Portrait of Sveva Caetani, 1990.

BIOGRAPHY   Sveva Caetani di Sermoneta was born in Rome in 1917. She was the last of an ancient and noble family whose members have left a considerable imprint on Italian history. Numbered among them were two popes: Gelasio II, in the 10th century, and Pope Boniface VIII in the 13th century. Sveva's father, Leone Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta, was a distinguished scholar and a Socialist Deputy of the Italian parliament. In Italy between the two World Wars he sensed the

growing power of Fascism and decided that Canada would provide a more liberal and healthy environment for himself, his common-law wife, Ofelia, and his daughter Sveva. In 1921 he immigrated to a small farming town in British Columbia. For Sveva's father, the move represented a welcome release and change, but for her mother it meant distance from friends and the loss of a familiar way of life.Sveva was eighteen when her father died. Her autocratic mother then retired into complete seclusion, compelling her daughter to share in this for the next twenty-five years. For the first three years following her father's death, Sveva was not permitted to go out of the house. Whenever she tried, her mother would react with serious heart palpitations.

Ofelia was extremely jealous of her beautiful, talented and spirited daughter. To prevent Sveva from escaping she severed all contact with the outside world. Letters were burned and friends turned away at the gate. Ofelia also forbade Sveva writing and painting, two activities Sveva loved. Day and night Sveva had to obey her mother's demands. She would scrub the floors and wash the bedding ever day. Her mother was paranoid of germs and insisted that the dishes were washed before and after the meals. Sveva was forced to sleep in the hallway outside her mother's bedroom. Later when Ofelia became increasingly ill, Sveva had to nurse her day and night. The mother became increasingly fearful of her daughter leaving her. After three years Sveva suffered an emotional breakdown, Following the warnings of their doctor, Sveva was permitted to spend an hour in the garden each day. However, a fence was built and she was not allowed to venture beyond the gate. During this lonely and difficult incarceration, reading became Sveva's only lifeline to the outside world.

In 1960 Sveva lost her mother, and was obliged to go out and earn her living for the first time at the age of forty-three. She loved children, and chose to become a teacher. She had never married, or had children of her own. Sveva also rediscovered her love of painting.

Shortly before her retirement from teaching, she began painting the Recapitulation series. The paintings that you are studying in this site are from this series. In the latter years of her life, she became an invalid, confined to a wheelchair. Nevertheless, she continued painting until the series was completed. Sveva Caetani died in Vernon, British Columbia, on April 27th, 1994.

ACTIVITY  While working through all the lessons try to identify different images and symbols in the paintings that may tell us what Sveva was thinking and feeling during her childhood. Compile a mental list. Do you think that her paintings reveal more about her pyschological trauma than she realizes?