Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon (Hardcover)

by Andrea Di Robilant (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Q&A with Andrea di Robilant

Q. A discovery of letters between a young beauty, Giustiniana Wynne, and your ancestor, the Venetian nobleman Andrea Memmo, inspired your first work, A Venetian Affair. What lead to the discovery of Lucia’s letters and what inspired you to tell her story in your new book, Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon?

It was only after finishing A Venetian Affair that I realized there was another box of letters among my father's papers which I had not yet opened. They turned out to be by Andrea Memmo's daughter, Lucia, to her future husband, Alvise Mocenigo. These letters, written when Lucia was only sixteen, were so vivid and immediate and provided such a fascinating insight into the complex negotiations leading to an arranged marriage in Venice in the late 18th century, that they seemed to be the perfect starting point for a narrative on that period. In the course of researching Lucia's life I was lucky to find several more collections of her correspondence in the archives in Venice and other cities of northern Italy, which, taken together, covered her entire life time. The sheer quality of her correspondence throughout her life--her observations, her descriptions, her wonderful habit of transcribing dialogues, the precise information about her personal life and the world around her--compelled me to write her story.

Q. How did the experience of writing Lucia differ from that of A Venetian Affair?

In writing A Venetian Affair I was entirely absorbed by the intensity of the love story between Andrea and Giustiniana. Lucia, instead, is more like a rich family saga. Whereas I had something of a crush on Giustiniana, the relationship I developed with Lucia was at once deeper and more complex. I grew to love and admire her. She was a strong, courageous, passionate woman. But she also irritated me at times, and disappointed me and even exasperated me.

Q. Who was Colonel Plunkett and what role did he play in Lucia's life?

After the fall of the Venetian Republic, Colonel Plunkett, a dashing officer with the occupying Austrian troops, became Lucia's secret lover. He fathered her only surviving child, Alvisetto, before being killed in action while fighting the French in Switzerland. All traces of this love affair were carefully erased by Lucia. Alvisetto was passed off as Alvise's son, thereby ensuring the survival of the Mocenigo line.

See the entire Q&A with Andrea di Robilant

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From The New Yorker
Drawing on the letters of his great-great-great-great-grandmother Lucia Mocenigo, a Venetian aristocrat, di Robilant paints a vivacious picture of the Napoleonic age. The fifteen-year-old Lucia’s correspondence with her new fiancé, the nobleman Alvise Mocenigo, includes a glissando from formality to rapture that gives an idea of the narrative’s pitch: "My most esteemed spouse, my good father having informed me of your favourable disposition towards me, and having told me of your worthy qualities . . . I felt such agitation in my heart that for a brief moment I even lost consciousness." Over the years, as Lucia travelled throughout Europe, this girlish enthusiasm was whittled away by a selfish, neglectful, and manipulative husband; on discovering, after Alvise’s death, letters from an impressive array of lovers, she filed them alphabetically by author. Back in Venice, living in an apartment where, she complained, rats were her only reliable company, Lucia became Byron’s landlady.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (January 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400044138
• ISBN-13: 978-1400044139
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #319,764 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a very special story in many ways , January 30, 2008

By	an Amazon shopper - See all my reviews

Let's start with the lovely cover image: thanks to the research behind Lucia, this previously unknown work by the widely acclaimed Swiss painter, Angelica Kauffmann, came to light. And thanks to the owner's permission, its appearance on the cover allows us all to enjoy it. This is our first meeting with the blossoming young Lucia. Her glowing complexion, full bosom and that chestnut tendril that curls downward along her neck bespeak an innocent yet eager anticipation of life's sweetnesses. But this is not a love story. Lucia's life is much larger than her courtship and marriage with Alvise Mocenigo, and emphatically disproves what we think of as the bounds for a woman then.
From the start, Lucia's story shows her caught in the middle of things, from local power struggles in Venice to empires rising and falling and the devastating wars they brought about. Political events determine one challenge after another for her, as daughter, fiancée, wife, mother, woman on her own.
Accounts of political moves, diplomatic dealings, warfare strategy might not seem the stuff of a woman's life story, and yet they make perfect sense here, are fundamental, illuminating and intriguing. As these combine with finely wrought details of the everyday, the past truly comes to life. Di Robilant's style, as in A Venetian Affair, draws the reader in. When you read Lucia, you feel welcome and respected. And at once you are involved.
Di Robilant works with some very special material, unearthed not only among family papers but also in archives around Europe. In the end, he did not write the story exactly as he had set out to, for his research uncovered unexpected turns in what he knew as his family's history. He never makes an issue of this, but leaves it tacitly to his readers to imagine what it must be like to see a family legacy twisted into a different shape and to discover fundamental family ties you never knew existed. Di Robilant set out to bond with his past, which in the end he did, but not with the past as he knew it when he set out.
I highly recommend this book to readers with a passion for Venice, the Napoleonic years and memoirs about women who rise to unexpected challenges; to readers curious to have an insider view of life at court (Paris, Vienna, Milan) in the nineteenth century or a landlady's perspective on the scandalously libertine Lord Byron; to readers simply fond of books where biography and history elegantly merge with great merit to both genres.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read for Anyone Interesed in Venice , February 8, 2008

By	A reader from London - See all my reviews

In this book Venice at the end of the eighteenth century comes to life. Lucia was only a young girl when she returned to her native city from Rome, where her father was Venetian Ambassador, to be married to a much older man. She lived in many of the great courts of Europe, travelled extensively, witnessed the fall of the Venetian Republic to Napoleon, and as an impecunious widow was the landlady who rented out her fabulous family palazzo to no other than Lord Byron. It was in the attic of Palazzo Mocenigo on the Grand Canal that her correspondence, recounting every minute detail of her long and fascinating life, was preserved and handed down through the generations until it came into the hands of the author, who is her descendant. A wonderful book. Highly recommended.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and beautiful, April 22, 2008

By	K. Huff (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon begins where Andrea Di Robilant's A Venetian Affair left off. Lucia Mocenigo was the eldest daughter of Andrea Memmo, and she married at seventeen into one of the best-known patrician families in Venice. When the Republic fell in 1797 to Napoleon, Lucia went to Vienna, where she became friends with Josephine Bonaparte. Later, Lucia moved back to Venice, where she became Byron's landlord. She died in the 1850s, when she was in her 80s.

Lucia is a compelling look into the life of an intriguing woman. She was at the heart of European political change, as her letters to her husband and sister show. What Di Robilant does successfully in this book, as he did in A Venetian Affair, is bring the event s and people to life. Everything Lucia, her husband Alvise, and her son Alvisetto, do is documented here with precision. Sometimes with too much precision: when her son was a teenager, Lucia obsessively worried over his progress in school. But in all, Lucia was an impressive woman who rose to the challenges she faced with courage.