Read online the new book: Greatest of Great Ladies or The Three Lives of Donna Laura Minghetti by Dietrich Seybold First edition of 2014

If I was an Italian TV producer – I would make this a TV serial: the story of the life and times of the ›greatest of great ladies‹: Donna Laura Minghetti and her Roman salon. It is about the threads of 19th and 20th century history, the history of Italy’s South, and of Italy’s North; and it is about European history, cultural history and political history, and about the protagonists of history – they all assembled in the Roman salon of Donna Laura Minghetti or became, in one or the other way, part of her life. A life, and therefore a biography, that encompasses many stories – that are interwoven here for the very first time, visualized and last but not least: interlinked with sound bites. Thus: Hear the pieces of music that Donna Laura Minghetti danced to (when Franz Liszt was playing), or that she sung (when Richard Wagner was listening); follow the various threads of her story, and see – because in using the possibilities of online publication, we have put together a visual biography.
And with various supplements – about the notorious painting named after her: the so-called ›Donna Laura Minghetti-Leonardo‹, about Laura Minghetti and the Roman Campagna, and about her second husband, statesman Marco Minghetti – this biography adds up to my first online only publication: about the ›greatest of great ladies‹, as one friend, composer Ethel Smyth, called her, Donna Laura Minghetti (1829-1915), a born Acton, whose life led her to the very centers of power, be it of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Kingdom of Italy or, in later years, the German Kaiserreich.

INDEX

Circle of Morelli or The Three Lives of Donna Laura Minghetti – a Visual Biography
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/Spotlight5CircleOfMorelliOrTheThreeLivesOfDonnaLauraMinghetti)

The Mysterious »Donna Laura Minghetti-Leonardo«: Re-opening the Case
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/TheMysteriousDonnaLauraMinghetti-Leonardo)

Supplement One) Donna Laura Minghetti and the Roman Campagna
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/DonnaLauraMinghetti)

Supplement Two) Marco Minghetti and his Views on Art
(Read more: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/MarcoMinghetti)

All paintings here by Oswald Achenbach (In the Park of the Villa Borghese, Fireworks in Naples, Evening Mood in the Campagna),
except the portrait of Donna Laura Minghetti (small picture above) which is by Franz von Lenbach

And see also my now completed The Giovanni Morelli Monograph.

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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