Camilla Faà

Who was Camilla Faà?

Camilla Faà di Bruno, also da Casale, also Camilla Faà Gonzaga was an Italian noblewoman who was married secretly, briefly and morganatically to Ferdinando the Gonzaga Duke of Mantua and Duke of Montferrat. Repudiated by her husband she became a nun and the sixteen page memoir which she wrote in 1622 at the behest of her Mother Superior has been described as the first prose autobiography written by an Italian woman. Her story was the subject of Paolo Giacometti’s historical drama Camilla Faa da Casale, first performed at the Teatro Nuovo, Florence on 29 October 1846.