HomeBlog / Latest NewsVenice

  • From rent boy to hierophant

    • November 22, 2017
    • Posted by:
    • Category: Casanova
    No Comments
      November 1745 to March 1746 represented the low point of Casanova’s young life to date.  This highly educated and ambitious young man who just a couple of years before had been socialising with the cream of Venetian society was now scraping by as a lowly fiddler in the small theatre of San Samuele where
    read more

  • Venice, Canaletto and Casanova

    • November 15, 2017
    • Posted by:
    • Category: Venice and Paris
    No Comments
      Below is a YouTube link to a fascinating hour-long talk given by Frederick Ilchman which covers Venice, Canaletto and Casanova, the two men being pretty much contemporaries. Casanova is introduced about 27 minutes in.  There are a couple of little inaccuracies (Casanova’s involvement in the Paris lottery began in 1757, not 1756, and he
    read more

  • Crime and punishment

    • June 19, 2017
    • Posted by:
    • Category: Flashbacks
    No Comments
    During his lifetime Casanova will have witnessed a sea-change in Europe in terms of its attitudes towards crime and punishment. Largely because of the influence of Enlightenment ideas, the fate awaiting felons at the start of the eighteenth-century was very different to that awaiting them at the end. Fortunately for Casanova, who was imprisoned on
    read more