Kathleen Ann Gonzalez's Blog

Continuing the series of abstracts from the Casanova in Time conference (June 2025 in Venice), here I’ll share the presentation from Lisetta Lovett. She and I have emailed for a number of years but didn’t meet in person until this conference. She has been a great help in my own research and writing, particularly in understanding differing mores around age of consent, etc. Here is her abstract, followed by a brief CV:

“Suicide: Do Casanova’s Views Have any Relevance to Today?“

Suicide ideation, as far as we know, is only a characteristic of the human animal. Written records of its occurrence go back to almost 4 millennia ago. It has always emotionally challenged people and their societies but led to diverse responses in different eras, across religions (although the major ones condemn it), and in different cultures. It continues to be a huge global phenomenon accounting for over 700,000 deaths per year and is the fourth leading cause of death in 15–19-year-olds.

Casanova often reflected on suicide and seriously contemplated it. Ultimately, he rejected it as a personal option, dying of natural causes. He lived at a time of real debate on suicide. Like some of the philosophes, such as Voltaire and Montesquieu, he defended the right to take one’s own life in certain circumstances, provided this was a rational decision. Other philosophes, such as Diderot, Rousseau and Kant were critical. The Catholic Church of course prohibited suicide. Although Casanova was anti-clerical, he believed in a God and would have been familiar with the Thomistic arguments against suicide. Nevertheless, his comments suggest that he thought suicide was justified to avoid overwhelming remorse or the prospect of becoming mad. There is little to suggest that he thought of the effect on others. Significantly, a paradigm shift occurred from the late 18th century to that of suicide being not evil, or rational but instead a proof of mental illness.

How would people today regard Casanova’s views?  Times have changed! For example, although the major religions continue to prohibit suicide, their attitudes have softened. We live in a more secular world where beliefs that God gave us the gift of life and there is an afterlife are not so prevalent. The West has (mostly) embraced a democratic libertarian world where people expect to have the freedom to choose. Yet, many take a paternalistic approach to those who contemplate suicide by expecting their detention in hospital and prevention of  copycat suicides through limiting freedom of speech by omitting detailed newspaper accounts. The concept of ‘rational suicide’ has weakened, although is experiencing a revival in current discourses about euthanasia. Ambivalence, contradictions, and confusion about the subject are as prevalent today as in Casanova’s time. The nuances will be explored further in her paper.

Lisetta Lovett’s image taken from LinkedIn.

CV: Dr. Lisetta  Marianna Lovett     BSc. DHMSA. MBBS. FRCPsych. PGCME.

Honorary Senior Lecturer in Humanities, School of Humanities, Keele University since 2012. Consultant in Adult Psychiatry for twenty years. Senior Lecturer in Medical Education Keele Medical School for almost ten years. Association of Medical Humanities (AMH): Council member 2013-19. She has  published in academic journals on history of medicine about Thomas Bakewell, madhouse keeper of the early 19th c and the Marseille Plague of 1720, and given a number of talks internationally.  

She has  published extensively in academic journals of Psychiatry as well as Medical Education. Before  studying medicine at Guy’s Hospital in London, she read Mathematics and Physiology at London University. After obtaining her MBBS, she then trained to become a psychiatrist in Cardiff, South Wales and the University of Liverpool. She was a Consultant General Psychiatrist for over 20 years, specialising in Mood Disorders and Early Onset Psychosis but also psycho therapeutically trained in individual, group and family therapy. She worked for over 10 years in a deprived multi-ethnic inner city which also housed a large number of asylum seekers. Through this she developed experience of recognising and managing mental health problems in immigrants. She was active in the Royal College of Psychiatrists where one of her roles was as Regional Representative for Public Education in Mental Health. She was appointed as a Senior Lecturer in Medical Education at Keele University when a medical school was opened in the early 2000s. Apart from organising teaching in psychiatry she established a Medical Humanities option for medical undergraduates.

Following retirement she was appointed Honorary Senior Lecturer at Keele University but in the School of Humanities. She has since annually supervised medical students on a history of medicine four week project. She has always had a deep interest in the Humanities, so since retirement has written a book on 18th century history of medicine, Casanova’s Guide to Medicine: 18th c Medical Practice. She has just completed a further book on social history post WWII in the Potteries called Ladies of the Potteries, based on narratives of women born before 1953 … yet to find a publisher !

