Villa San Michele, Capri

Date: 2012.05.16 | Category: Around, Furnishings&Decor, Gardens, Photodiary | Response: 0

Villa San Michele, the Bedroom

I already talk about Marchesa Luisa Casati plenty and passionately and now I can confess that my attraction for Capri started when I knew that she lived there for some years during the 20′s. I came to know that the Villa where she lived was still existing and used today as a museum. Its name is Villa San Michele, a place I was so longing to see and that I visited trying to capture every single feeling I could. Here is its story.

Axel Munthe, wandering soul

Although I came to know Villa San Michele through Marchesa Casati’s story, I can’t ignore the story of its owner, doctor Axel Munthe (1857-1949). He was a swedish psychiatrist who, after attending medical school and opening his first practice in France, fell in love with Italy. The reason that Munthe finished his studies in record time was a visit to Capri that changed his life forever. After a visit to the island he fell in love with it. He discovered on a cliff a crumbled chapel called San Michele and decided to find the money to make the chapel and the surrounding property his. This is how the story of Villa San Michele started.

Between 20 years the Villa was completed and Munthe considered it as his second home. Under the little chapel he finds remnants of the villa of the Roman emperor Tiberius. The ground was filled with these treasures, which will form the nucleus of the collection of antique art that graces San Michele today. In return he treats the islanders for free. He saw his profession as a sacred calling, and absolutely refused to ask for payment for his services. His efforts and his charity bring him closer and closer to the people of Capri, who highly value his presence on the island.

He became famous as a doctor and his new circle of acquaintances arrived to include members of the Swedish royal family, including Prince Eugen, who was studying painting in Paris. Munthe became the prince’s doctor and they remained good friends. During his roman period, he soon made contact with the foreign colony in Rome, including the British diplomatic corps, and with the most prominent Roman families, he was also introduced to the Italian royal family.

By this time he was regarded as a true cosmopolitan, and his circle of acquaintances stretched across all borders in Europe, both socially and geographically. His acquaintance with Prince Eugen leads to the confidence of the Swedish royal family, and he begins to treat Crown Princess Victoria, whose health is unstable. This responsibility would transform the rest of his life. The acquaintanceship between Munthe and Crown Princess Victoria grows over the years into an intimate friendship. They share common interests, including photography and travel.

As the permanent personal physician to Queen Victoria during his later life Axel Munthe spends more of his time in Sweden, and at the Stockholm palace, but his life on Capri became a painful memory.

The Story of San Michele

The Villa became famous because its story is recorded by Dr. Munthe in his book entitled “The Story of San Michele”. Published in 1929, he began writing in 1884, when as a doctor he found himself in Naples during a severe cholera epidemic. This book is together the story of the Villa and his biography.

Munthe mixes dream and reality in an unusual manner, he displays an obvious fascination with death and a love of life at the same time, and he gives a voice during his travels to doctors and streetcleaners, people from the far north of Sweden and Parisians, saints and Father Christmases and dogs.

Reading his book one must see he had a dark side which grew stronger with the years. He was obsessed by death and surrounded himself with death and vanitas symbols. His view of life was at times pessimistic and misanthropic and he had periods of depression. I think that Villa San Michele was a kind of shelter from the world that he built for being alone, a place where he could stay in harmony with nature, sea.

The italian journalist Indro Montanelli said, after an interview with him, that Axel Munthe used to have always a ticket for Capri in his pocket because, as he said, “even die is different, in Capri”.

info source: villasanmichele.eu

book sources: “Infinite Variety. The Life and Legend of the Marchesa Casati” by Scot D. Ryersson and Michael Orlando Yaccarino; “The Story of San Michele” by Axel Munthe. The article by Indro Montanelli was issued in “La settimana INCOM” on the 19th february 1949. You can still read it if you visit the Villa.

The Atrium

Actually the atrium is not the first place you visit when you entering the Villa, you can reach it through the kitchen but I’m showing you as the first because I think is symbolic of the Villa’s style. As you can see it’s a small courtyard in which Axel Munthe put Roman tomb inscriptions and various types of antique fragments discovered among the remains of Roman villas on Capri.

This place where old and new meet and blend each others, may be interpreted as a symbol of Axel Munthe’s philosophy. It’ s a place of peace and meditation where dead things like roman fragments perfectly dialogue with plants and nature, symbolising the connection between life, art and death.

