Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione: The Most Photographed Woman of the 19th Century
Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, was sent to Paris in 1855 by her cousin, the future architect of Italian unification, with one unofficial job: win over Napoleon III. She did. Then, starting in 1856, she spent the next forty years and most of her fortune directing a photographer named Pierre-Louis Pierson through several hundred elaborately staged self-portraits, choosing the costumes, the poses, and the camera angles herself, right up until her own decline in the 1890s.
This episode covers her disputed birth records, the affair with Napoleon III and how it actually (probably)…
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