Virginia Elisabetta Luisa Carlotta Antonietta Teresa Maria Oldoini, the Countess of Castiglione, was celebrated during her lifetime as the most beautiful woman in the world. She was photographed more than 700 times between 1856 and 1899, marking her as either the first or second most photographed person of the 19th century. Her rank as most-photographed is only eclipsed by the possibility that Queen Victoria, a noted amateur photographer, might have privately taken more. For complicated reasons, Castiglione has been mostly forgotten, her impact on the development of photographic portraiture minimized as an indulgence, her work dismissed as the unimportant ravings of a wealthy narcissist.