Sara Coppio Sullam was renown for her beauty, her poetry, and her salon of intellectuals in the Ghetto of Venice. She was a wealthy matron, married to a husband who admired and indulged her. She seems more like a modern woman compared to her contemporaries. Women were forced to marry whom their father chose, and once married, they were little more than prisoners to their husbands. Jewish women of the same time period would also have arranged marriages, but if the husband mistreated his wife, she could appeal to the council of rabbis for a divorce.
Sara Coppio Sullam
This portrait, of Helene Sedelmayer from the Gallery of Beauties of Ludwig I of Bavaria, was the inspiration for “Bettina”. In real life, she was a delivery girl for the King’s toy store, where he saw her and commissioned her portrait for his Gallery of Beauties. She ended up marrying the King’s chamber footman, had 10 children with him and lived until the age of 85.
1831, Portrait of Helena Sedelmayer, Schloss Nymphenburg, Munich, Germany