Giacomo Casanova
Venetian adventurer and writer (1725–1798)
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Giacomo Casanova was an 18th-century Venetian adventurer and writer known for his eventful life across Europe and his detailed memoirs. His life and writings offer historical insight into the social world of the 1700s and have made him a legendary figure in European culture.
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Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (April 2, 1725 – June 4, 1798) was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life), is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century. He was so famous as a womanizer that his name remains synonymous with the art of seduction. He associated with European royalty, popes and cardinals, along with luminaries such as Volt
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- The Internet of Things: A survey
· 2010 · cited 11,301x
Works in European collections
13 objects attributed to Giacomo Casanova, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana
Article
Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (/ˌkæsəˈnoʊvə, ˌkæzə-/; Italian: [ˈdʒaːkomo dʒiˈrɔːlamo kazaˈnɔːva, kasa-]; 2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798) was an adventurer and writer who was born in the Republic of Venice and travelled extensively throughout Europe. He is chiefly remembered for his autobiography, written in French and published posthumously as Histoire de ma vie ("The Story of My Life"). That work has come to be regarded as a unique and provocative source of information on the customs and norms of European social life in the 18th century.
Born to a family of actors, Casanova studied law at the University of Padua and received minor orders in the Catholic Church with a view towards pursuing a career as a canon lawyer. However, he had no enthusiasm for the law or vocation for the church, and he soon abandoned those plans and launched instead upon an itinerant life as a gambler, violinist, confidence trickster, and man of letters. Throughout his life, Casanova obtained money and other advantages from various aristocratic patrons by pretending to possess alchemical, cabbalistic, and magical secret knowledge. Among other exploits, Casanova escaped from the Piombi prison, to which he had been confined by order of the Venetian Council of Ten for offenses against religion and morals, and later helped convince the authorities of the Kingdom of France to establish a state lottery as a source of revenue.
