Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (placeholder)

Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice in 1725. His father, Gaetano Casanova was an actor, who also directed some plays. He had married in 1724 Giovanna Maria (Zanetta) Farussi, an actress and a perfect beauty.
According to Casanova’s History of My Life, he learned to read in a less than a month. In 1734 Casanova was sent to live with Doctor Gozzi in Padua. He received a good education, and showed early extraordinary cleverness. He studied at the University of Padua and at the seminary of St. Cyprian from where he was expelled for scandalous conduct. Drinking and love affairs ended his plans to become a priest, but he never gave up his belief in the existence of an immortal God.
Casanova served in the army for some time, played violin, but not very successfully, and worked for the lawyer Manzoni. In 1742 he received his doctorate from Padua. In 1744 he became a secretary to Cardinal Acquaviva of Rome. A scandal again forced Casanova to leave the city and he traveled in Naples, Corfu, and Constantinople, settling in Venice. He had a love affair with Signora F. and in 1746 he was a violinist in the San Samuel theater in Venice.
Casanova enjoyed good health until very late in life – he was five feet nine inches and he had a very dark skin. He contracted his first venereal disease in adolescence and the pox, gonorrhea, ‘Celtic humors,’ and other venereal diseases marked different periods of his life. He also learned the rudiments of medicine and when sick he recovered by following a strict diet of nitrate water for six weeks. Although his sex life was very lively, he did not enjoy orgies, which were popular among the high society. Once he said: “Real love is the love that sometimes arises after sensual pleasure: if it does, it is immortal; the other kind inevitably goes stale, for it lies in mere fantasy.”
Casanova met in 1749 his great love, the young and mysterious Frenchwoman, Henriette, in Cesena. “People who believe that a woman is not enough to make a man equally happy all the twenty-four hours of a day have never known an Henriette.” Henriette left him, returned to his family, and Casanova remembers it in his autobiography as one of the saddest moments in his life. “What is love?” he asked, and compared love to an incurable illness and divine monster. He went to Lyons, where he was received as a Freemason. By 1750 he had worked as a clergyman, secretary, soldier, and violinist in several countries.

For further information go to : http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/casanova.htm