Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi

Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi (Corfù 1760–Venice 1836) was a leading figure in the Venetian Republic's cultural life in the years after Foscolo went to Venice from Greece and she held one of the city's most prominent salons, where literary and cultural figures such as Melchiorre Cesarotti, Antonio Canova, Aurelio de’ Giorgi Bertola, and Ippolito Pindemonte met. She wed very young to Carlo Antonio Marin, had the marriage annulled in 1795 and re-married the year after to nobleman Giuseppe Albrizzi.

Renamed Temira by Foscolo in Sesto tomo dell’Io, which was inspired by Montesquieu's Tempio di Gnido (The temple of Gnido), Isabella had an intense romantic relationship with the very young poet, with whom she maintained a bond of friendship and intellectual complicity in the years following his departure from Venice: "lover for five days, but friend for all life" Foscolo said of her. The pair saw each other again during the writer's stay in Venice between 1806 and 1807; the idea to write Dei Sepolcri came from discussions with Isabella and with Ippolito Pindemonte.

Teotochi Albrizzi published the first edition of Ritratti (Portraits), profiles of personalities she had met outlined in an unconventional, direct, personal way, at Brescia publishers Bettoni in 1807. Her portrait of Foscolo reveals a dominant, extreme personality, hostile to compromise who was a lover of freedom, of his country and of solitude; it is a portrait full of nuances, which shows admiration, but also awareness of the writer's inevitable distance and diversity.

The pair saw each other for the last time in 1812, before the poet moved to Florence, but the correspondence via letter continued in the period of exile.