Fantasy | 18 December 2000

Howard Coggins

A surrealistic nightmare inspired by an 1855 photographic portrait, in which the magic tricks of early cinema are used to eerie effect. Creepy and beautiful at the same time, it does not share platitudinous ways to frighten the audience with the vast majority of modern horrors. Countess di Castiglione is a really existed Italian courtesan famous for her beauty and wide acquaintanceship among the ruling elite of those times. She directed Pierre-Louis Pierson to help her create 700 different photographs in which she re-created the signature moments of her life for the camera. Robert de Montesquiou, a Symbolist poet, dandy, and avid art collector, was fascinated by the Countess di Castiglione. He spent thirteen years writing a biography, La Divine Comtesse, which appeared in 1913. After her death, he collected 433 of her photographs, all of which entered the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.