Talk of the Fortuny lamp is to enter into the rich and vast universe of Mariano Fortuny and Madrazo. It is not an isolated design nor another piece of the work of this great artist and unparalleled creator, who was called the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century. All his creations are part of the Wagnerian concept of total work of art, a doctrine that was to unite all disciplines, artistic and scientific. With an extraordinary and complex personality, the extensive creative production of this multifaceted artist and inventor included fields as diverse as painting, engraving, scenography, lighting, photography, textile design and printing, and fashion.
The Fortuny and Madrazo family
Son of the famous Aragonese painter Mariano Fortuny Marsal and Cecilia Madrazo, Daughter, granddaughter, niece and sister of the Madrazo dynasty of painters, Mariano grew up in an environment of artists and collectors (her mother was a textile collector, a fact that would greatly influence Mariano).
Born in Granada, next to the Alhambra in 1871, lived in Rome, Paris and Venice, where he would settle until his death in 1949. With a humanist spirit and innate curiosity, he dedicated a large part of his life to creative experimentation and scientific research.
A life in Venice
Recorded more than 38 Patents, including the famous dress design Delphi, which he attributed to his wife and muse, Henriette Negrin, whom he met in the French capital in 1902, and the new method of printing fabrics that he invented. With Henriette he carried out numerous projects and designs, and set up the famous textile factory in Giudecca.
Venice played a fundamental role in its development: it was a cosmopolitan city, where Western culture mixed with Eastern culture, so that it constituted a perfect homeland for a man who had experienced art and travel since childhood.
Mariano and Henriette settled on the upper floor of the palace. The Sorrow of the Orpheans, his workshop – which later became a museum -, where they made some of the creations of fashion and design most extraordinary of the 20th century. Her pleated silk dresses, velvet coats and ethnic shawls are the expression of a timeless style, which actresses and models still wear today as a modern and contemporary garment.
One of the rooms of the recently renovated Fortuny Museum, in Venice.
Passion for exoticism
All his inventions were unique combinations of styles and influences of ancient cultures and remote places made, however, with the technologies more innovative. Thus, he managed to reconcile in his work the tradition with modernity through technology.
At the same time that he was doing sets and costumes for the great operas of Wagner, printed exquisite textiles through techniques that mixed the East with the West, but with very modern technology for the time. Fortuny sought inspiration in the ancient Venice, Greece, Egypt, Florence, Persia, Asia, South America and the Far East. His innovative creative methods, which transform historical sources into modern expressions, set him apart from his contemporaries.
The Fortuny dome
Fortuny loved to experiment with light and in his time he was a famous inventor and a lighting technician of stages. In fact, his findings are still used in prestigious theatres around the world.
His interest in light was inextricably linked to his passion for ,, which he developed during the 19th century in Paris. In the French capital, Fortuny was a regular backstage at the theatres and began to create mockups y miniature scenarios, experimenting with new applications of electricity. At the end of the 19th century, when he moved to Venice, he carried out research on stage lighting and its artistic effects. He believed that the use of light indirect diffuse It was the only method that allowed the audience to be truthful. This is how the legendary “Fortuny system”, a true revolution in the theatrical tradition of Italian theatre.
The painted backgrounds were removed and replaced by moving projectors, to achieve the effect in plain air and a set of lights. The system consisted of a iron and fabric dome, a concave section in the shape of a quarter sphere, which, encompassing the scene, acted as a light source and whose cotton walls were supported by a folding metal casing with tubular arches, and an indirect lighting mechanism, which included lamps, rotating silk bands, mirrors and projection devices.
The final result was a homogeneously illuminated scene, in which shades of color alternated, and which allowed the public to immerse themselves in the work. <strong>success</strong> of his proposal was immediate. Fortuny used his indirect lighting to design the sets for Tristan and Isolde, performed at La Scala in Milan in 1900, and his system officially debuted on 29 March 1906 with the two-piece ballet to music by Charles-Marie Widor and performed at the private theatre of Countess Martine de Béarn.
Fortuny and the light
Working as a lighting technician, he carried out numerous high-profile works, as well as revolutionary theatre productions. He would later create beautiful dome-shaped lamps, in glass or textile material, of a very elegant historicism, and he also designed furniture, storage systems for artistic materials, photographic development methods...
Fortuny's incredibly modern designs, which included both the famous broadcasters like the invention of dimmer (a tool that allowed the intensity of the light coming out of the lamps to be controlled), allowed colored lights to be projected in theaters and created a more effective and efficient system of theatrical lighting. In short, he invented tools, methods and systems that made his creations possible.
The Fortuny lamp
From this same system, but transferred to the domestic environment, in 1907 he devised a semi-spherical floor lamp whose interior reflected the light of the central bulb. The effect of the Fortuny dome was transferred on a small scale to his lamps, which were the direct result of the research he carried out on theatrical lighting techniques and constituted a genuine innovation at the beginning of the XNUMXth century.
These majestic three-legged lamps, With an aluminum screen and steel structure, they can rotate and tilt 360° and are equipped with the technology of diffuser created by Mariano Fortuny, which gives them great flexibility of use.
