Iris Origo

Antonio and Iris Origo with baby daughter Donata, at La Foce in 1943

Dame Iris Margaret Origo, Marchesa of Val d'Orcia, DBE (15 August 1902 — 28 June 1988), née Cutting, was a British-born 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. During the Second World War, she consistently sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy's fascist regime and Nazi occupation forces.

Origins and upbringing

Origo was born at Beechwood Cottage, Birdlip, Gloucestershire, England, 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.

In April 1918 her mother, Lady Sybil Cutting, married the architectural historian Geoffrey Scott. She divorced him in 1926 and took a third husband, the essayist Percy Lubbock.

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 correspondence was followed by a passionate affair. 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).

Writing career

It was following the death of her son, Gianni, that Iris Origo embarked on her writing career, with a well-received biography of Giacomo Leopardi, published in 1935. A reviewer said: "...an unobtrusive scholarship gives alimentation to a deft power in narrative, and the style is always alive and sometimes very beautiful." 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 her article “The Domestic Enemy: the Eastern Slaves in Tuscany in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries”.

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 Val d'Orcia, was the first of her books to be a popular, as well as a critical, success.

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 the architect Cecil Pinsent for Iris's mother at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezia. Antonio Origo died on 27 June 1976. Iris Origo died at her estate in Tuscany on 28 June 1988, aged 85.

Honours

She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967. On 31 December 1976 she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) "for services to British cultural interests in Italy and to Anglo-Italian relations.

Legacy

Every year, in July, a music festival is held at La Foce in her memory. This is organised by her grandson, the cellist Antonio Lysy, and has been held since 1989, the year after her death.

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 diary 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
• "Pope Pius II" (1961), in Plumb, J. H. et al., The Horizon Book of the Renaissance, Collins 1961
• 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

Further reading

• Giffuni, Cathe. "Iris Origo: A Bibliography," Bulletin of Bibliography, Vol. 47 No. 3 September 1990, pp. 169–176.

External links

• "An American writer in Tuscany" Iris Origo and Villa La Foce

Sources

• "Coming Home to Heroism", The Spectator 7 October 2000. Available online. Book review of Caroline Moorehead's Iris Origo: Marchesa of Val d'Orcia (London, John Murray, 2000)
• Gianna Pomata, "Dalla biografia alla storia e ritorno: Iris Origo fra Bloomsbury e Toscana" in Genesis. Rivista della Societa' italiana delle storiche, pgs. 117-156 (2007)