Alessandro Cagliostro

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Count Alessandro di Cagliostro
Bust by Jean-Antoine Houdon, c. 1786
Born	Giuseppe Balsamo (1743-06-02)June 2, 1743 Albergheria, Palermo, Kingdom of Sicily
Died	August 26, 1795(1795-08-26) (aged 52) Forte di San Leo, Papal States
Nationality	Italian
Other names	Joseph Balsamo
Occupation(s)	Occultist, adventurer, magician

Giuseppe Balsamo (Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈbalsamo]; in French usually Joseph Balsamo;^[1] 2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795), known by the alias Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (US: /kɑːlˈjɔːstroʊ, kæl-/ ka(h)l-YAW-stroh,^[2][3] Italian: [alesˈsandro kaʎˈʎɔstro]), was an Italian occultist.

Cagliostro was an Italian adventurer and self-styled magician. He became a glamorous figure associated with the royal courts of Europe where he pursued various occult arts, including psychic healing, alchemy, and scrying. His reputation lingered for many decades after his death but continued to deteriorate, as he came to be regarded as a charlatan and impostor, this view fortified by the savage attack of Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) in 1833, who pronounced him the "Quack of Quacks". Later works—such as that of W. R. H. Trowbridge (1866–1938) in his Cagliostro: the Splendour and Misery of a Master of Magic (1910), attempted a rehabilitation.