Between Classicism and Modernity
Piero Portaluppi
“All architecture is geometry, in dream, thought, representation, translation, realization, fulfilment.” — Piero Portaluppi
Cinema can be an extraordinary aesthetic stimulus, as, under the auspices of a talented director, other worlds, places, works of architecture and interiors can be presented viscerally, in a way that moves us, sometimes even changing our appreciation and understanding of a particular style, aesthetic or way of living. This was seemingly the case with polymath mid-twentieth-century Italian architect Piero Portaluppi’s (1888-1967) unique, and for very many years underappreciated, Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan, which appeared in order of date, and for that matter, merit, in Luca Guadagnino’s (b. 1971) I Am Love (Io Sono l’Amore: 2009) and Ridley Scott’s (b. 1937) much-hyped Hollywood blockbuster House of Gucci (2021), where Lady Gaga (b. 1986) plays Patrizia Reggiani (b. 1948), the Italian socialite convicted of orchestrating the assassination of her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci (1948-1995). The former, meanwhile, starring art house favourite Tilda Swinton (b. 1960), tells the story of the bourgeois Recchi family. In the vein of Tolstoy’s (1828-1910) Anna Karenina, or Flaubert’s (1821-1880) Emma Bovary the female protagonist Emma (played by Swinton), a Russian immigrant adopted into Milanese high society, has given her life as a mother but hasn’t paid a great deal of attention to herself, and as such, feels suddenly adrift, without place or purpose, amidst a sea of starchy patrician faces. “[Necchi Campiglio] shows the obsession with perfection and details that the Milanese bourgeoisie have,” Guadagnino explains. “Old money always comes with great charm. Their real success is making others believe that money doesn’t exist — and luxury, as most people perceive it, doesn’t really exist in this house. It’s very severe, and feels almost unmovable, like a piece of rock.” Aesthetically speaking, Necchi Campiglio provides an arresting architectural backdrop to Swinton’s monochromatic wardrobe of crisp, clean classics, designed by Raf Simons (b. 1968) and his then team at Jil Sander (all accessorised with jewellery from Damiani, which although technically Piedmontese, has its boutique practically in the centre of Via Montenapolone, and perhaps somewhat more expected, the ultimate bourgeois status simple, a box calf Hermès Birkin) — which, in its captivating simplicity, enraptured the fashion world and in turn bought Portaluppi’s rationalist chef-d’œuvre to the world stage. Of course Swinton is not an actress for whom matters of fashion and style are of little import, and official publicity for the film described the world of the Recchi dynasty as “governed by … exclusive labels”, with hardly a review or commentary failing to mention the role of fashion.
“I wanted to convey observations about a kind of limitation of a completely false hierarchy in the market and a kind of global availability and domination of certain luxury brands, which is disappointing at best,” Swinton said of her wardrobe in an interview. “It’s possible to walk into a rich person’s house in any city in the world and find the same make of candles, or the same shoes. I find it a waste of cultural specificity and history and myth-making, and I would so much rather walk into someone’s house, however much money they have and feel that I’m actually connecting with the culture of that place and the people who live in that place. I’m disappointed when I go through airports and I see the same shops and I think there’s a way in which that particular luxury milieu is like one big duty-free shop.” Of course, one striking feature at Necchi Campiglio is that the house itself is quite unlike anything else one might see in any other city, and as a result, to some extent, Swinton can be seen as playing a second fiddle to the arresting architecture that surrounds her. In France for example, since the ancien régime, aristocrats aped the Royal family vis-à-vis their homes, resulting in a plethora of chateaux with essentially the exact same look, layout and architectural details (needless to say, the Vaux-le-Vicomte saga presumably proved something of dissuasion to those with ideas outside the box). The same can be seen in furniture, which, excluding, for example, Queen Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793), whose relentless desire for “newness” resulted in some truly exceptional works (for example, the Bureau à cylindre in gilt bronze, silver and mother of pearl, made by her favourite cabinetmaker Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806) in 1786 for the Boudoir de la Reine at Fontainebleau), the majority of chairs, commodes and canapé are all much of a muchness, varying simply apropos quality and execution. Similarly, a newly minted nineteenth-century haute bourgeoisie, anxious to cement their social standing, were equally keen to mimic the sort of panelling, Louis furniture and sweeping stone staircases that had become de rigueur in terms of observable association with what had already become an ingrained aesthetic of “old money”. In a similar vein to the Pierre Chareau (1883-1950) designed Maison de Verre (1928-1932), with its luminous and enticing glass block facade, Necchi Campiglio, despite having been built for “new money” industrialists, turns all such pretensions on their head.
