The Many Lives of Villa Medici
Home to the French Academy of Rome, the Villa Medici has welcomed artists and writers for centuries. Recently, a major refurbishment transformed this legendary palace with contemporary design and artwork.
Photography by Callicles
This article was published in March 2024 in Mastermind 15. Purchase all issues here.
Perched high on the Pincio Hill, hidden above the Spanish Steps next to the Villa Borghese, where the ancient Gardens of Lucullus once blossomed, stands the Villa Medici, a Renaissance palace over-looking Rome. Built in 1564 by Cardinal Giovanni Ricci di Montepulciano, who hired the architects Giovanni and Annibale Lippi, the villa was acquired in 1576 by the very wealthy Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, who added a seven-acre garden to its grounds.
In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte made the decision to transfer the French Academy of Rome to the villa. Founded in 1666 by Louis XIV, the academy’s mission was to welcome artists, writers and researchers who had won the First Prize of Rome. To this day, the Villa Medici welcomes artists, igniting curiosity and fascination. Every year, 16 fellows are chosen through a strict selection process and are invited to live for a year in the villa, devoting themselves to an artistic project.
In 2020, after managing the Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles festival for six years, curator Sam Stourdzé was named director of the villa. He has embarked on an ambitious project to refurbish the palace. “The first observation I made was one of sadness, a desolate impression of a space that lacked panache,” says Stourdzé. The painter Balthus, who directed the villa from 1961 to 1977, had done a major renovation in his time, as did the scenographer Richard Peduzzi in the early 2000s. “But that’s already over 20 years ago,” Stourdzé says. “A refurbishing is also a way to rethink the use of the spaces, which have evolved over the years. Let’s not forget that the building is over 500 years old; the institution is 350 years old and has been present on this specific site for 120 years. So, things evolve. The great risk with these heritage places is that they quickly congeal and become museums. They can stay stuck in a time that no longer even resembles their own time of origin.”
Stourdzé wants to prove that the Villa Medici was and remains a useful institution. With the support of the Mobilier National (the public institution that preserves and promotes France’s crafts and furniture), he asked artistic directors Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi, as well as the Fendi architecture department, to redecorate six reception salons, while offering the renovation of the historic bedrooms to French designer India Mahdavi.
Stourdzé believes in the adage that nothing is created, but everything is recycled. “We can create only from the foundations that are built underneath,” he says. “And that’s the whole point of history, culture and heritage. All the creators to whom we offered this mission have the vision and intelligence to understand that their gestures must be inscribed in a certain continuity. Sometimes they introduce a form of rupture, but it is always a reminder of what existed previously. I think it’s the greatest homage we can offer to the villa. Balthus, in his own time, understood that.”
The designers offer a bold reinterpretation of the spaces, while choosing to preserve the original tones of Balthus’s wall patinas as palettes for each room. Mahdavi blended her audacious geometrical forms and bright colors with the bedroom’s 16th-century frescoes by the Mannerist painter Jacopo Zucchi. Several tapestries by women artists including Louise Bourgeois, Sheila Hicks and Sonia Delaunay were also introduced to the villa’s walls.
Over the many years of its existence, the Villa Medici has welcomed more than 2,000 artists, among them painters such as Ingres and Fragonard, and composers including Berlioz and Debussy. In 2011, after her third attempt, filmmaker Caroline Deruas was finally accepted as a resident. During her stay, she became fascinated by the story of the villa itself, drawn to its ghosts: the sculptor Lucienne Heuvelmans, the first female artist to become a pensioner, in 1911, and the Roman Empress Messalina, supposedly killed in the Gardens of Lucullus on the villa’s grounds. Deruas ended up writing a feature film, L’Indomptée (Daydreams, 2015), inspired by her experience, which she shot on location at the villa two years later. “It was a miraculous space to work in, life-saving, reassuring,” she says. “Very linked to Virginia Woolf’s idea of finding a room of one’s own.”
Stourdzé firmly believes it is essential that the disciplines of the fellows should continue to break barriers. “Last year, we had a jurist who worked on ‘the right to wander’ as well as a choreographer who studied voguing,” he says. “I wanted this space to be a little disturbed and shaken, invaded by life!”
Last year, conservator-restorer Laure Cadot was one of the lucky fellows, with another original area of expertise: the treatment of organic materials and human remains in art. From 5,000-year-old Egyptian mummies to 19th-century bone relics, Cadot’s research blends archaeology, science and anthropology with spiritual and religious practices. She was struck by the conviviality of the villa. “When you first arrive here, the beauty of the palace is disconcerting and distracting!” she says. “It’s staggering at first to think that we’ll come to call this place home. My rhythm here has changed. My two kids play hide-and-seek with the other children in the Bosco” – part of the villa’s garden, located high on a terrace. “I couldn’t have dreamed of living and working in such a beautiful environment, in the middle of nature, in the heart of Rome.”
Alix Boillot, another artist fellow in 2022-2023, envisions the villa as an island. She applied because she felt a strong need to retreat from the world. Boillot’s research focuses on water in all its forms, exploring its historical, ritualistic, mythical, religious and political realms. She seized the opportunity of her stay there to create a solo drum performance at the Trevi Fountain last autumn. She also hopes to create a sculpture using the coins dropped by tourists in the fountain itself. “I contacted the Catholic organization in charge of retrieving the coins,” she says. “As we are fellows of the Villa Medici, things are easier – it’s a great calling card. Once we have the right contacts, the projects can happen.”
As the year goes by, Stourdzé never tires of looking out his window. “There’s a certain light in Rome,” he says. “When the sun sets, the colors gush out of the sky and radiate; it’s a sublime moment. Looking out the window here is like seeing a painting of the landscape. I love rediscovering it every time a new season arrives.” Although he says he isn’t mystical, he does seem to feel the presence of ghosts. “Every night, you can feel that there’s something shifting. Five hundred years of history and inhabitants… I don’t know who they are exactly, but they’re not evil spirits. They’re benevolent.”
It’s said that a pensioner once locked himself in his room in the Villa Medici, refusing to leave when it was time to go. “They didn’t know how to dislodge him,” says Deruas, smiling as she remembers the story. “One night, he finally disappeared. Maybe the villa’s mystery is linked to its history and the fact that we can’t stay forever. What makes it so elusive is its magnificence, the fact that no one can really seize it. We’re all tenants.”