1344) Virginia Bourbon del Monte

Donna Virginia Bourbon del Monte dei principi di San Faustino (1899 – 1945). Wife of Edoardo Agnelli and the mother of Gianni Agnelli (principal shareholder of FIAT).

She was the daughter of Carlo Bourbon del Monte, Prince di San Faustino (1867–1917), a descendant of an ancient Tuscan-Umbrian family. Her mother was the American Jane Allen Campbell (1865–1938).

Virginia married Edoardo Agnelli, the son of Senator and Fiat co-founder Giovanni Agnelli, on 5 June 1919. She became a widow on 14 July 1935, as Edoardo died in a plane crash in the seadrome of Genoa.

A few months after the death of her husband, Virginia engaged in an intimate relationship with the journalist and writer Curzio Malaparte. Their wedding ceremony—originally scheduled for October 1936—didn't take place due to the stubborn opposition of Virginia's father-in-law, Senator Giovanni Agnelli.

Meanwhile, Virginia had to face a tough confrontation with her father-in-law, who tried to claim parental authority over her seven children by all means after finding out that the two lovers were about to get married.

In deliberating on this issue, the Court of Turin pronounced a verdict against the mother. The dispute went on with several legal actions, until Virginia decided to move to Rome. Since there were better chances for her of being favoured by the judicial authorities of Rome, her father-in-law finally gave his consent to negotiate a compromise agreement by the end of 1937. Its most important aspect was the granting of child custody to Virginia.

She was arrested in Rome on 8 September 1943, since she was the daughter of a U.S. citizen, a country at that time at war against Germany, and confined in a villa on the Caelian Hill, from which she was then able to escape.

Virginia perished in a car accident near Pisa in the late afternoon of 30 November 1945, after the car in which she was traveling was hit head-on by a heavy truck of the U.S. Army. 

 

- "Era bellissima Virginia, donna anticonformista, dai capelli rossi e sempre senza cappello..." (Virginia was a beautiful, nonconformist woman, with red hair and always without a hat). https://www.liberaeva.com/.../interviste/virginiaagnelli.htm

 

- "Era una bella ragazza, alta con le gambe slanciate e lunghissimi capelli ricci e rossi." (She was a beautiful girl, tall, with slender legs and very long hair, curly and red.) http://elisabettavillaggio.altervista.org/virginia-agnelli/

 

 - "Era una creatura dal magnifico portamento e dai meravigliosi capelli ricci e rossi." (She was a creature with a magnificent bearing and wonderful red and curly hair). https://books.google.it/books?id=At7bCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT72...