Rationalist architecture combined with furnishings that recall Louis Quinze and peppered with some modern art doesn't sound like it should work, but it does, almost seductively, at Villa Necchi Campiglio.
The 1930s home of "middle class" industrialists boasts the first swimming pool ever built on private land in Milan. No wonder they put it in the front yard.
Villa Necchi Campiglio has caught the eyes of location scouts for both I Am Love and The House of Gucci, too, which may explain why it felt so familiar.
The modest grounds also include a tennis court.
The original owners (two Necchi sisters--Gigina and Nedda--and Gigina's husband, Anthony Campilio) sure knew how to live. There's nothing remotely ostentatious or out of scale.
The strategic positioning of this mirror adds sunlight to both sides of the room.
You could imagine the birdsong while sipping espresso in the morning and perusing the Corriere della Sera on the veranda and bemoaning the state of the world. Do I sound like a real estate agent?
An Italian fascist infamous for his cruelty requisitioned the villa in World War II when Nazi-controlled northern Italy was known as the Republic of Salò. That name struck a distant chord because of--what else?--a chilling, 1976 film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, released shortly after his murder. The British occupied the villa, too, after the Allied victory, but eventually returned it to the original owners who resided there until 2001, when Gigina, the last one standing, died.
I wasn't able to identify any of the art but whoever chose it certainly had an eye similar to mine.
Tchotchkes everywhere were secured with what looked liked fishing line.
Post-war, the house underwent several glow-ups, including one to absorb a private collection of 18th century art, furnishings and textiles that transforms one of its largest "daytime" rooms into a museum gallery. Gigina, perhaps with an eye to distracting legacy, accepted the donation not long before her death.
The design of this arresting, vaguely authoritarian dinner plate still gave me pause.
Perhaps better to conceal your previous political leanings with plain service.
Even in anterooms, everything is positioned just so.
I couldn't help but think of Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom again. An era's art and architecture really freezes it in time, good or bad.
But an unprepossessing enamel side table looked like something you might be very happy to find at an Italian flea market.
The brand name of this sewing machine explains its prominent display: Necchi. The sisters were descended from a family that had established a cast iron foundry in Pavia, their birthplace just south of Milan. After World War I, they retained control of the foundry while their brother, Vittorio seized an opportunity to help seamstresses buy locally produced automation: Italy First.
Each of the four bedrooms upstairs had its own bathroom.
This must have been Anthony Campiglio's dressing table.
A single bed suggests that Netta, the unmarried sister, slept here. If so, she surrounded herself with objects of religious devotion.
She also had a hat for every occasion. Did Netta wear one to view the bodies of Mussolini and the fascist henchman who requisitioned her home hanging upside down in Milan's Piazzale Loreto on a spring day in 1946? Even with guidance from god, it's so hard to pick history's winners or losers!
It looks like she wore Chanel, too.
Carell's flattering portraits of the Italian royal family and her friendship with Mussolini's favorite daughter accelerated her career and protected her from deportation to the camps but eventually got her into trouble.
After the war, critics accused her of glamorizing fascism.
Il Duce looks as if he could have been shot by George Hurrell.
Carell's reputation recovered enough for her to photograph the pope in 1960. Before emigrating to Israel in 1970, she donated 50,000 negatives to an Italian photographic manufacturing company, a gift that prompted a reconsideration of her life and career more than four decades after death.
The FAI, Italy's version of the National Trust and the administrator of the Villa Necchi Campiglio, rationalized its decision to host an exhibit of Carell's portraits on the grounds that the sitters were likely to have been the kind of people they had entertained.
Putting two and two together, I'm guessing they were at least fascist-adjacent, semi-redeemed by their exquisite taste. No chance of that with the new White House Ballroom.
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