In the middle of the atrium there is a roman well-mouth (puteal), cut from a single block of white marble.

The Loggia: here we can see a bronze copy of a female figure belonging to the mysterious group of sculptures called “The Sibyls from Herculaneum”.

an old picture of the Atrium and the Loggia

The Dining Room

The Dining Room is the first room you visit when you enter in the Villa. It displays the original objects in their original arrangement.

“The dining-room surprises the visitor with its replica of a Roman mosaic placed in front of the door. It shows a skeleton holding a carafe of wine in one hand and a jug of water in the other hand. The message could either be a call to moderation, or on the contrary, a recommendation to enjoy life to the full while there is still time. The decorative details vary both in age and artistic value. The heavyu Renaissance sideboard is from Bologna. The large chest with inlaid frontal dates from the 15th century.” Levente Erdeös

The original of this black and white mosaic floor is Pompeian and was covered by ashes and pomice when the Vesuvius exploded in 79 A.D.

An old picture of how the dining room looked like.

The Kitchen

The stove with three hotplates in iron, two boxes in wood and six doors in iron.

Old pictures of the kitchen. The girl (whose name I can’t remember) was Munthe’s housemaid. He knew her in Capri, tought her to read and write and she stayed at the Villa taking care of the kitchen together with her mother.

Munthe and a guest in the dining room

The Bedroom

Probably the most beautiful of the rooms for its unique way of combine ancient and modern things. The room is divided into two parts by an arcade and a middle column, a recurrent architectural motif of the Villa. The 15-th century wrought-iron bed is Sicilian and was presumably a campbed. On the tables and on walls are roman remains or relieves. Furnishing is ancient too but coming from 15th and 18th centuries. The twilight pervading the room helps meditation and reflection.

The French Salon

The most empty of the rooms of the villa, it houses the first copy of the book “The Story of San Michele” with Munthe’s autographic corrections and his reading glasses. But this room is for me the most important of the house because it shows on the wall a precious finds: Casati’s motto.

This is ONLY surviving thing that Marchesa Luisa Casati left to us. During her stay in the Villa she changed the furnishing and decoration of the house according to his eccentric tastes and she wrote on the walls these french words; “Oser. Vouloir. Savoir. Se-taire” that mean “To dare. To want. To know. To be quite itself”. Munthe decided to keep this motto, unlike other changes Casati did in the Villa. The most famous book about Marchesa’s story, written by Scot D. Ryersson and Michael Orlando Yaccarino “Potraits of a Muse” took inspiration from here.

Luisa Casati at Villa San Michele.

Luisa Casati arrived in Capri in 1920 and chose to stay at Villa San Michele, with or without Munthe’s permission. Her arrive was troubled because Munthe was not so glad to having the Marchesa as tenant knowing her eccentricities but at the end she made it. Luisa did not wait to give her personal touch to the Villa and decided to change the original decoration: “Ivory walls and windows were obscured behind golden curtains and heavy draperies of black velvet. Black carpets and animal skins hid the mosaic floors, while Munthe’s collection of antiques was shut away to allow space for the Marchesa’s ebony forniture. In a room now reserved for Casati’s sorcery pharaphernalia, a black sheepskinhad been nailed to one wall and the others were adorned with quotations and proverbs handwritten in french and with black paint”. She was in her black period wearing swathing gowns and dyeing her hair first in green and then black, rumors said she used to celebrate black masses in the Villa.

Axel Munthe did not frequently socialize with Casati but others on the island found her a curiosity and accepted invitations to San Michele like Sir Compton Mackenzie, who often invited her to his Villa Casa Solitaria, the old friend, furistic painter Fortunato Depero. Diaghilev and Gabriele D’Annunzio come to visit her. In Capri Luisa also made new friendships like the one with painter Romaine Brooks, who made a portrait of her, and with Capri’s most notorious exile baron Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen who lived in Villa Lysis (soon a post about it). The nobleman shared the Villa with his companion, the 15 years old newspaper boy from Rome, Nino Cesarini. More than one source confirms Casati as frequent guest to Fersen’s Chinese room, the opium room.

The Studio

It was the place where Munthe preferred to write. You can see a Medusa’s head in white marble hanging above the writing desk in the studio which Munthe reputedly found on the seabed off Palazzo a Mare even if possibly the mask comes from the Temple of Venus and Roma, built by Hadrian in 307 AD.