The entrance to Portaluppi’s Villa Necchi Campiglio, photograph by Lorenzo Pennati
The veranda at Portaluppi’s Villa Necchi Campiglio, photograph by Lorenzo Pennati
Elegant in its luxurious austerity, the villa was designed and built between 1932 and 1935 for two powerful bourgeois families, Angelo Campiglio, his wife, Gigina Necchi, and his sister-in-law, Nedda Necchi, and has since become an icon of Italian rationalism. The Necchi-Campiglios were prominent members of the cultured Lombard industrial elite, whose astronomical wealth came from a cast-iron manufacturing company in Pavia. The villa’s “origin story”, if one can call it that, is almost as theatrical as its architecture, and as the legend goes, one night on their way to La Scala opera house, the family’s chauffeur got lost in the surrounding fields — now the Via Mozart — and Campiglio was so utterly enchanted by the landscape that the very next day he set out to buy a plot of land there. Upon finding a suitable location, he immediately entrusted the ensuing architectural project to Portaluppi, who had already made a name for himself in Milan with the Casa degli Atellani and the Planetarium, leaving him, for all intents and purposes, with stylistic and financial carta bianca. The city has since consumed the once rural neighbourhood surrounding the villa, but behind its walls, with what was, reputedly, the first private outdoor swimming pool in Milan, the gardens are still luxuriant, fragrant with the scent of magnolias and shaded by ancient plane trees. Conceived as a single-family dwelling, its marble-clad exterior exudes an elegantly stark glamour, with very little in terms of ornamentation or other such decorative elements. Designed, essentially, to serve as Milan’s “It” party pad, entering through a set of bronze-framed double doors, one is immediately taken aback by the richness of Portaluppi’s interiors, which, conceived as a gesamtkunstwerk, or rather, an indissoluble work of art, are a somewhat unusual synthesis of Italian Rationalism, French Art Deco and Vienna Secession. This can be seen to great effect in the grand marble staircase with its double Greek fret balustrade (which in turn, frames one of the villa’s most iconic features, Arturo Martini’s (1889-1947) L’Amante Morta (Deceased Lover) (1921), a polychromatic sculpture depicting a woman in a state of painful ecstasy, abandoned by her lover, and hence with no more reason to live) as well as the recurrent diamond motif seen on everything from the plaster ceiling in the library to the sliding doors dividing the smoking and dining rooms. The latter of which, somewhat inexplicably, and for some time, were covered over by a second designer, Tomaso Buzzi (1900-1981) (best known for his neoclassical Villa Volpi (1952) in Sabaudia) whom the family commissioned in 1938 to renew the villa in a more “contemporary style”, which, perplexingly, involved the removal of much of Portaluppi’s furniture and the abundant use of antiques and heavily embroidered window treatments so as to reflect the eighteenth-century style of Italian palazzos (the rumoured impetus behind such ill-considered, frou-frou add-ons was that the family felt Portaluppi’s original design looked a tad too fascist in its hard-lined asperity, especially given Il Duce’s Republican Party had requisitioned the house as its headquarters during the war).
