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Personal data
Name
Caterina Maria Therese di San Gillio
Date of birth (prefix)
ca.
Born 1715
Died 1800
Alias
Madame de St. Gilles
Caterina Maria Teresa di Coardi di Carpanetto
Biography

Turin socialite in the 18th century.

Her second husband was Vittorio Francesco, Comte di San Gillio (ca. 1695/1705-1769).1

According to Andrea Merlotti:

"Perhaps the most famous salon in eighteenth-century Turin was that of Countess Caterina Vignati di San Gillio (1714–1800), daughter of a cavalry officer who had been Piedmontese ambassador in Spain and an important member of the Turin court. The Countess’s second husband was Count Vittorio Francesco Vignati di San Gillio (c.1695–1769), thought by many to be an illegitimate son of Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoia. In the late 1740s, the Countess of San Gillio opened a salon that, for the next thirty-five years, became one of those most frequently attended by foreigners visiting the city, in particular the English."2

  • 1Vittorio Francesco was thought by many to be one of several illegitimate children of King Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia (1666-1732).
  • 2In Merlotti, A. (2010) "European Travellers and Settings for Aristocratic Sociability in Eighteenth-century Italy" presented at the 21st International Congress of Historical Sciences in Amsterdam.