The Medusa’s head is the only object, along with the Egyptian sphinx, belonging to San Michele that remained unthouched during Luisa Casati stay because they appealed to her tastes.

How the Studio looked like during Munthe stay. You can see the skull on the table, Munthe was obsessed with vanitas symbols.

The Venetian Salon

It’s so called because most part of the rococo furnitures comes from Venice, like the 18th century mirror made in golden wood. The chandelier, instead, is an eccelent work of Sicilian handicraft, made of wrought iron.

The Gallery

Leaving the Villa one passes under an open gallery which then becomes a pergola and later opens into a series of terraces with splendid panoramic views. The design of the garden still follows Munthe’s intentions. Everywhere pots, amphoras and various “objets d’art” are to be seen like the cosmatesque table. Munthe found it in a small town near Palermo where it was used as a laundry table.

The Pergola

Many different flowers come into bloom and the garden remains fresh and green all year round.

The Sphinx

Actually there are two sphinxes in the Villa. The sphinx has become in some way the symbol of Villa San Michele and object of a lot of legends. The bigger one (above), a granite statue, half lion, half woman, is the Egyptian Sphinx and it’s dated in XIII century b.C. Even if Axel Munthe wrote in the book “The story of Villa San Michele” that he found it out in the country during a morning, after a premonitory dream, we’ll probably never know how he found his sphinx. It probably doesn’t even come from the island, but it does come from Egypt and it has adorned a villa in the Roman Empire. Now the fantasy creature is on the last outpost of Axel Munthe’s villa looking towards the rising sun in the east.

Luisa Casati was particularly fond of the egyptian sphinx as it was reputed to grant the wishes of those who touched its flank with their left hand.

View of the sphinx from the outside in an old picture

the end of the chapel archades

This is the Etruscan sphinx, smaller than the other and once setted where today is the Egyptian one. Now is on the chapel terrace.

The Chapel (entrance)

Inside the chapel today.

Inside the chapel about in 1901 a.C., photographed by Prince Max of Baden and once used as a library.

Another masterpiece from Egypt, the so-called Horus falcon.

The Olivetum

Partly concealed by olive trees and completely in harmony with its surroundings is the garden pavilion known as the Olivetum. The garden pavilion was designed by architect and curator of Villa San Michele 1975-1995 Levente Erdeös who said: “Its function accords with Munthe’s great passion for nature. A permanent exhibition dedicated to Capri’s unique flora and fauna has been set up in the Olivetum.” Here is the shell collection.

The exit.

Endless spaces (fragments)

Date: 2012.05.08 | Category: Fashion, Fragments, Photography | Response: 0

Luigi Ghirri photography is a state of mind. The tidy methaphisics of hanging spaces gives a waiting feeling. A distant loneliness, endless spaces, a rarefied atmosphere that hides the mistery of things.

“La sguardo è memoria, è immaginazione, è percezione di nuove possibilità, tutte ugualmente importanti, tutte ugualmente diverse. Lo sguardo non riesce a delimitare il reale. Ci prova, ma si aggroviglia. Cerca l’essenza perdendosi nella nebbia. Trova lo stupore su una spiaggia qualsiasi. Intravede la fine e ritorna all’origine. Fino all’inizio del mondo.” Luigi Ghirri.

As I am a fan of collections and I also love botany, I was very happy to discover the Linnean herbarium. Its official site displays in pictures some of the 4000 herbarium specimens today preserved at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. The specimens were once distributed by Linnaeus to his disciples and eventually they became part of the collections of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, subsequently the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

I found pictures of this strange garden called “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation” located in Portrack House, South West Scotland. It’s a private garden created by Charles Jencks and inspired by science and mathematics, with sculptures and landscaping on these themes, such as Black Holes and Fractals.

I prefer other kind of gardens, like the renaissance ones with bush labirinth and strange architectures but though this minimal garden is not abundant with plants and it’s based on mathematical formulae and scientific phenomenae, it’s a great example of a modern garden landscaped as a locus amoenus.

official site: charlesjenks.com

Xiao Wen Ju, Anais Pouliot and Frida Gustavsson in Comme des Garçons by Tim Walker for Vogue, May 2012

If you’re in Paris don’t miss the exhibition “White Drama” at Les Docks – Cité de la Mode et du Design. It displays the 2012 Spring/Summer collection of Comme des Garçons.

