Adolfo Coppedè
( 29th April 1871 Florence – 15th August 1951
Prato-Parugiano/Montemurlo )
Adolfo Coppedè
is an eclectic artist, immaginative and exuberant
architect, volcanic and brave. Since his early age
he has been on the scene of the cultural life linked
to the architecture at national level.
He was born in 1871,
trained in the artisan carving atelier " La Casa
Artistica" in Florence, an atelier that was opened
by his father Mariano in 1875, because Florence was
the town where the production of art furniture was
flourishing on the basis of a long tradition.
Adolfo, as his elder
brother Gino, attends the Vocational School of
Decorative and Industrial Arts, and gets his
diploma in architectural design.
Gino gives the
artisan atelier a different character, enlarging the
artistic interest from furniture to the
architectural designing and to house and marine
furniture, inventing the famous " Coppedè Style "
The cliché of
Coppedè is connected to the neoeclectic European
trend of the early years of XX century. It was
expressed as an architecture of neomedievalist and
neomanierist type, that assumed medieval models like
stylemes for the designing. It was made of the use
of stones, turreted mansions and battlemented
castles, with sculptures upon facades, flowery
decorations, feminine headpieces and also large
masks, while shaping eclectic combinations and
pleasant compositive balances, rich in captivation
and fascination.
In 1898 Adolfo
participates to the competition for the design of “
Pensionato Artistico” in Rome for the architecture
section. In this occasion he gets acquainted to the
MP Pilade del Buono, who is a relevant personality,
fosterer of the ironworker activity on the Elba
island, where he had several properties. The Member
of Parliament trusts the young designer several
works, that represent the first orders in his
professional activity.
He drew his
presentation boards upon “cartasuga”, a type of
absorbing paper upon which the line couldn’t be
definite and clean-cut, in order to give the effect
of a sketched designing and to figure a pictorial
form that wasn’t strictly technical, in contrast
with the real effort he used to profound in the
development of his ideas, that were based upon a
great number of studies, of detailed boards, thus
showing to be a serious professional, always.
The work at Elba are
fully inserted in the characteristic architectonic
language, typical of Adolfo; the first work is a
funeral chapel, in white marble, for Del Buono
Family, that is in the monumental graveyard of
Portoferraio, in an original position at the centre
of a staircase.
Upon a request of the
MP Del Buono, in the area of San Martino, next to
the Villa Napoleonica, was built a manor house with
farm, defined with prospectus and continuous
recourses, with framework and brick decorations and
with large projections of the roof.
Under demand of the
same person in 1904, along the Calata Mazzini at
Portoferraio, he completed the” Palazzo dei merli”,
the Palace of blackbirds, following a plan of
renewal of the town image.
The main prospectus
had been planned with a granite basement, type of
marble typical of the Elba island, with a
projection that was to be held by some shelves
linked with arches, with a ribbon in decorated
ceramic, completed by mullioned windows and a
battlemented framework.
The building was
destroyed by the bombing in the second World War.
There are two more
works at Portoferraio, one in Calata Mazzini,
entering from via Guerrazzi, that presents façades
with finishing in plaster, gable- windows with
decorations, and a balcony on the sea side. This
building was originally the” Casa del Fascio” the
house of Fascism. The other work stays in Calata
Italia, in the haven area, and was the venue for the
administrative offices of the smelting furnaces.
This building is
characterized by an open gallery, with fronts
originally painted as a fake stone and other
decorations that have gone destroyed.
Finally at Cavo, on
the cape of Lentisco Mount, in 1906 he erected a
noble grave for the Tonietti Family, the work is
completely of stone, it has a turreted shape, with
cusps and decorations.
The chapel is a
monument in memory of Giuseppe Tonietti, renter of
the Elba mines, as he never was allowed to be
officially buried there.
Adolfo Coppedè is an
interpreter of high class-bourgeois clients, that
let him realize wondrous works; as a whole, he
retraces his brother’s Gino architectonic lines in
his project language, with more temperate solutions,
less intrusive and with a minor fancy impact in the
building decoration.
In his long
professional activity he has always planned and
designed with an untiring strength, together with an
inventive original inspiration, he has proposed
really surprising solutions, determined by an ample
expressive vision, and by sculpture decorative
suggestions.
Translation by Irene de Angelis-Curtis
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