Margherita Grassini was born in
Venice to a
Jewish family, the daughter of Amedeo Grassini and Emma Levi (whose cousin
Giuseppe Levi was the father of
Natalia Ginzburg). Amedeo was a wealthy
lawyer and businessman and a former fiscal attorney for the Venetian government. He was a close friend of Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, later
Pope Pius X, and would later be made a Knight of the
Order of the Crown of Italy. In 1902, the couple moved to
Milan. in 1911 Sarfatti met Benito Mussolini (three years her junior) and started a relationship with him. During this time she was working as an art critic at the socialist newspaper
Avanti!, which at the time was directed by Mussolini. After losing her husband in 1924, she wrote a biography of Mussolini. This was first published in 1925 in Britain under the title
The Life of Benito Mussolini; it was published the following year in Italy with the title
Dux. Because of the fame of Mussolini and the author's familiarity with the dictator, the book was a success. Seventeen editions were printed and it was translated into 18 languages. Sarfatti is memorialized in Guido Cadorin frescoes in what is now the Grand Hotel Palace, Via Veneto No. 70, Rome. "Fiammetta and I wanted to pass into immortality in the salon's frescoes," she remarked, referring to her daughter, who is portrayed with her in the frescoes. Sarfatti had an influence over Mussolini's policies from 1922 until 1938, when Mussolini bowed to German pressure and enacted racial legislation through the
Manifesto of Race; until then, the fascist government's politics were not
antisemitic, and the party's membership rolls were open to Jews. In 1922, the group Novecento was enlarged to
Anselmo Bucci,
Leonardo Dudreville,
Achille Funi,
Gian Emilio Malerba,
Pietro Marussig,
Ubaldo Oppi, and
Mario Sironi. Sarfatti had contacts with many Italian Freemasons, who were disliked but tolerated by Mussolini as long as they were useful to him. By 1930 Sarfatti converted to Catholicism, and noted that Mussolini was cheating on her with younger women, and expelled her from whatever influence she had. By 1938, with the application of racial laws, she left Italy, first to Switzerland, and then alone for
Argentina and
Uruguay. She took with her the 1272 letters from Mussolini. She worked as a journalist for the newspaper
El Diario of
Montevideo. After the war, in 1947, Sarfatti returned to her home country and once again became an influential force in
Italian art. Her children who remained in Italy survived the war, but her sister with her husband were extradited to the fascist forces and perished on the way to
Auschwitz. == In popular culture ==