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I had the suspicion that it was all the fault of my grandmother or her sister Yole if so many painters insisted on letting me pose. In fact, among the many pictures of the house, of female portraits there were only theirs and perhaps, I thought, all the women of the family who had the misfortune to resemble their grandmother or Aunt Yole ended up in a frame. Strange, however, that they had started taking portraits of me so soon, all the more so that my parents seemed interested in buying them.

The portrait of grandmother Evelina was in the hall but although it was a beautiful painting, few looked at it: everyone's attention was always attracted by the large tapestries with mighty horses that unsaddled and trampled on ferocious soldiers - a design by Rubens.

Aunt Yole, on the other hand, was in the pink sitting room, between Papa's study and my parents' room. Painted by the famous Corcos, full-length against a satin drapery, the wide-necked white dress tucked into a thin slim waist. A long string of pearls descended from the slender neck, the perfect oval of the face was surrounded by a mass of hair gathered and enclosed by other pearls. It was similar to a fairy. Certainly not me, always disheveled.

So I looked at myself in the mirror and decided it was useless to waste any more time with the comb. Returning to my room, I stopped for a moment to watch the sun come in. This is also why I loved my room so much: thanks to the two large windows overlooking the courtyard of Ca 'Soranzo it was always full of light. Not so the row of lounges overlooking the Rio di Santa Maria Formosa, where the sun struggled to enter because of the houses opposite, across the canal.

Every time a "forestiero*" came to our house for the first time, he was amazed at the high number that marked the door, 4421, not knowing that the numbering of the houses and progressive for each district in which...

*generally translated to a stranger or a visitor but one reference of the word forestiero defines it as an "Italian from another town." As such, leaving the Italian term in its correct vernacular seems appropriate in this instance, especially since Adriana put it in quotations to connote a seemingly specific meaning.