In 1896, a Scottish insurance magnate named Evan MacKenzie set himself to erecting a massive “medieval” castle on a glorious site overlooking the Mediterranean, hard by the outskirts of Genoa. For this extravagant client, a gifted young Florentine architect named Gino Coppedè concocted a huge turreted, crenellated, and rusticated fantasy that, to this day, remains a masterpiece of fin de siècle historicism run amok. As the final jewel in MacKenzie’s baronial crown, Coppedè designed a chapel and commissioned for its walls some suitably religious frescoes. Executed by the brilliant Russian copyist, and later restorer, Lockoff, these decorations paraphrase and mimic the one primitive (Roman Catholic) artist with whom the presumably low-church MacKenzie would have felt comfortable: Fra Angelico. The choice is not surprising: by the end of the nineteenth century, the “beatification” of the celebrated Dominican...

 

A Message from the Editors

Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.

Popular Right Now