1. Catherine Bagration was known for her beauty, love affairs and unconventional behavior.
25 Facts About Catherine Bagration
1. 2.
Catherine Bagration was the daughter of Count Pavel Martinovich Skavronsky, Chamberlain of the Royal Court and Minister Plenipotentiary to Naples, well known for his mental imbalance and extraordinary love of music, and his wife, Catherine von Engelhardt, niece and at the same time favorite of Prince Grigory Potemkin.
3.
Catherine Bagration's father was the son of Count Karel Samuilovich Skavronsky, presumably eldest brother of Catherine I of Russia.
4.
Catherine Bagration was educated at the court of the Empress Catherine Bagration II the Great and the Empress Maria Feodorovna, wife of her son Emperor Paul I; later becoming her maid of honor.
5.
Catherine Bagration was a mere soldier, with the tone and manners of one, and he was extremely ugly.
6.
Catherine Bagration's wife was as white as he was black, and she was as beautiful as an angel, bright, the liveliest of the beauties of St Petersburg; she would not be happy with such a husband for long.
7.
Catherine Bagration traveled so extensively that she had a special carriage made, with an elegant ladder that allowed her to climb in and out of it comfortably.
8.
Catherine Bagration called her carriage her dormez or 'sleeper'; this was the time when she came to be known as "the Wandering Princess".
9.
Prince Catherine Bagration called her back to Russia a number of times, and sent her so many letters that even her friends tried to persuade her to go; she remained abroad using the excuse that she was sick and in need of medical treatment.
10.
In Europe Princess Catherine Bagration was a great success, and became well known in court circles.
11.
Catherine Bagration became notorious everywhere and was called le Bel Ange Nu because of her passion for revealing dresses, and Chatte Blanche, because of her unlimited sensuality.
12.
Princess Catherine Bagration was bypassed, and the pride of her husband was wounded.
13.
The Prince paid thousands of roubles for debts Princess Catherine Bagration had accumulated from living in Vienna.
14.
Catherine Bagration then became the mistress of the influential Prince Klemens von Metternich and had a daughter by him in Vienna on 29 September 1810, whom she named Marie-Clementine after the natural father.
15.
Princess Catherine Bagration was an extremely emancipated lady for her age, and played like a man, choosing for herself which man to take as lovers, and which as just friends.
16.
Catherine Bagration's salon was constantly filled with the rich and famous.
17.
Catherine Bagration maintained a friendship with Goethe and corresponded with him.
18.
Catherine Bagration boasted that she knew more political secrets than all the envoys put together.
19.
Catherine Bagration had refused her advances because he still adored his wife Catherine, and she quickly married her first cousin Wilhelm, later to become King William I of Wurttemberg.
20.
Catherine Bagration's compromising letters were discovered among his papers, along with an oval miniature of his true love, Catherine.
21.
In 1815 the Princess Catherine greeted the victory of the Russian army over Napoleon, and during the Congress of Vienna she held a grand ball in honor of the Russian emperor Alexander I She was not only his intimate friend but during, and after the war, she constantly supplied the Russian Emperor with information about the political mood in Europe.
22.
Catherine Bagration counted many Parisian celebrities among her close friends: Stendhal, Benjamin Constant, the Marquis de Custine, even the Queen of Greece.
23.
Princess Catherine Bagration was the heiress to the fabulous jewelry collection of her great uncle, and it is possible that her finances were flagging at the end of her life.
24.
Catherine Bagration sold some items, including the famous "Potemkin Diamond", which was purchased by the Emperor Napoleon III for his wife the Empress Eugenie, after whom it was renamed.
25.
Catherine Bagration finally died during a trip to Venice, on 2 June 1857, and was buried in the Orthodox section of the San Michele cemetery on the Isola di San Michele, in Venice, which is the last resting place of Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky.