Matteo Giovanni di Bragadino, Casanova's devoted patron at the time was 65. Casanova was 30. Bragadino was a member of an illustrious family including one who lost Cyprus to the Turks at the Battle of Famagusta in the 16th century and was flayed alive, his skin "stuffed with straw and borne in triumph to Constantinople." Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1956 edition.
Casanova condemned by the Council of Ten - from Casanova, the movie, 1987, with Richard Chamberlain and Faye Dunaway. This is poetic license on the part of the author of the screenplay. Casanova denied the honor of an such an audience.
Harper's Magazine
gives the
GORY DETAILS
"Famagusta lies near the center of a long scallop of bay on the eastern shore of the island, facing Syria. In the 13th Century it was the wealthiest port in the Mediterranean….it is surrounded by massive stone walls that were reinforced in the 16th century by Venetian military engineers bracing for the arrival of the Ottomans. The invasion finally came in 1570….50,000 Turks came ashore in the withering heat of midsummer, led by a sadist named Lala Mustafa. After sacking Nicosia and killing 20,000 inhabitants, Mustafa led his forces against Famagusta, which was defended by a garrison of Venetian soldiers.""The Turks hammered the thick stone walls with an estimated 100,000 cannonballs until the Venetian commander, Marcantonio Brigadino, finally ran out of supplies. Bragadino arranged for peaceful terms of surrender, but the Turks - enraged by the losses they had suffered while taking the city - started torturing and killing Bragadino's soldiers. When Bragadino objected, Mustafa ordered that his ears and nose be cut off and that he be skinned alive. The skin was stuffed with straw and mounted on a wagon, and legend has it that Bragadino lived long enough to behold his own gruesome double paraded through the streets."
From Dispatches from a Dead War, by Scott Anderson and Sebastian Junger, Harper's August, 1999
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