The light of Fendi rises at Villa d’Este
Vita gazette – Fendi is starting a 2 million euro restoration project to restore the accessibility of Diana’s Grotto at Villa d’Este in Tivoli.
Fendi puts its signature on another project to recover the Italian artistic heritage. Thanks to the synergy between the luxury Maison and the Villa Adriana and Villa d’Este Institute, a new light will be born on the Grotta di Diana, one of the unique places of Villa d’Este, in Tivoli, already a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001. It will begin in the Estense garden in Tivoli in the following days. The intervention for the Grotta di Diana, a chamber nymphaeum with a cruciform plan located in the Passeggiata del Cardinale, aims to fully recover the legibility of the decorative cycle, composed of stuccos and mosaics with mythological representations and high reliefs of Neptune and Minerva, of the Muses with eyes of precious stones and Caryatids with fruit baskets.
Located in a particularly evocative and panoramic point of Villa d’Este, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2001, the Grotta di Diana is a cross-plan nymphaeum located along the Cardinal Path. Built between 1570 and 1572 by Paolo Calandrino, probably inspired by the architect Pirro Ligorio, who designed the villa and the park, the area is dedicated to honesty and virtue, personified in Diana, the hunting goddess and symbol of virtue. Inside, mythological episodes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses are depicted with the canephores of Tritons, Nereids and Caryatids. The entire surface of the cave is covered with a rich and complex polychrome and multi-material decoration (stucco, glass paste, shells, glazed majolica, stone materials). The Cave of Diana became a vital reference model, forming the basis for developing cave figures and nymphaea in European gardens in the 16th and 17th centuries. Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este particularly loved wandering around these places, which concentrated an ideal synthesis of the distinctive values of the mannerist culture of the end of the 16th century.
The decorations propose five scenes inspired by chaste and honest love. The first represents the transformation of the nymph Daphne into a laurel; in the second, Andromeda appears freed by Perseus; the third concerns the metamorphosis of Actaeon into a deer; in the fourth scene, the transformation of Syringa, the nymph chased by Pan, into a cane is depicted. Finally, the fifth scene represents the metamorphosis of Callisto, the nymph companion of Artemis, into a bear. The Grotta di Diana became a reference model for developing caves and nymphaeums in European gardens of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este loved walking through these places, which contained, in a blend of architecture and decorations, an ideal synthesis of the values of the mannerist and humanist culture of the late sixteenth century.
Fendi has already carried out similar interventions for highly symbolic places of history and culture. This is the case of the FENDI for Fountains project, with the restoration of the most iconic Roman monumental fountains, such as the Trevi Fountain, the Quattro Fontane Complex, the Acqua Paola Exhibition, the Moses Fountain and that of Peschiera, in addition to the Exhibition of the new Acqua Vergine. More recently, Fendi has also sponsored the restoration of the Temple of Venus and Rome on the Palatine.
At the end of the works, the space will be guaranteed to reopen, with particular attention to improving motor accessibility and the needs of people with visual, hearing, and cognitive disabilities through a dedicated path.
