Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, called as Mariano Fortuny, was a Spanish painter, engraver, fashion and textile designer active in Venice. Fortuny born on 11 May 1871, to an artistic family in Granada, Spain. His father, Marià Josep Bernat Fortuny i Marsal (1838-1874) is a Catalan painter, known as the Italian name Mariano Fortuny, a genre painter, died when Fortuny was three years old. His mother, Cecilia Madrazo y Garreta, also comes from a family of painters (His father was director of the Prado Museum in Madrid) moved the family to Paris, France. In 1897, he met Henriette Negrin in Paris, where he married a few years later. Henriette Negrin is a French seamstress and artist in textile arts who greatly influenced her husband. They created in Venice around 1899 a textile company. In the history of fashion, the name Fortuny remains associated with the pleated and the famous Delphos dress, although he is also a protean artist.