Rei Kawakubo, the designer behind this Japanese avant-garde label, said : “White Drama — named after the collection — will showcase the monochrome confections of the line, which magnifies four stages of life: birth, marriage, death, and transcendence. Clusters of fabric roses adorn some garments, while graffiti-like patterns decorate others. Naive dresses evoke a baby’s baptism, lace veils signify one’s wedding day, and shroud-like garments point to life’s end.”

“White Drama” celebrates whiteness, the purest of the colours, in every hue, facing life’s big events with the same shade which is now fresh, then virginal, then funeral and also holy.

source: artinfo.com

Another exhibition I’d like to see is “Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland” now at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. The show, dedicated to the extraordinary fashion editor, showcases both Diana Vreeland’s revolutionary work at Harper’s Bazaar and American Vogue during the forties to the seventies, as well as her iconic personal style.

On display for the first time are several belonging to Vreeland  stunning and precious pieces from luminaries such as Yves Saint Laurent, Missoni, Emilio Pucci, Chanel, Irene Galitzine, Valentino, and Paco Rabanne, some culled from Vreeland’s own closet and some on loan from private collections or the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, where Vreeland was a consultant from 1971 until her death in 1989, as well as books and magazines from the editor’s library and portraits by Christian Bérard and Cecil Beaton.

source: iloboyou.com; pilarrossiblog.wordpress.com

I recently joined Pinterest, here you can follow me or just look my favorite pictures divided in themes I deal with the most on this blog. If anyone is interested I also add my facebook profile, you can add me here.

My friend Gio and me photographed by Stockholm streetstyle during the last Milan Fashion week.

Wonderful earrings and necklace with pearls and porcelain roses at Dolce&Gabbana a/w ’12 I’d like to have. via dazeddigital

and almost the same ceramic pastel flowers decoration in these A-morir sunglasses.

more weird sunglasses by A-morir.

A Pink Flamingos pouch, perfect for John Water lovers like me. This one is by Charlotte Olympia.

Strange shoes I’d like to have: Meadham Kirchoff SS 2012 cake-alike shoes;

some velvet tapestry boots like these one by Maison Martin Margiela (left) or Rodarte for Opening Cerimony (right);

Amazing baroque shoes with a 18th century spool heels by MiuMiu in velvet and satin;

also Marc Jacobs took inspiration from the 18th century for these shoes from the FW ’12, but he rather preferred a kitsch-pirate mood;

I’m also thinking to buy a pair of white hospital look-a-like shoes, like one of these. Clockwise: Celine Resort SS ’12; Alexander Wang SS ’12; Rochas SS ’12 and COS SS ’12.

Duomo, Amalfi

Date: 2012.05.01 | Category: Around, Photodiary | Response: 0

Amalfi’s Cathedral is stifled from other buildings on both sides, but its view from the bottom of the place is priceless. The Duomo appears from atop a steep flight of stairs with all its elaborate decoration of Arab-Norman Romanesque style.

Actually the Cathedral is a real example of eclectic architecture. Even if the church was built in the early 13th century to provide a suitable resting place for the relics of St. Andrew the Apostle, it has been remodeled several times, adding Romanesque, Byzantine, Gothic, and Baroque elements.

Its facade, an 1800s approximation of the original, is an Arab-Sicilian riot of stripes, arches and mosaics. The bell tower on the left has a highly elaborate top, comprised of a central cupola surrounded by four turrets at the corners, all decorated with green and yellow tiles.

The Cloister of Paradise, entered at the left side of the cathedral’s portico, is one of the highlights of Amalfi Cathedral. Built between 1266-68 to house the tombs of Amalfi’s wealthy merchants, it features slender double columns and Moorish-style arcades made of pure white marble. In the center is a Mediterranean garden; the surrounding walkways are full of notable historic art like some fine Cosmatesque fragments.

view of the bell tower from the cloister

Basilica of the Crucifix, dating from the 9th century and containing more frescoes, was an older basilica that now houses the cathedral’s museum and treasury.

A reliquary-casket made of ox bone, dated in the early 15th century. It’s decorated with scenes of the life of SS Cosma and Damiano.

A travel bishop’s litter coming from Macao, China (18th cent.)

A bishop’s cross made of 9 emeralds and surrounded by little diamonds.

The Angevine mitre (1297) made of 20000 little pearls.

A wonderful 18th century ostensory.

