L'atelier artistico della famiglia Coppedé

This dissertation aims to discover the history, the context, the international success, the promotional strategies and the final decline of the La Casa artistica atelier, led in Florence by the members of the Coppedè family. Created in 1873 by the householder Mariano (1839-1920) as an atelier for wood sculpture, carving, furniture and interior decoration, it gets an extraordinary reputation covering several decades, becoming moreover the professional training place for all Mariano’s sons, who will become artists: Gino (1866-1927) and Adolfo (1871-1951), who will follow a career as architects, and Carlo (1868-1952), who will devote himself to painting. The story of the paternal atelier is connected to his sons’careers, creating a sort of alliance bringing to many joint commissions in Italy and in foreign countries, thanks to a rich and cosmopolitan clientele, until his decline in the Thirties, due to his difficulty in renovating his decorative language who was the main reason for his success during the previous decades. In order to achieve this goal, my dissertation is divided into four different chapters, sort of reading keys to understand the development of the atelier and the birth of this particular decorative taste that contemporaries already called “Coppedè Style”. The starting point is the exploration of the several meanings linked to the “Coppedè” name (ranging from a decorative excess to mere bad taste, from a particular nuance of art nouveau to the triumph of eclecticism, etc.), since the climax of the atelier reputation till the present times. For this reason, I have analyzed the different steps leading to the rediscovery of these artists and the new identification of their extremely peculiar artistic profiles; a path that necessarily leads to a focus on the situation of the Italian studies concerning the national art nouveau movement, the so called Liberty. My essay will focus on the connection between the Coppedè family atelier and the Florentine artistic landscape, starting from framing the situation of the wood carving art during the years after the Italian Unification, when Mariano begins his activity. Three exemplary cases are displayed, in order to show the influence the city has on the atelier: the gothic revival works for the Holy Trinity Church, home of the Anglican community in Florence; the controversial restoration of Pazzi Quaratesi Palace, midway between philological research and new decoration, so as to create new spaces for the Banca di Firenze; Matteo Palmieri’s Apothecary Shop, where the ancient artistic tradition of Florence is renewed in an original and quite humoristic way. This process is concluded by the final part of the atelier’s life and the following isolation from the Florentine context experienced by Adolfo and Carlo. The same approach is used in the following chapter, dedicated to the international spread of the Coppedè atelier, beginning with the analysis of the fascination the city of Florence and Renaissance art have among the most sophisticated travelers, especially Anglo-Saxons This sort of myth influences (but also limits) the artistic craftsmanship of the city in several ways, causing different marketing strategies to become a part of a similar commercial market. Again, three illuminating examples are taken into account: the works for the Marquis de la Motilla in Seville, lasting about forty years, put together thanks to the discovery of a huge amount of new documents from the Spanish family archive; the furniture for St. Paul’s Chapel in the Columbia University Campus in New York, where the atelier collaborates with two famous American architects who want to recreate a Florentine image in the New World; the decoration for the Palacio de Comunicación in Mexico City, which has a political message - quite unusual for the Coppedè -, connected to the last years of Porfirio Diaz’s regime. Finally, the path in the atelier’s history finds its natural conclusion in the projects for the Italian ocean liners during the Twenties and Thirties. Here, the original decorative ideas of the “Coppedè Stile”, aiming to a monumental eclecticism, reaches its paroxysm.