"My interiors are designed to age well, because houses are like people. They grow old and should do so pleasantly. If a house is beautiful to start with, it will grow even more so with age, just like a woman..."—Renzo Mongiardino
The work of Renzo Mongiardino (Genoa, May 12, 1916 - Milan, January 16, 1998) is filled with poetic intimacy and his unique signature gravitas. Mongiardino entered his studies at the Polytechnico di Milano, at twenty years old. His professor was Gio Ponti. Among other influences on his youth were Piranese, de Chireco, and Le Courbusier.
This title, is not a biography—though it shares a good window into his life's path—rather it is a walk through his world by way of his beautifully photographed interiors alongside rembrances from those who knew and loved him. Included are those of his granddaughter Francesca Simone, an art historian working in Milan, and artisans who worked with Renzo.
Mongiardino peeled back the veneer of the world we live in daily to reveal there isn't a wall before you or an object beside you. But rather the possibility of seeing so much more.
Studiolo is a Renaissance term meaning a private study; some measure workshop, some measure curiosity shop. In German, the alternative is a Wunderkammer. A room for sharing and for taking refuge from the world. The name originates most famously from the 1570- 1572, Studiolo, commissioned by Francesco I de' Medici, Duke of Tuscany, with Giorgio Vasari as supervisor. I've visited this small barrel-vaulted room in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. It held twenty cabinets with rare objects and thirty-four corresponding gilded paintings covered the entire ceiling. It's an important and forgotten concept, a room for private reflection, replaced today by the "media room." Renzo Mongiardino kept architectural traditions alive, they were his inspiration.
Mongirdino worked alone, without associates, no press office, and no secretary. He had two trusted collaborators who assisted him, Umberto Tavernini and Sandro Ostoni. Mongiardino was an aristocrat who needed no part in a social high life. He preferred the companionship of his dear friends, his objects, and his work filled days.
Manina Schon worked as assistant with Renzo for five years on the 19th century villa of Jill Sanders, his last project. Schon had this tribute "he never backed down from his choices, even those that seemed eccentric, despite the resulting uneasiness of some clients, who nonetheless were always astonished once the work was done."
Renzo Mongiardino at home in his Milan studiolo. He was to work here from 1948 - 1998 across his entire productive adult life.
Renzo was quick to defer appreciation of any creation to the many craftsmen who had brought his vision forward. He worked his mastery with the utmost respect for those involved; painters, plasterers, marble workers, wood masters, seamstresses, metal workers.
Renzo Mongiardino peeking in on the far right, shown with his crew at work.
Mongiardino's training was in architecture but he preferred interiors. The creation of stage sets for opera and film formed an important venue for him. He often worked with set and costume designer Lila de Nobili, of whom Laure Verchere tells us he would say; "...a fundamental character. The only person with whom I seek to compare myself." The trio of director Franco Zeffirelli, costume designer Danilo Donati and Renzo Mongiardino, collaborated on operas and multiple Oscar nominated films, among them; Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which told the life of Saint Francis, Romeo and Juliet and the 1964 Tosca with Maria Callas.
Mongiardino saw bare walls as canvases to be dressed, a room as a stage for drama. Every object had meaning in Mongiardino's world. And stood ready to invoke memories holding powerful transformative experiences for their owners. It seems clear the older we grow, that shared threads of common appreciation unite us from our disparate worlds, no matter what material form the art expresses itself in. Renzo Mongiardino's work has been described as Proustian or Balzacian, and I agree. It's possible, is it not, for various artists to work in different materials—across different eras—to write, to paint, to decorate, to compose, and for sentiments to converge in one trajectory, overlapping and speaking to one another, like Mongiardino and Proust.
From Verchere's writing I learned that Renzo Mongiardino was a reserved person–not lacking warmth by any measure—not showy, even though his world revolved around many of the world's brightest peacocks. This isn't surprising, introspection is a significant part of an artistic temperament. What is revealed is Mongiardino's love of passionate reds, both in the homes of clients and in his home as well.
Trompe l'oeil draperies in the salon of Giancarlo Giametti's Villa Certona.
Trompe l'oeil work on the ceiling beams, mantle piece and paneling.
Reminiscent of Versailles, Mongiardino's floral hall of mirrors in a Parisian bathroom.
Corinthian columns, multiplied by Mongiardino's trompe l'oeil.
A dining room wall painted with a mythological demigod by Mongiardino artisan Irene Groudinsky. Mongiardino loved ancient statuary.
"He had a court of great artists at his disposal - young painters, upholstery artisans, furniture makers. He would work with them for a house or for a stage in the same way. A house was a stage for him, and a stage was his house." —Giancarlo Giametti
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