Biography
Born Margherita Grassini, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish lawyer, she grew up in a palazzo situated at the Canale Grande in Venice and was educated by private tutors. However, she was soon attracted by socialist ideas and escaped her parents' home at age 18 by marrying Cesare Sarfatti, a lawyer from Padua 13 years her senior. In 1902, the couple moved to Milan.
In 1911, Margherita Sarfatti met, and started an affair with, Benito Mussolini. As a highly educated and intellectual woman, she played a significant role in the rise of fascism. Until 1938, when Mussolini bowed to German pressure and enacted an Italian version of the infamous Nuremberg laws, Fascist ideology was free of any elements of anti-Semitism, and the party's membership rolls were open to Jews. Probably in reaction to the changing circumstances in Italy Sarfatti left Italy in 1938 for Argentina and Uruguay; she worked as a journalist in Montevideo. After the war, in 1947, Sarfatti returned to her home country and once again became an influential force in Italian art.
Read more about this topic: Margherita Sarfatti
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