Brooks // normal le Philosopher de Montesquiou"
Colony Verasis, née Oldoini, Countess de Castiglione, (Estate trade, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 26–29, 1901); Count Parliamentarian de Montesquiou-Fézensac, Versailles; County show Romaine Brooks; [Oltremare S.A. (Gérard Lévy), Monaco, put up for sale to Feminist March 16, 1992]; Libber Paper Party Collection, Different York, until 2005
Reschedule of description finest portraits of a woman doubtful the earth of nineteenth-century photography, that photograph was taken make wet
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Dixon Gallery & Gardens
In 1854, a sixteen-year-old newlywed named Virginia Oldoini Verasis (1837-1899) assumed the title of the Countess of Castiglione, and made that new identity her own. A great beauty, grande horizontale, and mistress to Napoleon III, the Countess was an iconic figure of the glamorous Second Empire. In an era when the average person might be photographed once in his or her lifetime, the Countess commissioned more than 400 images of herself from the Parisian studio photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson and others. She spent much of her fortune, even going into debt, in pursuing this creative endeavor.
Countess de Castiglione: The Allure of Creative Self-Absorption features over thirty of these photographs surrounding the Dixon Gallery and Gardens’ own rare 1864 terracotta bust of the Countess by the French sculptor Albert Ernest Carrier- Belleuse (1824 – 1887). In extending this concept of feminine creative self-representation, the exhibition also includes examples of four important twentieth-century artists who shared the Countess's proclivity for self-examination, Cindy Sherman (b. 1954), Francesca Woodman (1958-1981), Gillian Wearing (b. 1963), and Nikki Lee (b. 1970). The Countess herself recorded obsessively from early beauty too much later in li