INTIMACY

STYLE
WELLNESS
COMFORT
“The walls were covered with embroidered fabrics, in which silks of different colors, woven

with gold and silver threads, had been used, with all the art of which they were capable at

that time, to represent the pleasures of hunting and of falconry. The bed was adorned with

the same rich colorful fabrics, and closed with purple curtains. The chairs were also covered

with colorful fabrics, and one, taller than the others, had a finely carved ivory stool. Four

silver candlesticks, with large wax torches, were used to illuminate the apartment. But no

modern beauty envy the magnificence of a Saxon princess. The walls of the room were so

badly finished and so full of cracks that the rich tapestries swirled in the air of the night, and

despite a kind of screen that would have to protect it from the wind, the flame of the torches

spun and bent in the air as the flag.

There was therefore magnificence with a rude attempt at good taste, but comfort was not

there, and being then unknown, they did not miss it.

Walter Scott, Ivanohe, prima pubblicazione 1819, ambientato nel 1194 ca.
A set of furniture, fixed (the

wardrobe-archive) and mobile

allows man to perform a well-

defined activity.

Christine de Pisan, miniatura, XV sec.

Lo scriba Ezra, Codice miniato, Biblioteca

Laurenziana di Firenze, 689-716
 Dollhouse

Pietro Lorenzetti,
Nascita della Vergine,
Duomo di Siena, 1342.
 Robert Campin
Santa Barbara, 1438.
 Intimacy

Antonello da Messina, San Girolamo,

1474 ca.
Stimmung

The sense of intimacy created by

the room and its furnishings.

It is a feature of the interior that

has little to do with their

functionality but is rather related

to the way a home reveals the

person's personality, the way it

reflects its soul.

Albrecht Durer, San Girolamo nel suo

studio, 1514 ca.
Johannes Stradanus, La camera dell'astronomo, 1570
Shekar Kapor, Elizabeth – The Golden Age, La camera dell'astronomo, 2007.
 Domestic Intimacy

Pieter de Hooch, La camera, 1659 ca.

Pieter de Hooch, La madre, 1663 ca.

Pieter de Hooch, Donna che legge con una bambina, 1663 ca. Pieter de Hooch, Donna che sbuccia le
mele con una bambina, 1663
 Hygiene

Hans Memling
Betsabea che esce dal bagno, 1485.
Pieter de Hooch, Madre che elimina i pidocchi dai capelli della sua bambina, 1659
 Comfort and aesthetics

François Boucher, Madame Boucher, 1743

 Sofia Coppola, Marie-Antoinette, 2006.
Stephen Frears, Le relazioni pericolose, 1988.
François Boucher, La colazione, 1743.
Sofia Coppola, Marie-Antoinette, 2006.
Jean-François de Troy, Leggendo Molière, 1728.
Sofia Coppola, Marie-Antoinette, 2006.
Pierre-Louis Dumesnil il giovane, Una serata
con gli amici, 1720.

Sofia Coppola, Marie-Antoinette, 2006.

Sofia Coppola, Marie-Antoinette, 2006.
Sofia Coppola, Marie-Antoinette, 2006.
William Hogart, Il poeta in disgrazia, 1763
 Wellness

Very few prestigious personalities live in London.

They stay in their houses in town during

parliamentary sessions; from time to time, they

stop in their houses in town for particular

occasions; but their "homes" are in the

countryside.

The house became a "social" place, paradoxically

"private".

Henry Walton, La colazione di un inglese, 1775.

Ang Lee, Sense and sensibility, 1995.
Ang Lee, Sense and sensibility, 1995.
Joe Wright, Pride and prejudice, 2005.
Ang Lee, Sense and sensibility, 1995.
 Interior as a case

The Nineteenth century was, like no other age,

morbidly tied to the house. He conceived the

house as a man's case where all his belongings

were placed, so deeply conceived like this that

makes you think at a compass’ case where the

instrument is usually embedded in deep purple

velvet grooves .

Walter Benjamin, L'intérieur, la traccia,

in I passages di Parigi, Einaudi, Torino 2010.

 Victorian Interior, 1880 ca.
Henry Gibson, Drawing room, 1883
It was a kingdom of terror and we all still feel it in the bones. Velvet and silk, bouquet à

la Markart, dust, suffocating air and lack of light, portières, carpets and "compositions“

everywhere: thanks to God we have freed all of this!

Adolf Loos
 Light and Air

Interior decorator

Elsie de Wolfe, The house in good taste, 1913

Elsie de Wolfe, sala da pranzo, 1896 e 1898
(The house in good taste, 1913)
 The integral construction of the domestic space

The intérieur crisis takes place around the end of the century with the Arts and Crafts (1880-1920) and Art Nouveau
(1890-1910) movements.
By the mid-nineteenth century, many people
were troubled by the effects that the Industrial
Revolution was having on the environment,
society at large, and workers employed in
factories, concerns that are echoed in today’s
environmental movement.

