The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts - UCLA Department ...

38 DAPAWinter 1987
and is related to the genre of the books of emblems that in part inspired the
theater of Giulio Camillo. D'Annunzio appropriated this tradition in his own
creative and idiosyncraticway, using the mottos not only as decorative motifs,
but also in order to recollect, to comment on, or to reveal the symbolic function
of certain settings, objects, and images. Even the casts, sculptunlfragments,
and works of art are strategically arranged in order to create in every
setting not only a generic atmosphere of beauty but also to reevoke, through a
series of mnemonic associations, the traces of the literary and artistic tradition
whose creative reappropriation is fundamental in all of D'Annunzio's work. In
order to continue to be able to write, and to organize and render organic his
Opera Omnia, D'Annunzio kept in sight the emblematic simulacra of his own
works and of the traditions that inspired them. Copies and casts, even those of
poor quality which have a purely mnemonic function, are iuxtaposed with furnishings
and objets d'arr of notable beauty and decorative value. In his Libro
Segreto, his way of "composing a setting" is described like this: "Cgrtainly high
art inspires me, the taste for form and color guides me in choice and composition,
a most ingenious cunning enlightens me in how to regulate intervals and
heights. To raise up one figure higher than another a ceramic box serves me as
a base, a strip of gold cloth helps me to dissimulate the cube, a ready way of
weighing the bronze in my hands reassures me concerning the resistance of
the fragile glazedmateri^l underneath it....The simple people around me
smile in ignorance or astonishment, while I impatiently ask for an old nail, a bit
of precious cloth, a remnant of gold ribbon, a box of watercolors" (ProseII,709
-10). In reality, the accumulation of objects and props in certain settings is so
excessive that one gets the sense of a confused bric-a-brac, or of an anguished
and unlimited proliferation of signs.
The "Room of Relics," for instance, produces such an effect (it is to this room
[fig. 3] that the above description of D'Annunzio's refers). As in all the rooms of
the Priory D'Annunzio reduced the natural lighting to abare minimum, screening
it in this case with a stained-glass window done by Pietro Chiesa from a design
by Guido Cadorin. The window represents St. Cecilia at the organ, above
the surreal image of a battlefield with the faces of two fallen soldiers in the
foreground (one of which is a portrait of Maroni). The work of the Venetian
painteq decorator, and mosaic artist Guido Cadorin (1892-1976), inspired by
Pre-Raphaelite, Decadent, and Liberty iconography, can be seen in many rooms
of the Priory The "Room of Relics" is dominated by two compositions in the
form of a pyramid and an altar;in them we can clearly see D'Annunzio's religious
syncretism and Flaubertian taste for the exotic and the oriental, as we can
in "Leda's Room" (fig. 13) and in the "Blue Bathrooml'which contains more
than two thousand objects, mostly of oriental origin (tig. 14). The pyramid of
Asian idols is composed of a series of statuettes of dragons, of Confucius, and of
Buddha, crowned by a fifteenth-centurywooden sculpture of the Madonna and
Child, flanked by a series of small polychrome statues of various saints. The altar,
with a bas-relief of the Lion of St. Mark above it, is coveredwith precious
Baroque reliquaries and other religious paraphernalia; at its center is a
crushed steering wheel (a particularly incongruous detail). This belonged to
the powerboat in which Sir Henry Segrave died during a race which D'Annunzio
himself had proposed. The floor is covered with Fersian carpets, and the
walls are covered with damasks. On the wall opposite the pyramid hangs a very
fine sixteenth-century tapestry representing in an archaic, pastoral setting a
priest in the act of showing d-re five fingers of his right hand to a group of men
and women, while a group of children playing in the background appear to be
imitating his gesture. Amotto engraved on the wooden beam above the tapestry