Heir’s Rock

When architect Piero Castellini Baldissera decided to move into his late grandfather’s ground-floor apartment in Casa degli Atellani, Milan, some time ago, the space had not been lived in for years. The dusty walls had last been decorated after World War II, and despite the innovative design choices of his relative, noted architect Piero Portaluppi (1888–1967), some aspects needed to be reconsidered.

Castellini Baldissera began with a niche off the drawing room, wherein Portaluppi had created a working sundial. But, though the meridian lines remained, by that point a towering magnolia tree outside had grown so large as to stymie its use. While he made sure to preserve the mural surrounding it, the new owner promptly hired ébéniste Luigi Cagliani to realise his design for a cherrywood cabinet to fill this nook instead – one with a very particular purpose. It would serve to display the Recani Marbles: a collection of over 1,500 ancient stones, scavenged 150 years ago from countless archeological sites around Rome. Formerly they had been kept in Portaluppi’s studio just a block away. This, too, had fallen to Castellini Baldissera’s care.

The addition of the cabinet is one of many changes the new occupant made to his grandfather’s space. Nothing was destroyed, but the younger architect (now himself in his eighties) added layers: a marble portico in the entrance, boiserie to the dining room and his own collections throughout, including volcanic gouaches, glass canes, and modern and Classical busts. Castellini Baldissera carefully considered Portaluppi’s intentions and flourishes, and by turns repressed and revealed them to suit his home.

With the sale of Casa degli Atellani at the end of 2023, Castellini Baldissera has peeled back these layers in the process of moving out. As the cabinet and Recani Marbles were transported to his new apartment, the various relocations revealed aspects of the original design that had not been seen in decades. Before the transaction had gone through, Portaluppi’s works inside the building were swiftly listed by the Italian state under strict architectural preservation laws.

Castellini Baldissera credits Luca Guadagnino’s 2009 film I Am Love for renewing interest in Portaluppi. Its depiction of Villa Necchi Campiglio – a 1935 project of his grandfather’s that Castellini Baldissera had finished restoring just before filming began – emphasised the cinematic quality of much of his forebear’s work: typically a blend of bravado, symbolism and extravagant fun. In the Casa Corbellini-Wassermann, which the architect completed one year after the villa, stretches of coloured marble laid out like taffy lead guests to the drawing room; on the walls of the study back in his own home at Casa degli Atellani, a constellation of bronze letters spell out anagrams derived from Piero e Lia – his and his wife’s names.

Beyond the elegant layouts and luxurious volumes, indeed, are countless intricate details. Features like the brass strips woven into a tartan radiator cover, or else the inlaid mirror and rosewood marquetry on the back of a pocket door, are scattered across each building for visitors to discover like gold coins in a field at Easter.

‘[Portaluppi] really enjoyed being on the building site – he liked the tradesmen very much,’ recalled Castellini Baldissera in an interview with Guadagnino. At a time when ‘there was a real difference between the architect and the site crews’, the elder Piero’s dedication to working directly with the makers enacting his designs, feels his descendant, ‘was rejuvenating, totally outside of the box’.

Back in the day at his architecture studio, or Casa Portaluppi, he would have welcomed clients into a large conference room where plans could be pinned to the wall and presented for approval. Fabric swatches would be brought in, tracing paper overlaid to give a sense of the proposed schemes – but, theatrically, to show marble options on offer, he had the floor of the room paved with every kind of stone currently available.

One can imagine the joy he would have had directing the eye of some newly minted industrialist to the ground, saying: ‘and for the master bathroom, we are proposing...’. Whenever a particular type of stone became unavailable, the architect would simply call over his marmista, who would promptly hammer out the outdated slab and replace it with something new.

Unlike the working samples, however, the Recani Marbles were kept separately in a private area of his studio. ‘It’s a unique collection that Nonno had found after the war in Rome.... He kept it in his studio [in] a kind of open book. You’d flip through the pages and see all these marbles,’ explained Castellini Baldissera, referring to the iron case Portaluppi designed to house a selection of his favourites.

In their new home just as in the old, the precious specimens rest as they ever did, ensconced behind wire grilles and hidden within drawers. Deep red jasper, malachite, Afghan lapis lazuli; brown quartz, Egyptian porphyry, agate and amazonite; the humble Italian breccia, petrified wood. Each singular piece numbered and catalogued, in its proper place.

The collection came into being in 1862, when a certain Epiro Recani moved from Como to Rome; there he spent his afternoons exploring the Forum, Palatine Hill and ruins along the Via Appia on the city outskirts. Aided by his stonecutter, Antonio de Micheli, and Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, Recani collected, identified and polished the 1,500 specimens here today. Many were sourced from mines that had long since been emptied; many had been used to adorn the great structures of ancient Rome.

Though Recani’s treasures have now been moved from Portaluppi’s studio, many other items remain where the architect left them. In the little garden off his office, for instance, an old Roman doorway is affixed to the wall; on the pediment of the mossy-grey stone, he’d had his mason inscribe the phrase: Ride Chi Sciup’Or – Milanese for ‘laughter comes to those who waste money’. It sits there still, a reminder that joy certainly can come from a bit of liberal adornment – especially of the kind that has been exalting all manner of buildings for millennia.

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