A marble-clad bathroom at Portaluppi’s Villa Necchi Campiglio, which featured such cutting edge technologies as showers with lateral jets and an opening to allow the steam to escape, Photograph by Nacho Alegre
Portaluppi’s Casa Corbellini-Wassermann, where one can see the marble “millerighe” floors and extraordinary frescoed entrance hall, photograph Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
Fortunately, much of Portaluppi’s original design has been restored by the Fondo Ambiente Italiano, to whom the house was donated on the death of Gigina in 2001 (at the same time, the Necchi-Campiglio art collections were sold to form a charitable trust, and for that reason, various items of site-specific furniture were, sadly, dispersed). As such, Portaluppi’s magical, somewhat more refined touch can still be felt in the travertine and marble floors, the elegant celestial icons adorning the dining room’s stucco ceiling, not to mention, one of the villa’s most iconic features, the luminous glazed veranda, with its enclosed, heated winter garden, whose sliding security doors, faced in heavy German silver, have inspired numerous contemporary designers (as can be seen, perhaps most recently, in the work of Pamela Shamshiri and Pierre Yovanovitch, who reproduced them in stainless steel for private residential projects in Los Angeles and London respectively). The piano nobile was, essentially, intended to dazzle the Necchi’s illustrious guests, and as such, in places, one can see uninterrupted across the span of the house, thus heightening the sense of light, space and of course, la grandezza. The second floor meanwhile was conceived as something of an inner sanctum, containing the family apartments — with their incredible bathrooms clad in wall to wall arabescato marble, featuring such cutting edge technologies as showers with lateral jets and an opening to allow the steam to escape — separated by a barrel-vaulted corridor lined with wall-to-wall cupboards, so as to display Gigina and Nedda’s impressive and extensive collection of French and Italian couture. Perhaps unusually, guests were rarely invited to sleep under the family’s roof, with one exception, Principe Enrico d’Assia (1927-1999), a family friend who paid frequent visits to Milan on account of his designing sets for La Scala theatre. Somewhat apt, given his occupation, d’Assia was housed in a Portaluppi-designed suite of rooms which, whilst small in scale, are grandiose in their understated theatricality and nautical-Deco style. Within a relatively small space, compared to the principal suites, Portaluppi achieved the same division of bedroom, bathroom and dressing room — employing a simple architectural intervention, a half wall in black Carso marble, closed on the side by curtains, acting as a subtle partition, separating the bathroom and creating a sense of privacy. Of course, Necchi Campiglio is a perfect example of client and architect working together in perfect simpatico, the result of which, an almost neurotically geometric, rationalist masterpiece, designed for a childless lifestyle, free from offspring who might slip on its steel staff staircase, scribble over its pale parchment-clad walls or scratch the mechanical mahogany desk in Angelo’s ground floor office (the work of master Florentine cabinetmaker Giovanni Socci — the only other two known examples to be found at Palazzo Pitti in Florence and the Louvre in Paris). Of course, there’s considerably more to Portaluppi’s genius than Necchi’s wrap-around veranda and exceptionally stylish service rooms. The architect was something of a complicated figure, as whilst following a culture of historical continuity typical of the Milanese school, he developed an incredibly personal library of stylistic references, inventing orders and employing materials in entirely unexpected ways, all of which resulted in a truly unique repertoire.
The external spiral staircase at Portaluppi’s Casa Corbellini-Wassermann, Milan, photograph by Lorenzo Pennati
Whilst Fascism proved cataclysmic for Italy’s economy, conversely, it had an electrifying effect on architecture and design. As a former Socialist Party functionary, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) had little understanding of or, for that matter, interest in such matters, but essentially, he got lucky. Milan was really the only Italian city suitable for such a wholesale modernist makeover; Florence was inextricably caught up in its art-historical past, where Renaissance jostled for attention against the Middle Ages; Rome, Venice and Naples were full of palaces and ruins; in Bologna and Turin facades, set back behind porticoes, are concealed from prying eyes, and needless to say, sociologically speaking, nowhere else could claim such progress, in terms of a wealthy and educated bourgeois overthrowing the old social order. Between the two world wars, Mussolini developed strong ties with this burgeoning industrial elite, which, in turn, resulted in a massive increase in wealth, not only for vanity projects, such as private villas and party palaces but also monumental public works. It was one of Il Duce’s many mistresses, journalist and socialite Margherita Sarfatti (1880-1961), who co-founded the Modernist-cum-Classical Novecento movement — the intention of which was to ape and reinvigorate the architecture of Imperial Rome, advocating a return to the representational art of the past, and, metaphorically speaking, placing Il Duce at the helm as de facto emperor. It was, in essence, an exercise in nationalistic pride, and sought a renewal of Italian art by rejecting European avant-garde movements and embracing the country’s artistic traditions. Interestingly, despite its fascist affiliations, the Novecento, by design, never purposely promoted propagandistic art; in fact, it was so inclusive of various styles and genres that already by the late 1920s it was heavily criticised by many members of the Fascist party for its “un-Italian” qualities.
