Santa Croce, Venice. 1710–1715.

As Zanetta grows from three to eight years old, she becomes an unusually attentive observer of the world beyond her family’s shoemaking shop. Gestures, timing, expressions, and the rhythms of performance begin to settle into her memory—and eventually into her own movements.

She watches. She imitates. She learns when people notice.

A chance reaction in the marketplace teaches her caution. Then, during an ordinary Sunday walk past Teatro San Samuele, a simple discovery opens an entirely new possibility.

A Woman Named Zanetta — Volume One: The Silent Stage
A historical narrative from Zanetta Pictures.

Santa Croce, Venice. August 1707.

In a cramped home near the Rio Marin, Marzia Farussi endures a difficult three-day labor. When her child is finally born, the midwife announces simply: “A girl.”

Her name is Zanetta Farussi.

Born into a working Venetian family with little money and few expectations for a daughter, Zanetta enters a world already shaped by necessity, family, gender, and survival. Yet beyond the shutters lies another Venice — a city of theatres, music, masks, and possibilities her family cannot yet imagine.

This chapter begins the life at the heart of A Woman Named Zanetta, tracing the forgotten woman who would later become the mother of Giacomo Casanova.

A Woman Named Zanetta — Volume One: The Silent Stage
Chapter 2 — Birth

An illustrated historical narrative from Zanetta Pictures, exploring Zanetta Farussi, Giacomo Casanova, 18th-century Venice, Venetian theatre, and the lives behind one of history’s most famous names.

Dux Castle, Bohemia. September 1789.

At sixty-four, Giacomo Casanova sits before a blank page, preparing to write the story of his extraordinary life. But the beginning refuses to come.

Searching his earliest memories, Casanova confronts an unsettling absence: he can remember the women who raised him, but not the woman who gave birth to him.

His failed first page leads him somewhere unexpected — away from his own legend and toward the forgotten life of his mother, Zanetta Farussi.

A Woman Named Zanetta — Volume One: The Silent Stage
Chapter 1 — The First Page

An illustrated historical narrative from Zanetta Pictures, exploring the forgotten lives behind Giacomo Casanova, his memoirs, 18th-century Venice, and the world that shaped him.