The Villa Strohl Fern is a semi-urban Neo-Gothic-style, palace, or casino, and gardens erected in the late 19th century on the grounds of the Villa Borghese in Rome. It is known for having housed and provided studios for dozens of prominent artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Entrances to the site, when open, are from Piazzale Flaminio, Avenue Madame Letizia, and across from the Villa Poniatowski, part of the National Etruscan Museum.
The aristocratic Alsatian Alfred Wilhelm Strohl (1847-1927) was exiled from his native land soon after the German occupation in 1870. By 1879, he had purchased a substantial plot of land at the site, and built the main villa, and additional housing and studio facilities, and organized the gardens at the site. Strohl also designed the casino and gave it the name by adding the adjective "fern" (far away) to Strohl, to emphasize his exile. [1]
The park contains odd elements such as cement trees, fountains adorned with stalactites, grottoes, covered bridges between sections of land at different levels, and an artificial pond with a cement boat on its bank. [2] The property is best remembered for the diverse artistic community that Strohl gathered there, at small chalets in the park. Among the many artists who stayed at the site were Nicola D’Antino; Bruno Barilli; Alfredo Biagini; Amedeo Bocchi; Arnold Bocklin; Anton Giulio Bragaglia; Renato Brozzi; Ercole Drei; Emil Fuchs and his mistress, the painter Barbara Leoni; Vincenzo Gemito; Baldomer Gili i Roig; John William Godward; Virgilio Guidi; Carlo Levi; Arturo Martini; Umberto Moggioli; Ludwig Nick; Cipriano Efisio Oppo; Ilya Repin; the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and his wife in 1903-1904; the sculptor Clara Westhoff; Aleardo Terzi; Francesco and his son Antonello Trombadori; and Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel. [3] [4] [5]
After his death in 1927, Strohl was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, near the Pyramid of Cestius; and the property was willed to the French Government with a number of restrictions, including on the maintenance of the structures and purpose. In 1957 transferred it to the Lycée Chateaubriand. The property has been undergoing much needed restorations. On specific occasions, you can visit the gardens (about 80,000 m²). [6] [7]
Castel Gandolfo, colloquially just Castello in the Castelli Romani dialects, is a town located 25 kilometres (16 mi) southeast of Rome in the Lazio region of Italy. Occupying a height on the Alban Hills overlooking Lake Albano, Castel Gandolfo has a population of approximately 8,900 residents and is considered one of Italy's most scenic towns.
Villa Borghese is a landscape garden in Rome, containing a number of buildings, museums and attractions. It is the third largest public park in Rome after the ones of the Villa Doria Pamphili and Villa Ada. The gardens were developed for the Villa Borghese Pinciana, built by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, developing sketches by Scipione Borghese, who used it as a villa suburbana, or party villa, at the edge of Rome, and to house his art collection. The gardens as they are now were remade in the late 18th century.
The Villa Albani is a villa in Rome, built on the Via Salaria for Cardinal Alessandro Albani. It was built between 1747 and 1767 by the architect Carlo Marchionni in a project heavily influenced by others – such as Giovanni Battista Nolli, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Johann Joachim Winckelmann – to house Albani's collection of antiquities, curated by Winckelmann. The villa has been conserved intact into the 21st century by the Torlonia Family, who bought it in 1866. In 1870, the treaty following the Capture of Rome from the Papal States was signed here.
The Villa Medici is a Mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and now property of the French State, has housed the French Academy in Rome since 1803. A musical evocation of its garden fountains features in Ottorino Respighi's Fontane di Roma.
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Gianfranco Goberti is an Italian painter. After studying Arts at the Institut Dosso Dossi in Ferrara, Italy, and at the Academy of Art in Bologna, he was teacher and Director of the Institut of Arts Dosso Dossi. His first exhibition was held in 1959 with references to Picasso and Bacon. His research dealt with nuova figurazione and Abstract Expressionism. The first optical-figurative period starts during the 1960s. In 1980, he was selected by the National Catalogue of Modern Art Bolaffi together with Paolini, Adami, Bulgarelli, Cassano and Paladino. Goberti has held exhibitions at the International Art Expo of Bilbao, Quadriennale d'Arte in Rome, Rassegna Premio S. Fedele (Milan), Arte Fiera (Bologna), Altissima (Turin), Expo Arte (Bari), ArteExpo (Barcelona), and LineArt (Ghent), "La Venere svelata – La Venere di Urbino di Tiziano".
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Gabriele Simongini is an Italian art historian and art critic. Simongini is a professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma. Art critic of the newspaper Il Tempo and essayist. In particular deals with research in Italian abstract art.
Studi sul Settecento Romano is an Italian yearly journal of art history, devoted in particular to the study of artistic and architectural culture in eighteenth-century Rome.
Pasquale Verrusio was an Italian painter, sculptor and engraver.
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Antonio Servillo, Italian painter of contemporary art.
