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

u DAPArwinter 1987
made of wood or colored marble, to suppoft a series of casts of Greek
sculpture and works by Michelangelo; these are decorated and painted, as was
D'Annunzio's custom, in order to imprint the "seal" of his decadent st)4e on all
the oblects around him. In the room, where Luisa Baccara and the Vittoriale
Quartet regularly performed, there are a number of Thode's ov/n mementos,
two pianos, and a number of other instruments. One can also see there
\Wagner's death mask (given by Cosima to D'Annunzio). \Tagner's work serued
for D'Annunzio as a supreme example of a total dramatic art in the modern
period (.Gesamtkurutwerk). He is the model that Stelio Effrena tries to imitate
and surpass in Il Rtoco with his plans for an Italian Bayreuth (which was
D'Annunzio's dream for the Greek theater at Il Vittoriale). \7hen he was
working for La Tribuna,D'Annunzio defended with considerable coherence
Vagner's sublime music from Nietzsche's fierce critique. And in all his worksbut
above all in his novel 1/ Trionfo dello. Morte (.Tbe Triumpb of Death, 1.894)
-\Tagnerian themes constantly appear, both at the level of images and of situations
and in the "musical" poetic language of the tert, embedded with leitmotifs.
The bright colors (red, blue, and gold) of the lacquered walls, the stained-glass
u'indos's, and the vaulted and stuccoed ceiling in the Art Deco dining room
called the "Room of the Kheli," vividly clash with the delicate luminosity of the
"Music
Room" (fig. 15). Completed in 1929, the room takes its name from the
large bronze tortoise (by Renato Brozzi) that decorates the table. Opposite to it
stands a beautiful bronze by Le Faguays representing the dance ofa nymph
with a satyr Both these sculptures are reminiscent of specific themes in
D'Annunzio's "solar" poetry. In "Laus Vitael'the poet imagines himself turning
to his alter ego, Hermes, and thanking him for having created the lyre out of a
tortoiseshell (.KbAlis in Greek) and having thus given mankind the gift of music:
"The
hollow shelV of the tortoise born in the mountains/ you made resonant
.. ./ And your wild tortoise shelV was a companion to the songs of man"
(Versi 11,90). The dance of the nymph and the satyr recalls the enchanred images
of the metamorphoses and the loves of gods and mythical creatures in
Alcyone. Renato Brozzi (1885-1963), a refined sculptor whom D'Annunzio
compared to Pisanello, was the creator of-besides the Kbeli and the Vinged
Victory on the prow of the h.rglia (fig. 9)-innumerable metal objects in
Il Vittoriale, some of which are on the dining room table. D'Annunzio gave
commissions t