{"id":45,"date":"2021-10-21T11:40:23","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T09:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homesandantiques.com\/?p=22525"},"modified":"2021-10-25T17:53:14","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T15:53:14","slug":"an-elegant-renovation-of-an-italian-villa","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/homesantiques\/rss_feed\/an-elegant-renovation-of-an-italian-villa\/","title":{"rendered":"An elegant renovation of an Italian villa"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Molly Malsom\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Thursday, 21 October 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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With its elegant terraces, immaculate Italianate garden, and tantalising views of Lake Garda, it\u2019s hard to imagine this villa as the dilapidated shell Jane Ross stumbled upon more than 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u2018My mother was returning to her home after spending a year with her husband in the Villa Massimo (a German cultural centre). She had fallen in love with the country, but she wanted to live near the water. It was 1969 and she saw a rundown house set in an abandoned vineyard,\u2019 explains her daughter, Anna Katharina Fr\u00f6hlich.<\/p>\n

The building may at one time have served as a tavern for the nearby monastery, and featured on old maps<\/a>, dating back some 500 years. \u2018There was no electricity or running water, part of the house was a stable, and what is now my home was a separate dilapidated barn,\u2019 recalls Anna Katharina.<\/p>\n

\""Lake\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Lake Garda and the mountains beyond form a dramatic backdrop to a pair of houses owned by mother and daughter, Jane Ross and Anna Katharina Fr\u00f6hlich. The buildings are linked by Italianate gardens.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

None of this deterred Jane, who is, according to her daughter, an indefatigable gardener and architect. \u2018She was fascinated by the house, and over the decades she\u2019s changed every centimetre, as many times as a snake changes its skin.\u2019 Throughout Anna Katharina\u2019s childhood the renovations and enlargements continued, and the house and the garden around it took shape.<\/p>\n

A passion for art and a love of reading are reflected in almost everything the main villa contains. There are two libraries, one large one small. Walls are hung with Old Master paintings or lined with books inherited from Jane\u2019s second husband, a member of the Ullstein family, who were once leading international publishers.<\/p>\n

Much of the furniture and many works of art were found at antiques markets<\/a> throughout Italy, as well as in India, France and Germany, where Jane spent periods of her life. \u2018My father was a writer and so were my mother\u2019s other two husbands. It\u2019s not surprising that growing up in this milieu my ambition was to become a writer too,\u2019 says Anna Katharina, who is the author of five highly acclaimed novels.<\/p>\n

\""Lake\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Jane\u2019s bedroom is deliberately romantic in style. She found her bed in the antiques market in Brescia and commissioned an artist from Rome to paint the trompe l\u2019oeil ceiling with billowing clouds<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

There was no overriding theme to the decoration of the house, it developed slowly, shaped by Jane\u2019s love of Italian Renaissance painting. \u2018Many of the decorations are copied from Pisanello, Dosso Dossi and Veronese,\u2019 says Anna Katharina.<\/p>\n

There are imaginative theatrical touches throughout the house: balustrades intertwined with foliage, beams painted in strong hues, a striped tented ceiling. \u2018My mother travelled around looking at every detail in churches and palaces.\u2019 Her favourite room is her bedroom, with its rich velvet-draped canopy and striking celestial trompe-l\u2019oeil painted ceiling. \u2018For all of us, a bed is an escape from life,\u2019 says Anna Katharina.<\/p>\n

Jane\u2019s delight in Old Master painting also lies behind a decorative collection of copper pots<\/a> in the kitchen. \u2018She was inspired by the still-life paintings of Chardin and bought the pots over the years. Some are very old. My mother says the older they are the more they shine. We have dinner together every evening and still cook with them.\u2019<\/p>\n

\""Lake\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Soft grey walls on the landing are hand-painted with foliage and flowers inspired by the wall decoration in Venetian palazzos.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

The echoes of her mother\u2019s taste in Anna Katharina\u2019s converted barn are unavoidable, but the unspoken decorative aim was slightly different: to unite the two countries in which she spent most of her life \u2013 India and Italy.<\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, Anna Katharina was at an auction in India\u2019s oldest surviving auction house, The Russell Exchange<\/a>, Kolkata, when she bought a few blue and white plates. That purchase triggered the collection that now fills a huge dresser in her kitchen.<\/p>\n

\u2018After that, wherever I went, I looked for blue and white plates, and over the years the collection came together.\u2019 Some of her other Indian finds were discovered in the unlikeliest places. \u2018I bought a lovely old Indian mirror<\/a> in the fish market in Calcutta.\u2019<\/p>\n

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