The Franzoia Mansion: Culture, Knowledge and Love of Beauty

Italian Mansions, one of Cambi’s most anticipated Genoese auctions, returns on Thursday, July 4, 2024, in the evocative setting of Mackenzie Castle in Genoa with a new catalog that stands out for its heterogeneity. On auction, a core of artworks, furniture, decorative elements and antiques selected by our experts to embellish any kind of environment.

Among the collections on auction at Italian Mansions, objects from the Franzoia Mansion stand out.

Marco Arosio, Director of the 20th Century Decorative Arts Department of Cambi Auction House recounts:

“It is difficult to summarize in a nutshell the personality and genius of architect Ferruccio Franzoia and the great legacy of culture, knowledge and love of beauty that he passed on to all the people who had the good fortune to know and frequent him.

I collaborated with him for more than 30 years in a continuous shuttle between Venice, his studio in Milan and his wonderful home in Feltre.”

“Ferruccio in addition to being one of Carlo Scarpa’s favorite students also had an artistic talent that led him to recognize and appreciate the authentic in every artistic form.”

“It was in Venice that he left the most interesting interventions in the restoration of historic palaces with very modern solutions to the needs of the clients: Palazzo Contarini della Porta di Ferro, Baron Rubin de Cervin’s apartment in Palazzo Albrizzi, the intervention in Palazzo Lezze in Campo Santo Stefano, and many works in collaboration with Barbara and Antonio Foscari.”

“If in architecture with a sure hand he solved the most difficult problems in the restoration and preservation of historic buildings, in antiques he had an unparalleled talent for advising friends and clients to choose the best to furnish their homes.

It was precisely because of his innate ability to enhance every object of art that some of the greatest antique dealers asked him to set up their stands in the most important exhibitions in Milan, Rome and Venice.”

“His home was a mirror of his passions: after reviving part of the ancient 16th-century structures hidden in the 19th century, for his studio he began to design beautiful furniture created to preserve his extraordinary collection of Murano Glass. Crucial was the input of his wife Carla Nasci, an attentive advisor for the most beautiful pieces. The fruit of this long and passionate search, which has seen us united in markets halfway around the world, is now on display at the Civic Museums of Feltre in an exhibition arrangement that was the ultimate gift of Ferruccio’s genius.

The architect was a direct nephew of one of the greatest protagonists of ironworking in early 20th-century Italy, Carlo Rizzarda, who dying at a very young age left the prototypes of all his work as a dowry to the city of Feltre. Ferruccio collected some of the most beautiful pieces.”

In fact, it is from the Franzoia collection that a group of Carlo Rizzarda lamps characterized by the fascinating floral and naturalistic decorations, in full Art Nouveau style, that give the auction catalog the character of eclectic vivacity.

“Painting was also a great passion of his, and proof of this are the magnificent paintings that made up his collection,” Marco Arosio continues.

Also coming from the Franzoia collection in fact, a heterogeneous collection of forty gouaches by Michelangelo Maestri (Rome, 1741, Rome, 1812), remarkable for their quality of execution and size, divided into twenty-two sheets, having as their main theme the Greek deities Apollo and Dionysus, along with depictions of Maenads and Muses.

This collection was exhibited in 2011 in the solo exhibition dedicated to the painter and draftsman of the neoclassical age, entitled “Michelangelo Maestri – The Breath of Memory,” and were published in the exhibition catalog.