The Triumph of Death

A man who cannot bear the ordinary courage of the woman he loves takes her to a cliff above the Adriatic. D'Annunzio published "The Triumph of Death" in 1894, at the height of his Nietzschean period, and it was read across Europe as the last word in decadence. The pilgrimage to the shrine at Casalbordino is the strongest thing in it and the least like the rest. Fifty-six plates, from Panini's Roman vistas to Boldini's society portraits, trace the Italian world D'Annunzio's lovers move through.