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| James McNeill Whistler Count Robert de Montesquiou, No. 2 1894 transfer lithograph Metropolitan Museum |
The Parisian dandy Robert de Montesquiou (1855-1921) became fascinated at an early age with a society beauty who arrived in Paris the same year he was born. Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione (1837-1899) grew up in Florence, where she entered into an arranged aristocratic marriage at age 17. In 1856 at age 19 she became the mistress of Emperor Napoleon III and turned her prominent position into a platform for fashion and fantasy (while incidentally bankrupting her husband). The photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson (1822-1913) was soon drawn into a collaboration with La Castiglione. Together they produced more than 700 images. Montesquiou later made it his business to obtain as many of these photographs as he could during the research and writing for his 1913 biography, La Divine Comtesse. A collection of 275 Castiglione-Pierson-Montesquiou photographs is now preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson The Gaze 1856-57 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson Le beau décolleté 1860s Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson L'accoudée 1856-57 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson Portrait in White 1856-57 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson Profile 1859 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson Opera Ball 1861-67 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson from Les Chiens 1860s Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson from Sèriè à la Ristori 1860s Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson Sculptural Shoulders 1861-67 Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson La robe bouffante 1860s Metropolitan Museum |
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| Pierre-Louis Pierson La cape 1860s Metropolitan Museum |