A daughter of count Pietro Bacinetti of Ravenna and countess Laura Rossi di Lugo, Marianna (1802 – 1870) had a literary education and devoted herself to reading philosophical works, becoming the female ideal of an educated woman of the time and a witty hostess of cultural gatherings and salons. She was one of the first female students, studying natural sciences at the University of Perugia in the first half of the 19th century. She translated Leibniz’s Monadology into Italian and also promoted the spread of works by Kant, Spinoza and Schelling in Italian. Politically she supported Italy’s national-movement and in 1850 published Some reflections on socialism and communism, which (like many of her other works) ended up on the church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
She was considered exceptionally beautiful. At the age of 15, she left school because her parents had arranged for her to marry the much older Marquis Ettore Florenzi of Perugia, three times her age and described as being short, ugly and old.
In 1821, at the age of 18, Marianna met Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, then 34, during the Carnival in Rome. They immediately began an intense relationship that lasted for over 40 years until his death in 1868. She visited him in Munich more than 30 times. He always sought her advice, even in government matters, and 3,000 of her letters to him (along with 1,500 of his replies) survive.
Perhaps it is merely coincidental, but on October 31, 1821, almost exactly nine months after their first meeting during the Rome Carnival, Marianna gave birth to a son, Marianna Ludovico Florenzi, in Perugia. The infant was carried to his baptism by then Crown Prince Ludwig.
In 1827, when he reached the age of six, Ludovico was sent to Munich to be educated in a college under the protection of King Ludwig and he remained there until 1834, shortly after Marquis Florenzi’s death.