Iris Origo

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Iris Margaret Origo, Marchesa of Val d'Orcia, DBE (15 August 1902 — 28 June 1988), née Cutting, was an Anglo-Irish biographer and writer. She lived in Italy, and devoted much of her life to the improvement of the Tuscan estate at La Foce, near Montepulciano, which she purchased with her husband in the 1920s.

Origins and upbringing

Origo was the granddaughter of William Bayard Cutting, her mother Lady Sybil Cuffe (daughter of Lord Desart, an Irish peer) having married the diplomat eldest son (also named William Bayard Cutting) of the rich and philanthropic New York family. Her parents travelled widely after their marriage, particularly in Italy, where her father contracted tuberculosis and died in 1910. Iris and her mother settled in Italy, buying the Villa Medici in Fiesole, one of Florence's most spectacular villas. There they formed a close friendship with Bernard Berenson, who lived not far away at I Tatti. Iris was briefly enrolled at school in London, but was largely educated at home, by Professor Solone Monti as well as a series of French and German governesses.[1]

Mother's remarriages

In 1918, Lady Sybil Cutting married the architectural historian Geoffrey Scott, who later embarked on a relationship with Vita Sackville-West. The marriage was to last until 1926; following their divorce she married, as her third husband, the essayist Percy Lubbock; she died in 1943. Her second marriage reportedly failed because she was emotionally needy and had married a man who suffered from neurasthenia.
[Lady Sybil] had a brief affair with Bernard Berenson and then astonished everyone by marrying Mary Berenson's protege, Geoffrey Scott, the fragile and neurasthenic author of The Architecture of Humanism. The marriage was not happy. No one could outdo Sybil where neuroses were concerned, and she spent more and more time in bed on one pretext or another.[2]

Personal life

Iris Cutting travelled to England and the United States in order to be launched in the society of both countries. In 1922, she first met Colin Mackenzie, a young Scottish businessman working in Milan; a romantic epistolary affair was followed by a lifelong friendship. On 4 March 1924, Iris married Antonio Origo, the illegitimate son of Marchese Clemente Origo. They moved together to their new estate at La Foce, near Chianciano Terme in the Province of Siena. It was in an advanced state of disrepair but, by dint of much hard work, care and attention, they succeeded in transforming it. They had a son, Gian Clemente Bayard (aka "Gianni") (24 June 1925 — 30 April 1933), who died of meningitis at the age of seven, and two daughters, Benedetta (born 1 August 1940) and Donata (born 9 June 1943). It was following the death of Gianni that Iris Origo embarked on her writing career, with a well-received biography of Giacomo Leopardi, published in 1935. The Observer said: "Her book is a monument to scholarship — the literary and historical background is painted with consummate skill, and a pattern of good taste."[citation needed] She followed this in 1938 with a biography of Cola di Rienzo, the 14th-century populist revolutionary and would-be dictator in Rome. Her 1957 book The Merchant of Prato is an invaluable source for students of Italian city and mercantile life, based on extensive research in the archives of merchant Francesco di Marco Datini (1335-1410). She also cast light on a little-known facet of medieval and early Italian life in “The Domestic Enemy: the Eastern Slaves in Tuscany in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries”.[3]

War years

During the Second World War, the Origos remained at La Foce and looked after refugee children, who were housed there. Following the surrender of Italy, Iris Origo also sheltered or assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war, who were seeking to make their way through the German lines, or simply to survive. Her account of this time, War in the Val D'Orcia, was the first of her books to be a popular, as well as a critical, success. [citation needed]

Post-WWII

After the war, she divided her time between La Foce and Rome, where the Origos had bought an apartment in the Palazzo Orsini, and devoted herself to writing. The Origos also holidayed at Gli Scafari, the house built by Iris' mother at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezia. [citation needed]

Death

Antonio Origo died on 27 June 1976. Iris Origo died at her estate in Tuscany on 28 June 1988, aged 85.

Honours

On 31 December 1976 she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the Overseas and Diplomatic List.[4]

Works

  • Allegra (1935), a short life of Byron’s daughter
  • Leopardi A Study in Solitude (1935/1953), a biography of Giacomo Leopardi
  • Gianni, a privately printed memorial to Iris's son
  • Tribune of Rome: A Biography of Cola di Rienzo (1938), on the 14th-century Roman revolutionary
  • War in Val d'Orcia (1947), a personal memoir of the last years of Fascism and the liberation of Italy
  • The Last Attachment (1949), on Byron and Countess Guiccioli
  • Giovanni and Jane (1950), a children’s book
  • A Measure of Love (1957), biographic essays
  • The Merchant of Prato (1957), on the life and commercial operations of Francesco di Marco Datini
  • Images and Shadows (1970), an elegiac autobiography
  • The Vagabond Path (1972), an anthology
  • The World of San Bernardino (1963), a life of Bernardino of Siena
  • Un'amica. Ritratto di Elsa Dallolio (1982), a memoir of an old friend
  • A Need to Testify (1984), biographies of Ignazio Silone, Gaetano Salvemini, Ruth Draper and Lauro de Bosis, four opponents of Fascism

References

  1. ↑ Origo, Iris (1970). Images and Shadows. London: John Murray. ISBN 0-7195-5671-6. 
  2. ↑ Isabel Colegate. Coming Home to Heroism (part 2) The Spectator 7 October 2000. Book review of Caroline Moorehead's Iris Origo: Marchesa of Val d'Orcia.
  3. ↑ in Speculum, vol. XXX, no. 3, July 1955
  4. ↑ London Gazette announcing Iris Origo's DBE

External links

Sources

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