Luisa, the Marchesa Casati Stampa di Soncino (23 January 1881 – 1 June 1957) was an eccentric Italian heiress, muse, and patroness of the arts in early-20th-century Europe.
The younger daughter of Alberto Amman, a wealthy cotton manufacturer and his wife, the former Lucia Bressi, Luisa Adele Rosa Maria Amman was born in Milan to a life of luxury. Her numerous portraits were painted and sculpted by artists as various as Giovanni Boldini, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Romaine Brooks, Kees van Dongen, Man Ray and Augustus John; many of them she paid for, as a wish to “commission her own immortality”.

She was muse to F. T. Marinetti, Fortunato Depero, and Umberto Boccioni. John Galliano based the 1998 Spring/Summer Christian Dior collection on her. Gowns from this collection have been displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Fashion Institute. She was buried wearing not only her black and leopard skin finery but a pair of false eyelashes. She also shares her coffin with one of her beloved stuffed pekinese dogs.

A sketch of one of Casati’s masquerade ensembles