Olympe Pélissier was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 artists' model

Model (art)

Art models are models who pose for photographers, painters, sculptors, and other artists as part of their work of art. Art models who pose in the nude for life drawing are usually called life models...

 and the second wife of the Italian composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 Gioachino Rossini. She sat for Vernet

Horace Vernet

Émile Jean-Horace Vernet was a French painter of battles, portraits, and Orientalist Arab subjects.Vernet was born to Carle Vernet, another famous painter, who was himself a son of Claude Joseph Vernet. He was born in the Paris Louvre, while his parents were staying there during the French...

 for his painting of Judith and Holofernes

Judith and Holofernes

The bronze sculpture Judith and Holofernes , created by Donatello at the end of his career, can be seen in the Hall of Lilies , in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy. A copy stands in one of the sculpture's original positions on the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio...

.

Under the Bourbon Restoration

Bourbon Restoration

The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon  – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...

, Pélissier had been a notable figure in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

ian society, admired by the Comte de Girardin, holding salon

Salon (gathering)

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...

s attended by Baron Schikler, and in 1830 having a liaison with Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

. She and Rossini first met in 1840, in the aftermath of his separation from his first wife Isabella Colbran

Isabella Colbran

Isabella Colbran was a Spanish opera singer, who was known in her native country as Isabel Colbrandt. Many sources note her as a dramatic coloratura soprano but, some believe that she was a mezzo-soprano with a high extension, a soprano sfogato...

, and Olympe began to cook for him and manage his business affairs, although they only married after Isabella's death in 1845, on August 16, 1846. She lived with him at his new house in the Passy

Passy

Passy is an area of Paris, France, located in the XVIe arrondissement, on the Right Bank. It is traditionally home to many of the city's wealthiest residents.Passy was formerly a commune...

 suburb, and continued to do so until her own death.

In fiction, she appears in the 1974 French television film Eugène Sue

Eugène Sue (television programme)

Eugène Sue was a 1974 French television film on the life of the author Eugène Sue, played by Bernard Verley. It was directed by Jacques Nahum and written by Jean-Louis Bory.-Cast:*Bernard Verley - Eugène Sue*Jean Davy - Father and commissioner...

, played by Claudine Coster.

External links

• Rossini and his widow; Death of the latter, how she came to marry the great composer, New York Times, April 28, 1878