Casanova’s Guide To Medicine: 18th Century Medical Practice. 2021. Lovett L.Medical History Education for Health Practitioners. Lovett L. and Tomkins A. 2013. Radcliffe Publishing (textbook for busy medical health tutors that introduces history of medicine topics)Practical Medical Ethics. Seedhouse D. and Lovett L. 1991 Chichester. J.Wiley.

On the same day that we got to visit the sacristy of the church of San Pantalon, we also got to climb the precarious and narrow wooden staircase up to the organ loft. Piero happens to be a church organist who plays at a number of Venice’s churches, as does his son Oscar. (I previously posted about hearing them play for Mass at the church of the Frari.) The friendly sacristan, who knows Piero well, allowed my husband and I to follow Piero upstairs to see the organ up close.

Notice the lovely woodwork on the keys.Piero played a few bars for us, whatever his memory dredged up.These three images show the graffiti on the walls beside the organ. Apparently, past organists like to leave their name. We didn’t have too much time to study this, but the oldest one I found was 1944. View from the organ loft looking down to the floor below.

Seen near-ish to Piazzale Roma. Who or what do you think the birds represent?

Casanova: The seducer. The ladies man. So many stereotypes and myths. But many Casanovists out there are working to tell a truer story. Today I’m sharing with you a series of videos that illuminate more about the real man.

Tom Vitelli and Stefano Feroci, both editors of various Casanova journals (Casanoviana, l’Intermediaire de Casanovists) have interviewed other eminent scholars to gather their knowledge that unearths the truer story of Casanova. In a series of 4 videos, we hear from Furio Luccichenti, Giuseppe Bignami, and Helmut Watzlawick. The interviews are in Italian and some English but can be found with English subtitles. Each section is 11-15 minutes long, covering the topics of the Lover, the Adventurer, the Writer, and the Casanovists’ first encounters with C. Or there’s one video that contains all four parts.

Full disclosure: I haven’t watched all of the episodes yet (I’m a teacher, and it’s my first week of school), but I wanted to share the information with you so you can get started. This is a great contribution to Casanoviana, capturing the expertise and insights of these important contributors who have a lifetime of knowledge and study. Grazie mille to Tom and Stefano!!

By the way, I’ll be making two presentations soon, also on Casanova: The Man Behind the Myth. If you’re in the Santa Cruz / Monterey area, come see me on September 3 in Monterey at CSUMB or on September 14 at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz.

What is going on here? Ancient deodorant practices? Thirsty lions? Sexual predilections?

My husband took this picture of a painting in the church of San Giacomo dell’Orio in Venice, but unfortunately he didn’t record the painter. (When he showed it to me, I laughed until I started wheezing.) I haven’t been able to find the painter or title. I even searched “painting of a lion licking a man’s armpit,” but, though Google claims to have magic search powers, it didn’t find the answer I wanted. Can you? What is the story behind this image? If you’re in Venice, maybe you can pop into the church and take a look?

And, btw, what is going on in the smaller painting above??

I love the murky canal beneath the dark Bridge of Sighs. Very evocative. I’m leaving this image very large so you can appreciate the texture of the card. It’s a watercolor rather than a photo.

The card is being sent to Ruth Bair in Blue Ball, Pennsylvania, not to be confused with Blue Bell, another town. Blue Ball was apparently named after a hotel from the 19th century that had a blue ball hanging on a post. In 2020, the population was a mere 1,095 people.

Both images taken from

The postcard reads: “Dear Ruth, This is the way the streets are in Venice. It is so pretty here–and we have had a perfect time lots of bands playing + __?_ here today.” Can you make out the mystery word? Or the names of the writers?

I am notoriously bad at deciphering the dates on the stamps. I’ll leave that to you, my readers, so please send the information when you figure it out!

You may already know that the church of San Pantalon has (it is said) the largest canvas painting in the world, actually made up of 40 canvases stitched together. It’s stunning–not only huge, but with trompe l’oeil technique that makes it seem to have pillars and arcades reaching all the way to heaven. Antonio Fumiani, the artist, is said to have fallen to his death from scaffolding while painting, but that seems to be apocryphal as other sources say he died six years after the work was completed. He worked on it from 1680 to 1704.

Yes, this is a slightly domed but essentially flat surface, not an entrance to heaven.

But that’s not what I’m actually writing about today, though I do hope you pop in to see this ceiling if you’re passing by after having your pastry at nearby Tonolo.

This past summer, my husband and I were having coffee with our Venetian friend Piero. He insisted we go with him to San Pantalon, hoping his friend the sacristan would be there. We were in luck! This kindly man pulled back the chain to allow us passage into the sacristy, not generally open to the public. There we viewed fragments of frescoes by Pietro Longhi in the Capella della Santa Casa di Loreta. They are bright and clean after lovely restoration work. I’ve seem many of Longhi’s paintings before, as they provide an excellent record of daily life in 18th century Venice. The paintings I’ve seen are almost invariably fairly small and dark, so I was so surprised by these large, bright frescoes.

For comparison, here’s Longhi’s painting Il Ridotto from the mid-18th century (Wikimedia Commons)

Now compare that with these larger frescoes by the same artist. It makes me need to rearrange my understanding of Longhi’s work.

Notice also the pretty gold stars on the ceiling.The Coronation of the Virgin with Saints and Prophets by Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni d’AlemagnaByzantine era paintings as wonderful as ones you can see at the Accademia museum.I confess, it felt a little disconcerting to walk on this floor.

Malina Stefanovska is one of the generous souls who ushered me into the study of Casanova’s life. In 2016, she organized a Casanova symposium at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she taught. Meeting so many other Casanovists there and hearing their new ideas inspired me to continue my own scholarship. I then reached out to Malina to help me organize the 2019 Casanova in Place symposium. Here you’ll see her biography with its extensive list of publications and the abstract that she offered for this June’s Casanova in Time symposium.

In this photo, Malina Stefanovska is in the front, wearing white.

Abstract: For this International conference organized in memory of the 300dth anniversary of the birth of Giacomo Casanova, the famed autobiographer and author of the Eighteenth century, I will elucidate a facet hitherto not theorized of his philosophical perspective : his relationship to reality. My reading is inspired by French philosopher Clément Rosset[1] whose readings of philosophers, from the Greeks to Nietzsche, brings to light the irrational “joie de vivre,” a major force and a philosophical concept developed in response to the daunting nature of reality. I analyze Casanova’s joyfulness as represented in an amorous encounter with a woman of letters of his time, Giustiniana Wynn, narrated in an erotic and comical mode.

[1] Clément Rosset, La Force Majeure (Paris, Editions Gallimard, 1983); Le Réel. Traité de l’Idiotie (Paris, Editiions Gallimard, 1977)

Biography: Malina Stefanovska, Professor Emerita in the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, at UCLA, specializes in 17th and 18th century French Literature, in particular the genres of memoirs, autobiographies and theater. Her authored or edited books are :

Saint-Simon, un historien dans les marges (Paris, Honoré Champion, 1998).

La Politique du cardinal de Retz : passions et factions (Paris, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008).

Space and Self in Early Modern European Cultures, (University of Toronto Press, Canada, 2012). (co-edited with D. Sabean)

Littérature et politique. Factions et dissidences de la Ligue à la Fronde, (Paris, Garnier, 2015). Co-edited with A. Paschoud.

From the Margins to the Center: Casanova in the Enlightenment (Un. Of Toronto Press, 2021). Editor.

Récits de vie et pratiques de sociabilité. 1680-1850 (Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2020). Co-edited with M.-P. De Weerdt Pilorge.

Emotions in Non-Fictional Representations of the Individual. 1600-1850. Between East and West (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2021). Co-edited.

       She has also published over fifty book chapters, articles and encyclopedia entries on her area of specialization.

       After studying other people’s memoirs, she decided to write her own, and has recently published a literary memoir/family history in French, translated in English:

Sevdah. Élégie pour un Sud rêvé  (Presses Universitaires du nouveau monde, 2021)

Sevdah. Elegy for a South Imagined (University Press of the South, 2023). 

      She is presently working on an imaginary correspondence with Giacomo Casanova and on a second personal memoir.

On the right, Malina stands with Jean-Christophe Igalens in the Longhena Library on San Giorgio Maggiore.

Malina Stefanovska is one of the generous souls who ushered me into the study of Casanova’s life. In 2016, she organized a Casanova symposium at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she taught. Meeting so many other Casanovists there and hearing their new ideas inspired me to continue my own scholarship. I then reached out to Malina to help me organize the 2019 Casanova in Place symposium. Here you’ll see her biography with its extensive list of publications and the abstract that she offered for this June’s Casanova in Time symposium.

In this photo, Malina Stefanovska is in the front, wearing white.

Abstract: For this International conference organized in memory of the 300dth anniversary of the birth of Giacomo Casanova, the famed autobiographer and author of the Eighteenth century, I will elucidate a facet hitherto not theorized of his philosophical perspective : his relationship to reality. My reading is inspired by French philosopher Clément Rosset[1] whose readings of philosophers, from the Greeks to Nietzsche, brings to light the irrational “joie de vivre,” a major force and a philosophical concept developed in response to the daunting nature of reality. I analyze Casanova’s joyfulness as represented in an amorous encounter with a woman of letters of his time, Giustiniana Wynn, narrated in an erotic and comical mode.

[1] Clément Rosset, La Force Majeure (Paris, Editions Gallimard, 1983); Le Réel. Traité de l’Idiotie (Paris, Editiions Gallimard, 1977)

Biography: Malina Stefanovska, Professor Emerita in the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, at UCLA, specializes in 17th and 18th century French Literature, in particular the genres of memoirs, autobiographies and theater. Her authored or edited books are :

Saint-Simon, un historien dans les marges (Paris, Honoré Champion, 1998).

La Politique du cardinal de Retz : passions et factions (Paris, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008).

Space and Self in Early Modern European Cultures, (University of Toronto Press, Canada, 2012). (co-edited with D. Sabean)

Littérature et politique. Factions et dissidences de la Ligue à la Fronde, (Paris, Garnier, 2015). Co-edited with A. Paschoud.

From the Margins to the Center: Casanova in the Enlightenment (Un. Of Toronto Press, 2021). Editor.

Récits de vie et pratiques de sociabilité. 1680-1850 (Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2020). Co-edited with M.-P. De Weerdt Pilorge.

Emotions in Non-Fictional Representations of the Individual. 1600-1850. Between East and West (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2021). Co-edited.

       She has also published over fifty book chapters, articles and encyclopedia entries on her area of specialization.

       After studying other people’s memoirs, she decided to write her own, and has recently published a literary memoir/family history in French, translated in English:

Sevdah. Élégie pour un Sud rêvé  (Presses Universitaires du nouveau monde, 2021)

Sevdah. Elegy for a South Imagined (University Press of the South, 2023). 

      She is presently working on an imaginary correspondence with Giacomo Casanova and on a second personal memoir.

On the right, Malina stands with Jean-Christophe Igalens in the Longhena Library on San Giorgio Maggiore.

On my most recent trip to Venice, I rented an apartment from a pair of Venetian brothers (who happened to live beneath this apartment). Just outside the apartment door was this large, gorgeous painting of an ancient Venetian map. I love it so much! It depicts the city, which hasn’t changed all that much. Wish I knew the date of the map! Notice other great details like the extra-large Bucintoro ship in the canal and many other masted sailing ships, belying Venice’s maritime strength. The orientation of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore is a bit off; I guess the painter wanted us to see its facade, which in reality mostly faces the Piazza San Marco. Also, there are more canals here, which tells us that it’s before the time of Napoleon, who had a number of canals filled in and made into streets. Below, I’ve included some close ups of different parts of the map.

Here at the bend in the Grand Canal (near the black boats), you can see Ca’ Foscari, now the main university building, and across the small canal to its left is Ca’ Dolfin where our Casanova symposium was held. Across the Grand Canal is the church of San Samuele where Casanova was baptized.Piazza San Marco looks the same then as now! The biggest difference is the lack of vendors selling cheap souvenirs.This is my favorite section of the map, with all the wee slips of gondolas lined up near the Rialto Bridge.