Mauro Restiffe: The Tattooed Villa

• Published in: Aperture no. 238; pp. 87 - 95
• Main Author: Elkin, Lauren
• Format: Trade Publication Article
• Language: English
• Published: Millerton Aperture, Incorporated 01.04.2020
• Subjects: 20th century; Cocteau, Jean (1889-1963); Houses; Murals; Photography; Restiffe, Mauro; Villas; Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat France
• ISSN: 0003-6420

On the tip of Saint-Jean-CapFerrat, on a peninsula of the French Riviera, sits the Villa Santo Sospir, once the home of the socialite Francine Weisweiller. One evening in 1950, while staying at the house, Jean Cocteau offered to draw the head of Apollo on the wall over the fireplace in the salon. Before long, Cocteau was covering the whole house in mythological frescoes, letting his whimsical yet controlled line wander where it would, across walls, doors, and even lampshades, covering some with rich, fantastical images and colors. Over twelve years, Cocteau embellished the surfaces of the house, "tattooing" it, in his words. The Brazilian photographer Mauro Restiffe was invited to document the paintings before the restoration began. These aren't the glossy, presentational kind of photographs of the house you'll find in home-and-garden magazines; they ask us to see the drawings as more than home decor. Restiffe stayed alone in the house for a week, photographing by day and by night, trying to see the house anew every time he went wandering through it. Eventually, he says, he grew so comfortable there that it began to affect the photographs he took.