Giacomo Casanova was an Italian writer, philosopher, and infamous lover whose name conjures up the image of the “ladies’ man”, but in fact, Casanova was bi.
Casanova finished his education young, and had already graduated from the University of Padua by the time he was seventeen. He studied to become an ecclesiastical lawyer, but was also drawn to philosophy and chemistry, with a particular penchant for medicine, as he viewed the medical arts as another way to play around and try his hand at these “quack” careers. “I should have been allowed to do as I wished and become a physician, in which profession quackery is even more effective than it is in legal practice."
Instead, he became a scribe for Cardinal Acquaviva in Rome, and was bold with his expectations on his job. Casanova was more interested in the church’s “forbidden library”, and penning clandestine love letters for his colleagues, but he was soon expelled from his position after his involvement in a relationship scandal between two of the other cardinals. At the age of 21, he intended to be a professional gambler, but got in too deep and ended up playing violin for the San Samuele Theater. Casanova was upset with the repetitive, often under-respected work he was doing as a musician, but his luck changed when he happened to be in the right place at the right time to save the life of the successful senator Bragadin. Due to his young age and wealth of knowledge, the senator and his friends believed Casanova possessed occult knowledge and were quick to invite him into their cabalist lifestyle. Casanova became a lifelong patron of the senator. This patronage gave rise to the Casanova we know today. He dressed in magnificent outfits, kept his hair curled and powdered, and spent a great deal of his time handling and seducing others.
Casanova was quite the prankster, and even dig up a freshly buried corpse in order to play a joke on one of his enemies — but the victim went into paralysis from the shock and never recovered, which forced Casanova to flee Italy and the senator’s patronage. After further obstacles and a passionate, three-month romance with a woman named Henriette, Casanova decided to set off on a “grand tour”, teaching Paris in 1750. This allowed him to travel between towns, engaging in seductions and lascivious acts that could rival the most well-written opera. Casanova had a penchant for falling in with clandestine groups, and soon joined the ranks of the Freemasons.
Casanova’s reputation started to catch up with him and he was constantly driven from whatever town or province he frequented. In July of 1755, at age 30, Casanova was finally arrested for an affront to religion and common decency. After a lot of pull from his patron Bragadin, and two escape attempts, he finally broke free and returned to Paris on January 5th, 1757. Casanova again lived up to his grand reputation, claiming to be a Rosicrucian and alchemist to capitalize on the sudden interest among the aristocracy to find the “philosopher's stone”, and profited handsomely from his continued deceit of others.
He spent the 1760’s continuing his travels across Europe, Italy, and Russia, and his past deeds were never too far behind. Casanova had adopted the persona of an established, successful partitioner, in stark contrast to his growing reputation as a reckless scoundrel. His travels ultimately amounted to nothing more than a few duels — one of which almost cost him his hand — and further ostracisation from the Pope and the country of France. He finally returned to Venice in September 1774, after 18 years of exile. Casanova’s last years were described as equal parts boring and frustrating as he attempted to live off of his writings, but grew increasingly disenchanted with his past habits and became somewhat of a hermit until his death on June 4th, 1798. The solitude gave him the best setting to write his memoirs, without which, he likely would not have risen to fame.
He often claimed himself to be a “free agent”, and toward the end of his life, wrote about how his deeds were a mixture of good and bad. He writes at length about some of his faults and motivations behind his actions without showing remorse, going into great detail about his intimate encounters with men and women in over 120 tales throughout his multi-volume memoir.
Casanova himself admitted that he could be manipulative in his exploits, but that he tried to be what he considered the “ideal escort”; helpful and charming, focusing on mutual consent for the benefit of everyone involved — but he did fall off the track a few times, also documented in his memoirs.
Casanova is not only the witty, charismatically charming lover that history remembers him to be, but someone with deeply flawed morals, and he could easily be considered one of history’s great disaster bis.