I knew about the Paris apartment that socialite Madame de Florian abandoned after she fled the Nazis in 1940. It was a huge story in 2010 when the apartment was finally opened after 70 years. The wonderful photographs of the apartment, below, were great inspiration for writing about Caroline Ferriday’s own Paris apartment, which she came back to after the war. But I didn’t know that one of my favorite artists, Italian Giovanni Boldini had painted the incredible woman in pink satin that they found in the apartment.
The subject of the portrait was 24-year-old Marthe de Florian, the apartment owner’s grandmother who was a Belle Epoque socialite, actress and Boldini’s muse. Born in 1864, de Florian was a member of a group of courtesans known as les demimondaines, famous for their lavish lifestyles, parties, and high-profile lovers. De Florian’s real name was Mathilde Heloise Beaugiron, and she worked as a seamstress and bore two children before she turned to acting.
Located on Paris’ Right Bank near Opéra Garnier, the apartment became a decadent and gorgeous time capsule. According to The Daily Mail, “When the apartment’s contents were discovered, Boldini’s painting was without a signature and no records of the work were found in reference books to prove it was his. But art experts managed to locate a mention of the work in a memoir by the famed painter’s widow, and they dated the painting to 1898. Their suspicions were confirmed by a stack of love letters found in the apartment that were wrapped in different colored ribbons and scrawled in the hand of, among others, Boldini and 72nd Prime Minister George Clemenceau.”
My favorite.
One visitor to the apartment described his visit as “stumbling into the castle of Sleeping Beauty.”
Incredible doors to the building
Known as the “Master of Swish” because of his flowing style of painting artist Giovanni Boldini married for the first time at age 86.
As much as I love the long lost portrait of Marthe de Florian in pink satin, it will never supplant my favorite Boldini painting, Portrait of a Lady With Lilacs, though The Letter, below, is a close second.