The same period saw the development of Architettura razionale, or Italian Rationalism, which as with the Novecento, was inspired by the scale, structure and symmetry of Ancient Rome, but without the ornamental flourishes associated with classicism and neoclassicism. This can be seen clearly in its uncluttered geometries and use of robust indigenous materials, for example, locally quarried stone and hand-forged metals, in essence, a visual manifestation of Mussolini’s Italy-first ethos. Until the mid-1930s, when, for those with a conscience at least, Fascism’s grotesque underbelly could no longer be ignored, for very many architects and designers, in what was an era of unprecedented building, politics came an uneasy second — especially when they knew such singular creative freedom might never come again in their lifetime. (This is also why, unlike other periods, such as eclecticism and art nouveau (called the Liberty style in Italy), the city doesn’t have a concentrated district of the modern movement; it was a period of frenzied activity lasting only a relatively shirt period, from the 1920s, interrupted, by World War II, after which followed disorderly, feverish post-war constriction, conflating different eras, epochs and styles, often on the same street.) Those who knew Portaluppi have said, quite unequivocally, that he was by no means sympathetic to Mussolini, and indeed, he was formally acquitted of actively supporting the party in 1946; but like many architects of the era, he accepted commissions from Il Duce, including, somewhat dubiously, the creation of Casa del Fascio Della Federazione Provincial (the parties provincial headquarters). In defence of Portaluppi, his grandson, Piero Castellini Baldissera, describes his forebear as no “more of a Fascist than the rest of the Italian population or more than other important architects of the time,” but at the same time, acknowledges “certainly, this coincidence did not do him good”. However one might take such a statement, it seems somewhat bizarre that Portaluppi’s wholly original body of work, tainted, as it were, by association, should have fallen into relative obscurity, given the career trajectory of arch-charlatan Phillip Johnson (1906-2005), an architect who openly and ardently indulged a love of fascism, actively supporting the more brutal representatives of the fascist cause in America.
Fortunately, for Portaluppi, great works of architecture will never be ignored, even if their provenance is marred in complexity. The architect’s work, much of which, fortunately, survived Allied bombings, is like no other, and stylistically speaking, somewhat hard to pin down, as, on one hand, stripped back and linear, it echoes the “International Style”, both in terms of the overall simplicity, organisation of spaces and focus on practicality, and on the other, it’s highly decorative, employing the sort of rich, embellished surfaces seen in the work of such French Art Deco greats as Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879-1933), Marc Du Plantier (1901-1975) and André Groult (1884-1966). Although Villa Necchi Campiglio has, cinematically speaking, captured the public’s imagination, Casa Corbellini-Wassermann, a hidden gem on Viale Lombardia, is perhaps the purest expression of Portaluppi’s vision. Constructed between 1934-36 for Guido Corbellini, a wealthy engineer and transport minister, and Paula Wasserman, heiress to a German pharmaceutical entrepreneur, much like Neccchi Campiglio, with a seemingly limitless budget, it is, in essence, the perfect fusion of Modernism and Rationalism that perhaps sums up Portaluppi’s oeuvre: a certain cerebral severity, juiced up by an array of rich, highly decorative surfaces. A relatively unassuming five-storey villa in Milan’s Città Studi neighbourhood, the property was conceived, essentially, as an apartment block. The first two storeys are clad in a distinctive patchwork of pinkish-grey Ornavasso marble (sourced from a valley in the northwest of Italy with two quarries, one of which was used exclusively to clad the Duomo di Milano, a fact of which, symbolically speaking, would not have been lost on Portaluppi — the architect was somewhat obsessed with marble and its infinite uses, so much so that the floor of his office, now part of the Fondazione Piero Portaluppi, comprised a patchwork of different stones, with clients encouraged to pick out the tone and texture of their choice by pacing around what was, in essence, an enormous sample library. Accordingly, if a particular stone ran out, or if a quarry closed, Portaluppi would have the corresponding “sample” removed from the floor and replaced by something readily available), thus signalling, visually, the owner’s private residence, in contrast to the upper rental floors that are simply rendered. Unlike Necchi Campiglio, which was dolled up (or ruined, depending on one’s aesthetic proclivities) after World War II with a panoply of antiques and sprinkling of fussy Rococo flourishes, Corbellini-Wassermann remains true to the Italian architect’s original intent.
