Queer Places:
Cheltenham Cemetery and Crematorium Cheltenham, Cheltenham Borough, Gloucestershire, England

Maria Cristina Casati Stampa di Soncino Hastings Philipps (July 15, 1901 - March 22, 1953), Countess of Huntingdon, also known as Christina Milford. When Frida Kahlo discovered Diego Rivera's latest dalliance with the model for his nude centrepiece, the Earth Mother "Califia", appearing in the Luncheon Club's stairway mural, Helen Wills Moody, the American tennis star, she began her own sexual dalliance with Christina Hastings, the wife of one of Diego's assistants. The lesbian affair resulted in a pencil portrait of her lover titled Lady Christina Hastings.

Maria Cristina Casati Stampa di Soncino was born in Milan, the daughter of Camillo, Marquis Casati Stampa di Soncino and Luisa Adele Rosa Maria von Amman. Cristina married Francis Hastings, 15th Earl of Huntingdon (1901-1990), divorced in 1943, and later Wogan Philipps, 2nd Baron Milford (1902-1993). She is the mother of Lady Moorea Hastings Black (1928-2011). Lady Moorea Hastings was from 1957 to 1966 the wife of politician and diarist Woodrow, Lord Wyatt of Weeford before marrying the adman Brinsley Black, named as one of the best-dressed Englishmen in the inaugural issue of Men in Vogue in 1965. Lady Moorea, who was famously unmaternal, had one son each with each of her husbands: Hon. Pericles Plantagenet James Casati Wyatt (b. 1963), became an owner and operator of water parks and recreational vehicle camps in Arizona; half-brother to journalist Petronella Wyatt; Octavius Orlando Irvine Casati Black (born 1968) was at Eton with David Cameron, married to Tory barrister Joanne Cash.

Cristina Hastings died in Colesbourne, Gloucestershire.


Portrait of Lady Cristina Hasting - Frida Kahlo


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