The story of an articulate Countess who, long before the advent of social media, turned her life into a media spectacle

We live in the age of photographs: 1.2 trillion photos were taken in 2021 alone. Nowadays, all you need to do is pull out a smartphone and in just a few seconds you can take a photo and share it on social media. However, in the old days, a person had to stand still in front of a camera for an hour to get a coveted portrait. But some women were willing to show their beauty to the world — and nothing could stop them.

we, from awesome.club, we decided to share the story of the flamboyant Countess of Castiglione, Virginia Oldoini, who is considered the first fashion model in the world. Check out!

Virginia Oldoini was born in 1837 in Florence, in the family of Marquis Filippo Oldoini, who was a diplomat, and Marquise Isabella Lamporecchi. Her father did not participate in raising his daughter. And the girl grew up in her grandfather’s grand palace, without much involvement from the family. Little Virginia’s behavior was different from that of other children of her age, she behaved like a real coquette. daughter was writing indecent letters to boys. So he sent Virginia to a convent to try to re-educate her. But once there, the girl began to show fervent determination and confidence, and after a week the nuns sent her back home.

In 1854, Virginia married the Count of Castiglione, who was 12 years her senior. The man knew perfectly well that his chosen one would never love him, but he couldn’t turn down the prospect of being the fiancé of a true beauty. Rumor has it that rebellious Virginia had an affair with a naval officer before her wedding. At that time, such behavior was quite unacceptable for an upper-class woman. During the wedding, the Countess did not lend herself to playing the role of the housewife matriarch, but she did as she pleased. However, she still had a son with the Count.

A cousin of the Countess of Castiglione was a minister. He decided to use his cousin’s beauty for diplomatic purposes. To that end, he sent Virginia to Paris and tasked her with seducing Emperor Napoleon III by any means necessary. . Of course, everything was set up with the musicians in advance by Virginia’s cousin. The newcomer bowed to the Emperor and Empress, and soon after Napoleon III invited her to dance. He couldn’t resist the Countess’s charm, and quickly they began to have an affair. Meanwhile, the Count of Castiglione has filed for divorce.

Virginia had a defiant behavior within the court. She stood in the middle of the hall and demanded that men who passed her bow as if she were a goddess. And she refused to converse with other ladies. She said: “I am superior to these women both in beauty and in intelligence.” Once, Virginia appeared at the ball arm in arm with the French emperor, as if she were his wife. It was a scandal. The young woman wore a very revealing outfit for a nineteenth-century lady. The neckline of the dress was made of the finest fabric, leaving no room for imagination.
When the empress saw the scene, she went to the Countess and said, “Your heart is in the wrong place, madam.” And so she sent Virginia home. In the photo below, you can see the Countess as “Imperial Love Woman”, as she became known at court. Virginia is supposed to be wearing the same dress she wore to the imperial ball.

While in Paris, Virginia stopped by Pierre-Louis Pierson’s photographic studio. And there the Countess found something she liked to do: she started posing for pictures. She was so popular that soon photographs of her began to be used for advertising purposes. For example, studio owners would ask the Countess to wear one of her dresses to a photo shoot. So, even before the age of social media, Virginia was the first model to make a name for herself through photography. We might even call her the Kim Kardashian of the 19th century. Back then, the process to take a picture was a long one. The model had to stand in front of the camera for almost 25 minutes. Considering that Pierson took about 400 portraits of Virginia, we can say that she devoted long hours to his favorite hobby. The Countess not only posed for photos, but also directed the shoot, meaning she thought of the smallest details. After the divorce was finalized, Virginia spent most of her fortune on clothes for numerous photo shoots. She used to play literary or historical characters in rehearsals, such as Lady Macbeth or Anne Boleyn. The Countess’s most popular photo was one in which she poses looking through a monocle at the camera.

Virginia liked to send pictures of herself to people she knew, even if no one asked her to. That was how she showed that she was solicitous. But there is reason to believe that the Countess of Castiglione also sent photos to enemies she felt intimidated by. Because that’s what she did to her ex-husband. When the Earl of Castiglione tried to take Virginia’s son, she posed for a photo called Vengeance. And the woman’s face in the picture did not bode well for her ex-husband. And just below that we have another photo called L’assasinat (“The Murder”, in free translation from French), which can also be categorized as one of the Countess’s intimidating works.

The romance with the emperor came to nothing. And the Countess of Castiglione returned to Italy. Over time, she began to see the first signs of aging in the mirror’s reflection, and it horrified her. Virginia complained: “I have barely begun my life and my role is already over”. A few years later, the Countess decided to revive her image in the memory of the Parisian people and returned to France. And her behavior became even more eccentric. Once, Virginia went to a ball wearing a dress with a very generous neckline, so at the next event, a crowd gathered in advance to follow the spectacle that was the presence of the Countess. But she managed to shock everyone even more. She appeared in a dress that looked like a nun’s robe. Virginia was completely unpredictable. The Countess also became even bolder in her photographs. She did a boudoir shoot and even allowed her own feet to be photographed, which was absolutely unacceptable by the standards of the time. But the older she got, the faster her interest in photography faded. And she ended up disappearing completely.

Eventually, Virginia even began to refuse to leave the house. She painted the walls of her residence black, put locks on all the doors and removed all the mirrors. The Countess only leaves the house at night to walk her dogs. She used to say, “The more I know people, the more I love dogs.” The Countess of Castiglione planned to have an exhibition in 1900 with her photographs entitled “The most beautiful woman of the century”. However, that dream was not realized: Virginia died a year before the expected date for the exhibition. Virginia, the Countess of Castiglione, left the following speech about herself for posterity: “The Eternal Father did not know what he was creating in the the day he sent her into the world; he carved and carved, and when he was done, he looked at his wonderful work and was impressed. And he left her in a corner, not assigning her any place. Meanwhile, he was called, and when he returned, the corner was empty.”

In your opinion, was the Countess of Castiglione a woman who lived ahead of her time? Tell us in the comments section.