There are different versions depending on the base: with only one foot it is called Atelier and with tripod, Studio. Their finishes also vary: with black, white or brown finish, and gold or silver leaf interior.
Its manufacture is extremely artisanal, made by hand in the Fortuny factory in Venice and the Fortuny stores in Venice, Paris and London are sold, priced at around €4.000.
In this video You can see the process of its elaboration.
Lamp Icaro on three levels, made of gold leaf (left) and ivory-colored fiberglass (right).
The lamp Scheherazade The silk chandelier with a floral design reflects Mariano Fortuny's fondness for combining the Venetian and Oriental worlds. The elegant 3-tiered structure is shaped like an upside-down pagoda and is hung by a delicate network of cables decorated with Murano glass beads.
Textile designs and printing
Of special interest in his work is the textile printing, always carried out by means of ingenious methods based on procedures of his own invention. Without forgetting his work as a lamp designer or his work as a photographer, much of his fame is based on the success he achieved with his fashion creations.
Fortuny created his own formulas of dyes and pigments drawing on the ancient techniques of the masters, giving his materials an aura of authentic antiquity. Incredibly durable and otherworldly in essence, his pieces were so mystifying that rumours of witchcraft and magic abounded, and Fortuny became known as the «Wizard of Venice».
The Delphos dress
The most famous of his textile creations was the Delphos dress, Inspired by the chiton, the tunic worn by men and women in ancient times Greece. Fortuny was not a couturier or a tailor, that was not what interested him. His intention was to create a piece of clothing unique with an innovative pleating technique, which fell over the woman's body, enhancing her figure, without the need for corsets and other structures that are almost always mandatory in current fashion.
This special silk pleating system, a closely guarded secret, could apparently have been the work of his wife. Henrietta. Although the patent was registered in 1907 in his name alone, he usually attributed it to her in confidence. And as a widow, Negrin herself would emphasize this in a handwritten letter to her friend. Elsie Lee McNeill, also his successor at the head of the brand, in which he gave him instructions to end the production of the DelphiThis design was worn by the most modern women of the time, who sought freedom of movement and expression, such as Eleonora Duse, Isadora Duncan, Ellen Terry and Oona Chaplin.
Left: Dress Delphi in celadon green pleated satin. With a boat neck, dropped sleeves and floor-length. Bordered around the perimeter by glass paste beads and accompanied by a belt decorated with a gold stencilled border. It belonged to the Chaplin family (©Museo del Traje, Madrid). Right: Isadora Duncan's three adopted daughters, in their Delphos dresses, the epitome of modernity.
The Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, facing Campo San Beneto, home of the Fortuny Museum.
Fortuny's legacy
Mariano Fortuny died in Venice in 1949 and was survived by his wife Henriette until 1965. The couple's great legacy included, in addition to the palace, The sorrow of the Orpheus, collections of paintings, drawings and engravings, photographs, fabrics, clothing, lamps, furniture and stage equipment, as well as the rights to his patents and inventions, the contents of his library and his extremely important private archive and the unusual objects in his chamber of wonders.
Fortuny's wish was that all of this be bequeathed to Spain after his death, a task that he entrusted to his wife, Henriette. The Franco government did not want to take charge of it. legacy and, for various reasons and dark interests, the widow's will was not fulfilled. In fact, after her death in 1965, and as the couple had no children, most of the assets passed into the hands of relatives and friends of the couple, and were then sold almost entirely to public institutions and private collectors, which led to the dispersion of a artistic and cultural heritage unique and representative of a particular moment in the history of art and of Fortuny's singular personality.
Fortunately, the town of Venice took over the Palazzo and part of its contents, to be opened to the public as the Fortuny Museum to this day.
Interior designer Elsie McNeill Lee, Countess Gozzi, takes over textile productions by Fortuny
The Fortuny factory
It was precisely the interior designer Elsie Lee McNeill who took over the firm, having convinced Fortuny to give him the exclusive rights to sell the brand in the United States. In his Manhattan store, they sold the artist's textiles and dresses, from the Delphos double up to the dress Eleonora.
When Mariano died, Henriette was no longer strong enough to take over the business, and she suggested that Elsie take over. The interior designer sold her Italian villa to rehabilitate the factory, and lived between Venice and the United States, leading the firm that is still in operation today. Shortly afterwards, she married a Venetian nobleman, and became the owner of the company. Countess GozziIn 1988, already in her nineties, she sold the company to her lawyer and friend, Maged F. Riad, who, together with their children, are the current owners of the factory.
The Fortuna factory on the Venetian island of Giudecca
The company has a massive archive where you can find everything from drawings of original designs and textiles to paintings, pleated dresses, coats and printed velvets. A legacy from Mariano and the Countess herself that serves as inspiration and a starting point for an equally vast catalogue of fabrics updated with her own designs. Of course, applying the same methods as Fortuny: “We continue to produce fabrics in the original factory, on the same machines, and using the same processes and techniques developed by him. Just as importantly, we have embraced our founder’s love of technology and innovation and are expanding our techniques as well,” Riad notes.
The national art world regrets not having been able to bring Fortuny's immense legacy to Spain, but at the same time is pleased that his most important creations remain alive.