A rare exemplar of “pace” dated 15th century, enamel and made in Venice, represents the Annunciation. A pace (osculum pacis) was a small wooden tablet, or plate of metal, given to believers to be kissed as a sign of peace.

Crypt of St. Andrew is where the saint’s relics are kept in the central altar. The crypt is decorated with beautiful Baroque murals from 1660. The large bronze statue of St. Andrew (1604) was sculpted by Michelangelo Naccherino of Florence, a student of Michelangelo. The marble statues of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen (deacons of the Eastern and Western Church) were sculpted by Pietro Bernini, father of the more famous Gianlorenzo Bernini.

The interior of Amalfi Cathedral is sumptuously Baroque but the underlying architecture is Romanesque. The triumphal arch in the apse is supported by two ancient columns from Paestum. The paintings on the walls and ceilings (by Andrea D’Asta and Castellano in the 18th century) depict the life and miracles of St. Andrew.

To the right of the altar area is the Chapel of the Relics (or Chapel of the Reconciliation), in which are displayed dozens of reliquaries. Some contain relics brought to Amalfi at the same time as those of St. Andrew.

Bust of S. Andrew with relics.

A crucifix, made of mother-of-pearl, brought from the Holy Land and located to the right of the back door.

info source: sacred-destinations.com

Saints and Martyrs

Date: 2012.04.27 | Category: Morbid Art, Photography | Response: 0

St. Anne, Italy 1968

I’ve already said here how thin is the line between Holiness and Grotesque. And althogh I completly understand the kitschness and grotesque look of these icons, there still a mistery that is able to capture me.

Saints and Martyrs is a series of photographies taken during the 60′s between Spain, Italy and Mexico by the photographer George Krause. Probably is one of the most suggestive photographs I’ve seen so far. He said about this series that “Saints and Martyrs pays homage to the anonymous artisans who fashioned the statues… These sculptures transcend most folk art. They are not conceptually motivated. The sculptor felt the suffering, and it allowed him to create something beyond himself and beyond the repetitive forms usually handed down among folk artists. I am responding to the artisan’s passion and his unique vision.”

source: georgekrause.com

BRAID HALO

PIETA, Toronto, Canada 1978

SAN MARTIN, Ecuador 1971

JESUS WITH LAMB, Mexico 1985

MARY IN MORGUE, Mexico 1978

CHOIRBOY, Mexico 1990

FLAMING ROSARY

OHN THE BAPTIST, Spain 1964

ROMAN SAINT, Italy 1968

Indian Christ

RESURRECTION, Italy, 1968

MILAGO, Mexico 1964

CROSS, Mexico 1975

WAXWORK, Mexico 1986

JESUS IN MORGUE, Mexico 1978

Villa Rufolo, Ravello

Date: 2012.04.25 | Category: Around, Gardens, Photodiary | Response: 0

Villa Rufolo is, together with Villa Cimbrone, the other wonderful Villa located in Ravello. Both the villas were laying in decay and poor condition until two english men took them back to their splendour during the 19th century.

The Villa belonged to the powerful and wealthy Rufolo family since the 13th century. They built the Villa between 1270-80 and became rich thanks to their mercantile business. Boccaccio mentioned the family in the second day of the Decameron, talking about the adventures of Landolfo Rufolo. After Rufolo’s fail, the Villa passed by inheritance to other owners such as the Confalone, Muscettola and d’Afflitto.

When Scotsman Francis Neville Reid bought the Villa, around the middle of the 19th century, it was completly in ruin because it had been abandoned since the end of the 18th century. Reid was a nobleman, botanist and expert in ancient art, who traveled to Italy with his wife, moved by the tradition of Grand Tour. But for Reid, Ravello and Naples will become the residence for the rest of his life: he restored the Villa back to its antique splendour, adding rare plants and also bought a house in Posillipo.

The enchantment of Villa Rufolo reaches its peak in its famous terrace-garden, also called “The Soul Garden”. The German opera composer Richard Wagner visited the villa in May 1880. He was so overcome by the beauty of the location that he imagined the setting as the garden of Klingsor in the second act of Parsifal. Ferdinand Gregorovius wrote in his “Italian Wanderings” that he felt like being in front of a Moorish city that, with its towers and arabesques, offered a completly Arabian view.

source: villarufolo.it

The Moorish cloister

The Big Tower

The Knights Hall

The Well

Belvedere

Soul Garden

view from the garden

a peek into the Dining room

under the Moorish cloister