IMPORTANT CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESSED TO CLÉO... - Lot 306 - Marie-Saint Germain

Lot 306
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Estimation :
1500 - 2000 EUR
IMPORTANT CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESSED TO CLÉO... - Lot 306 - Marie-Saint Germain
IMPORTANT CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESSED TO CLÉO de MÉRODE. Correspondence: 27 letters from Luis, 1 from Carmen, 1 from her father, 1 telegram informing her of her father's death, all addressed to her, accompanied by 3 letters written by the famous dancer, the one Jean Cocteau called "the Belle of the belles". Famous classical dancer, Cleopatra-Diane de Merode, known as Cleo de Merode, was born of an illegitimate union. She was the daughter of Vincentia Marie Cécilia von Merode (1850-1899), a Belgian baroness from the Austrian branch of the de Merode family, who was abandoned by her lover, a member of the Austrian upper middle class. Cleo was one of the first women whose photographic image was distributed worldwide. Elected "Queen of Beauty" by the readers of L'Illustration in 1896, Cleo posed for the painters Edgar Degas, Jean-Louis Forain and Giovanni Boldini. She increased her notoriety the same year with a whiff of scandal, due to the exhibition of Alexandre Falguière's sculpture The Dancer at the Salon des artistes français. This life-size white marble nude is said to have been carved from a plaster cast of her body, a work kept in Paris at the Musée d'Orsay. If the grain of the skin visible on the plaster cast proves that it was a live cast, Cléo de Mérode has always denied having posed nude. She accused Falguière of having made a scandalous work by molding the body of the statue on another female model, while she would have posed only for the head. So be it, but she did not hesitate to pose thinly veiled for her lover Luis de Périnat (1872-1923), Marquis de Périnat. This Great of Spain, was a Spanish sculptor and diplomat, attached to the Spanish embassy in Paris. The sculpture that he made of Cleo was intended to decorate the tomb of Vincentia in Père Lachaise. It will be said that the sculptors caused him much harm. After thirteen years of sentimental relations, Cleo discovered a letter from Luis' mother, reproaching her son for having impregnated a young woman.
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