The Contessa

Celebrity, seductress, covert diplomat. Virginia Verasis, Contessa di Castiglione, was the original "famous for being famous" It Girl. This thrilling, transporting biography explores the countessa's fascinating, provocative, and dramatic life in all its mess and glory.

Virginia Verasis, Contessa di Castiglione, was eighteen years old when Victor Emmannuel II sent her to Paris to seduce Napoleon III into sympathy for the cause of Italian unification. Already renowned as a beauty in her native...