The English art critic John Ruskin argued that

the inexpensive, factory-made goods flooding
the markets had a negative effect on both those
who made them and those who consumed
them.

Ruskin and others believed that mechanized

factory production deprived workers of the
personal satisfaction and creativity involved in
designing and making an object entirely with
one’s own hands. They also believed that
people who bought these goods were
surrounding themselves with soulless objects
that lacked aesthetic value.

Thus, their domestic environments were

missing the elements of spirituality and
refinement that produce healthy, well-rounded
citizens.

This was a particular concern in the age of the

Victorian “cult of domesticity,” which
emphasized the home as a morally uplifting
respite from the negative influences of city life.
Arts and Crafts
Movement

The Thefounders
foundersof ofthe
theArts
Arts & Crafts
& Crafts
Movement
Movement were
weresome
some of of the firstmajor
the first major
critics of the Industrial Revolution.
critics of the Industrial Revolution.
Disenchanted with the impersonal,
Disenchanted
mechanized with the of
direction impersonal,
society in the
mechanized
th direction of society
19 century, they sought to return in the
to
th
19 acentury,
simpler,they
moresought
fulfilling to
wayreturn
of to a
living.
simpler, more fulfilling way of living.
William Morris,
William Morris,
Edward Burne-Jones,
Edward Burne-Jones,
Charles Faulkner,
Charles
DanteFaulkner,
Gabriel Rossetti,
DanteP. P. Marshall,
Gabriel Rossetti,
and Philip Webb
P. P. Marshall,
and Philip Webb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBq73yxha0o
 “The movement … represents in some sense a revolt
against the hard mechanical conventional life and its
insensibility to beauty (quite another thing to
ornament). It is a protest against that so-called
industrial progress which produces shoddy wares, the
cheapness of which is paid for by the lives of their
producers and the degradation of their users. It is a
protest against the turning of men into machines,
against artificial distinctions in art, and against making
the immediate market value, or possibility of profit, the
chief test of artistic merit. It also advances the claim of
all and each to the common possession of beauty in
things common and familiar, and would awaken the
sense of this beauty, deadened and depressed as it
now too often is, either on the one hand by luxurious
superfluities, or on the other by the absence of the
commonest necessities and the gnawing anxiety for
the means of livelihood; not to speak of the everyday
uglinesses to which we have accustomed our eyes,
confused by the flood of false taste, or darkened by the
hurried life of modern towns in which huge
aggregations of humanity exist, equally removed from
both art and nature and their kindly and refining
influences.”

William Morris and Philpp Webb, Red House, Bexleyheath

Walter Crane, “Of The Revival of Design and
England 1860. Handicraft”, in Arts and Crafts Essays, by Members of
the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 1893
 To re-establish a harmony between
architect, designer and craftsman and to
bring handcraftsmanship to the
production of well-designed, affordable,
everyday objects.
William Morris

William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones

• against mechanical workings

• in favor of communities of artisans on a
medieval model
• craftsmanship
• Back to the origin (medioeval period –
specially Gothic style)

William Morris and Philpp Webb, Red House, Bexleyheath

England 1860.
William Morris and Philpp Webb, Red House, Bexleyheath, England 1860.
Paintings by Edward Burne-Jones.
Margaret McDonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh
 “Margaret has genius, I have only talent”.

Margaret MacDonald, The May Queen, Luncheon Room Ingram Street Tea Rooms, 1900.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hill House, Helensburg, Glasgow 1902
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hill House, Helensburg, Glasgow 1902
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hill House, Helensburg, Glasgow 1902
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hill House, Helensburg, Glasgow 1902
Margaret MacDonald, Sleeping Princess, gesso at The Hill House
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hill House, Helensburg, Glasgow 1902
Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
Hill House, Helensburg,
Glasgow 1902
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hill
House, Helensburg, Glasgow
1902
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hill House, Helensburg, Glasgow 1902
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hill House, Helensburg, Glasgow 1902
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hill House, Helensburg, Glasgow 1902
Bibliografia consigliata

Ariès, Philippe, Duby, George, La vita privata, Ed. Laterza, Bari 1987-88, cinque volumi.

Cornoldi, Adriano, L'architettura dei luoghi domestici. Il progetto del comfort, Jaca Book, Milano
1994.

Lanz, Francesca (a cura di), Letture di Interni, Franco Angeli, Milano 2013.

Ottolini, Gianni, Architettura degli interni domestici. Per una storia dell'abitare occidentale, Cortina,
Milano 2015.

Praz, Mario, La filosofia dell'arredamento, Longanesi & co., Milano 1981.

Rybczynski, Wittold, La casa, Rusconi, Milano 1989.

Teyssot, Georges, Il progetto domestico, Electa, Milano 1986.

Thornton, Peter, Il gusto della casa. Storia per immagini dell'arredamento 1620-1920, Mondadori,
Milano 1984.