Cecilia Maria de Candia

Cecilia Maria de Candia (born 1853 or 1854), later Mrs Godfrey Pearse, was a British-Italian writer, amateur singer and society hostess. She was the daughter of two famous opera singers, Giulia Grisi and Giovanni Matteo de Candia—a marquise who sang under the popular name of Mario the tenor.

In her childhood, she traveled extensively with her parents, who moved their main home from Florence to London in 1869. And she grew up surrounded by the artistic elite of Europe, the friends and colleagues of her parents. The de Candia family was part of the Italian nobility, and at birth, Cecilia Maria was registered as princess Cecilia Maria de Candia, Countess of Candia in the Italian Kingdom of Sardinia and Noble Lady (it: Nobile Donna) of the United Kingdom of Italy; from her mother family she was related to the Royal House of Greece.

She married Godfrey Pearse a "fencing champion" and they lived first in London, and some seasons in Brighton. They were good friends and correspondents of the famous Scottish painter James McNeill Whistler.

As Mrs Godfrey Pearse, she published three books:

• The Romance of a Great Singer: A Memoir of Mario (1910) (with Frank Hird)
• The Kitchen Garden and the Cook: An Alphabetical Guide to the Cultivation of Vegetables (1913)
• The Enchanted Past (1926).

She died while conducting research and writing her last book at her father's home—the Villa Salviati in Tuscany.

References

• Brief biography from University of Glasgow's Whistler collection

External links

• Text of The Romance of a Great Singer: A Memoir of Mario
• Works by or about Cecilia Maria de Candia in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Persondata
Name	Candia, Cecilia Maria
Alternative names
Short description	British-Italian writer
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death