Music like Art By Numbers

The Marchesa Casati (Italian pronunciation: [marˈkeːza kaˈzaːti]) is a portrait of Luisa Casati by Augustus John, painted in oil on canvas in 1919. It is currently housed in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto. John made three paintings of the Marchesa, but the AGO one is the best known.

John had been attached to the Canadian forces as a war artist during the First World War, and was hired to make record of the Canadian participation at the Paris Peace Conference that year. While painting Robert Borden, the Canadian Prime Minister, and other dignitaries, he used the opportunity to join the Parisian artistic and cultural community. He met Casati at a party hosted in Paris by a mutual friend, Maria Ruspoli, and the two became lovers. In his memoirs, John described first meeting her: