Lucia in the Age of Napoleon - Tapa blanda

In 1797, Lucia, the beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter of a Venetian statesman, was married off to Alvise Mocenigo, scion of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families of the once glorious maritime Republic. They were a golden couple in Venice's twilight years. But Lucia's life was suddenly transformed when the thousand-year-old Serenissima collapsed under the blows of young Bonaparte in 1797. Whether as a dazzling young hostess in Habsburg Vienna, lady-in-waiting at the court of Prince Eugene de Beauharnais in Milan, single mother in Paris during the fall of Napoleon's Empire or as Byron's hard-fisted landlady during the poet's stay in Venice, Lucia lived to be a remarkable witness to an age of great turmoil. Two hundred years later, Andrea di Robilant, Lucia's great-great-great-great grandson, has unearthed letters and diaries in archives across Europe to draw an intimate and vivid portrait of his ancestor, and of the exceptional times she lived in.

Andrea di Robilant was born in Rome in 1957. He was educated at Le Rosey (Switzerland) and Columbia University, where he studied history and international politics. He has worked as a journalist all his life, in Europe, the United States and Latin America. His previous book, A Venetian Affair, was published to great acclaim in 2004. He lives in Rome with his wife and two sons.