The Italian adventurer and libertine Giovanni Jacopo Casanova lived from 1725 to 1798 but was explored through Potter's six-part series focusing on themes of sex and religion. He commented that "Casanova was concerned with religious and sexual freedom, which we should address now." Casanova was imprisoned in Venice in 1755, and Potter used this event as a central device, intercutting to show his amorous escapades against the oppressive solitary confinement in a gloomy half-darkened cell.
The guardians of Venetian morality burst into the apartments of notorious lib...