Andrea Di Robilant Książki

In 1797, Lucia, the beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter of a Venetian statesman, was married off to Alvise Mocenigo, scion of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families of the once glorious maritime Republic. They were a golden couple in Venice s twilight years. But Lucia s life was suddenly transformed when the thousand-year-old Serenissima collapsed under the blows of young Bonaparte in 1797. Whether as a dazzling young hostess in Habsburg Vienna, lady-in-waiting at the court of Prince Eugene de Beauharnais in Milan, single mother in Paris during the fall of Napoleon s Empire or as Byron s hard-fisted landlady during the poet s stay in Venice, Lucia lived to be a remarkable witness to an age of great turmoil. Two hundred years later, Andrea di Robilant, Lucia s great-great-great-great grandson, has unearthed letters and diaries in archives across Europe to draw an intimate and vivid portrait of his ancestor, and of the exceptional times she lived in.

The fascinating story of the Venetian who helped to map the World during the Renaissance, by the author of A Venetian Affair and Autumn in Venice.[Bokinfo].

From the author of the best-selling A Venetian Affair comes a charming chronicle of his quest to uncover the identity of a mysterious old rose. This tale transports readers to the era of Josephine Bonaparte and showcases some of Italy's most enchanting rose gardens, vividly illustrated by artist Nina Fuga. In a previous biography of his great-great-great-great-grandmother, Lucia Mocenigo, di Robilant described a wild pink rose from the family estate, noted for its light peach-and-raspberry scent. This detail led to a meeting with local rose expert Eleonora Garlant, who speculated that di Robilant's unnamed rose might be one of the long-lost China varieties cultivated by nineteenth-century European growers. As he embarks on this quest, di Robilant becomes enchanted by rose enthusiasts throughout history, from Lucia and Josephine to Eleonora, who tends a remarkable garden of nearly fifteen hundred old rose varieties. What begins as a lighthearted pursuit evolves into a profound journey, prompting di Robilant to reflect on the enduring beauty passed down through roses, shaped by nature and nurtured by humanity over centuries.

In the attic of their old family palazzo on the Grand Canal, Andrea di Robilant's father had found the love letters of their ancestor Andrea Memmo, one of the last great Venetian statesmen, to a beautiful half-English girl named Giustiniana Wynne. Some of the letters were written in code, which di Robilant and his father cracked to reveal an illicit passion: Giustiniana was not of the elite ruling class and would never have been considered a suitable match for Andrea. But their acts of devotion were startlingly brazen. As their courtship unfolds, they plot elaborate marriage schemes that offend everyone, arrange secret trysts in borrowed rooms, cause trouble for the servants who must ferry their forbidden correspondence, and even weather an unwanted pregnancy, from which Giustiniana, with her wits and ingenuity and some crucial assistance from the infamous Casanova, emerges unscathed.