Fanny “The Contesse” – A Sketch of a Forgotten Novelist

“Nomen est omen”: born Baroness of Valvasor, daughter of Countess Christalnigg, wife of Carlo Morelli, life companion of Petar Nisiteo

Abstract

Frančiška – Fanny Morelli (1761-1829) from Klagenfurt, born Baroness of Valvasor, was for a long time a forgotten name from the margins of Slovenian territory. At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, she was admired by connoisseurs of fine arts in particular between Gorizia, Padua and Venice, where for a short period she published a literary magazine. She wrote mostly fiction, and her unpublished novel in French is today considered missing. She was related to three leading early historians, authors of the regional histories of Carniola, Carinthia and the Gorizia region. She was the grand-niece of the Carniolan polymath and historian Janez Vajkard Valvasor (1641-1693); her maternal lineage stemmed from the Carinthian historian Michael Gothard Christalnick (1530/40-1595), and she became the wife of Carlo Morelli (1730-1792), author of a comprehensive history of the Gorizia region. As a widow, she lived with the Dalmatian scientist Petar Nisiteo (1774-1866). Fanny also spent some time in Morelli’s manor in Ozeljan in the lower Vipava Valley and maintained contacts in Carniola, including with Jožef Kalasanc Erberg (1771-1843), cultural historian, art patron and collector of antiques and works of art.