''' Giacomo Girolamo

So famous a womanizer was he that his name remains synonymous with the art of seduction and he is sometimes called "the world's greatest lover". He enjoyed the company of European royalty, popes and cardinals, along with men such as Voltaire, Goethe and Mozart; but if he had not been obliged to spend some years as a librarian in the household of Count Waldstein of Bohemia (where he relieved his boredom by writing the story of his life), he would probably be forgotten today.

Youth

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was born in Venice in 1725 to actress Zanetta Farussi, wife of actor and dancer Gaetano Giuseppe Casanova. Giacomo was the first of six children, being followed by Giovanni Alvise (1730–1795), Faustina Maddalena (1731–1736), Maria Maddalena Antonia Stella (1732–1800), Gaetano Alvise (1734–1783), and Francesco (1737–1803). Because of his mother's profession, it is suspected that some or all of these were fathered by men other than her husband. Casanova himself suspected his biological father to have been Michele Grimani, a member of the patrician family that owned the San Samuele theatre where Zanetta and Gaetano had worked. Lending support to this, Grimani's brother Abbé Alvise Grimani, became Casanova's guardian. In his memoirs, however, Casanova provides an elaborate paternal genealogy to explain his birth, beginning in Spain in 1428.

The Republic of Venice during Casanova's time was past its peak as a naval and commercial power. Instead Venice thrived as ‘the' pleasure capital of Europe, ruled by political and religious conservatives who tolerated social vices and encouraged tourism. It was a required stop on the Grand Tour, traveled by young men coming of age, especially Englishmen. The famed Carnival, gambling houses, and beautiful courtesans were powerful drawing cards. This was the milieu that bred Casanova and made him its most famous and representative citizen.

Casanova was cared for by his grandmother Marzia Baldissera while his mother toured about Europe in the theater. His father died when he was eight. As a child, Casanova suffered nosebleeds, and his grandmother sought help from a witch: “Leaving the gondola, we enter a hovel, where we find an old woman sitting on a pallet, with a black cat in her arms and five or six others around her.” Though the unguent applied was ineffective, Casanova was fascinated by the incantation. Perhaps to remedy the nosebleeds (a physician blamed the density of Venice's air), Casanova, on his ninth birthday, was sent to a boarding house on the mainland in Padua. For Casanova, the neglect by his parents was a bitter memory. “So they got rid of me,” he proclaimed flatly.

Conditions at the boarding house were appalling so he appealed to be placed under the care of Abbé Gozzi, his primary instructor, who tutored him in academic subjects as well as the violin. Casanova moved in with the priest and his family and lived there through most of his teenage years. It was also in the Gozzi household that Casanova first came into contact with the opposite sex, when Gozzi's younger sister Bettina fondled him at the age of eleven. Bettina was “pretty, lighthearted, and a great reader of romances. … The girl pleased me at once, though I had no idea why. It was she who little by little kindled in my heart the first sparks of a feeling which later became my ruling passion.” Although she subsequently married, Casanova maintained a life-long attachment to Bettina and the Gozzi family.