This book traces Peggy Guggenheim’s life in Venice through the lens of Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, but it is equally a story about the lineage of eccentric, visionary women who shaped the city’s cultural imagination. Before Guggenheim, the palazzo was associated with figures like Luisa Casati, whose theatrical, self-fashioned persona turned life itself into a work of art. Mackrell places Guggenheim within this continuum, showing how she both inherited and transformed this legacy through her approach to collecting and living with art.

Rather than a conventional biography, the book unfolds through relationships—between people, artworks, and spaces. It captures how Guggenheim’s home functioned as an intimate yet porous environment, where artists, lovers, and ideas constantly circulated. The unfinished nature of the palazzo becomes more than an architectural detail; it mirrors a way of living with art that resists closure, embracing improvisation, display, and personal narrative.