The extraordinary entryway at Portaluppi’s Società di Filatura Cascami Seta, Milan, photograph by Lorenzo Pennati
In 2019 following an extensive two-and-a-half-year renovation (on which the Milan-based architect and industrial designer Antonio Citterio (b. 1950) advised) the ground floor opened as the eponymous flagship gallery of Massimo De Carlo, a blue-chip contemporary art dealer with spaces in London, Beijing and Hong Kong. “I wanted to challenge the idea of the white box,” explains De Carlo of his choosing Casa Corbellini-Wassermann as his crown jewel. “And there’s nothing less ‘white box’ than this.” A much-needed counterpoint to the otherwise austere luxury of the mezzanine, with its procession of living rooms, fumoirs and dining rooms (which in size and scale aren’t exactly what one might describe as cosy), on first entering the villa’s vast rectangular entrance hall, all four walls are frescoed floor to ceiling with a tempera painting, the work of an unknown artist, a whimsical map of Mediolanum (Milan’s ancient name), executed in shades of butter, ocher, coral and jade. The Corbellini-Wassermanns country estates are picked out in wonderfully elaborate renderings, and throughout, interrupting the cartographic scene, superimposed, as if in flight, are large detailed drawings of game birds the family loved to hunt. Charming in its naivety, the ensemble provides a much-needed element of playfulness; otherwise, the 6,500 square foot ground floor, with fourteen-foot ceilings and floors inlaid with a multitude of marbles, including, in the corridors, a design Portaluppi referred to as millerighe (“a thousand lines”), composed of red Monte Amiata, white Carrara and Verde Alpi — a pattern harmoniously mirrored in the stuccoed ceilings — isn’t what one might typically associate with a conventional family home. In period photographs of the villa’s capacious public rooms, one can see clusters of velvet-upholstered Art Deco barrel chairs, marble torchère and graphic rugs, with fires lit in the hearths, many of which, che sorpresa, have marble mantels in tones of claret, ebony and pine, or even woven copper, which, as at Necchi Campiglio, create an overall feeling of richness, without ostentation.
Even within his own lifetime Portaluppi was something of a discreet, understated figure, he didn’t have a school, he wasn’t a teacher and to put it bluntly, one could very easily write a history of twentieth-century architecture without mentioning his work. Indeed, for very many years, internationally speaking, unlike for example Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), Le Corbusier (1887-1965) or Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012), Portaluppi remained a relative unknown, appreciated, largely, by those aesthetes sympathetic the extreme refinement and pared back glamour of his extraordinary oeuvre. Of course, on a micro level, Milan wouldn’t be what it is today without Portaluppi, and it would be impossible to write a history of its urban landscape without making extensive reference to the architect’s immeasurable contribution. He transformed the face of the city, and within its borders completed in excess of a hundred architectural projects before his death in 1967. Portaluppi’s immediately identifiable style can be seen in anything and everything from the octagonal Planetario di Milano (where Italian jeweller Bulgari mounted its exhibition of artist Tomás Saraceno’s (b. 1973) work in 2019) to the Piedmont power plants he designed for Conti’s electric company. Not to mention the Arengario palace in Piazza del Duomo (designed in collaboration with Enrico Agostino Griffini (1887-1952), Giovanni Muzio (1893-1982) and Pier Giulio Magistretti (1891-1945)), a courageous project from an architectural point of view and decisive in defining one of the city’s most significant urban designs, from Piazza Scala to Piazza Diaz. It should be remembered Portaluppi was not only an architect; somewhat eclectic and agnostic he fabricated a persona, referring to himself as a man of twenty-five careers, including caricaturist, illustrator, philatelist, statistician, traveller, gnomonician, enigmatist and filmmaker. His body of work, which, whilst by no means reinventing the wheel, feels exciting in its use of the unexpected, whether that be in terms of proportion, decoration, materiality or planning. Milan has a certain gritty glamour that doesn’t necessarily appeal to everyone; even native writer and poet Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973) called it “ugly and uncoordinated”, yet, like sparkling jewels, set throughout the city, Portaluppi’s works offer a restrained but sumptuous vision of Italian design. Indeed, walking around the streets of Milan one can feel his touch in the work of those artists, designers and decorators that came in the generations after him. Portaluppi is an architect who, to a very large extent, sat somewhere between classicism and modernity. When one considers Corbusier’s streamlined, mechanised Villa Savoye was built in 1929, it becomes immediately apparent Portaluppi’s contemporaneous, rationalist commissions aren’t strictly Modern with a capital “m”. However, that is, perhaps, of little consequence, as when one experiences works of architecture like Villa Necchi Campiglio or Casa Corbellini-Wassermann first-hand, the words of Italian architect Virgilio Vercelloni (1930-1995) immediately spring to mind: “Modern is what lasts over time, not what is new.”