Gabriele d’Annunzio

Gabriele d’Annunzio: decadent poet, best-selling novelist, journalist-agitator, infamously demanding lover (of the likes of Sarah Bernhardt and her Italian rival, Eleanora Duse), and First World War air hero. He claimed to embody Nietzsche’s übermensch — an artist, eccentric genius, and leader of men.

The art director of Purple, Gianni Oprandi, was given free access to photograph d’Annunzio’s villa on the shores of the Gardone Riviera. This house and its garden were his final masterpiece, where he surrounded himself with books, artworks, mementos from his lovers, and some of his political and existential statements.

photography by GIANNI OPRANDI
photographer’s assistant FRANCESCO FRUGONI

 

A legend in his own time, Gabriele d’Annunzio constantly sought power and recognition. At the end of the First World War he tried to repatriate the town of Fiume, on the Croatian coast, a city-state that he ran briefly by dictatorial rule, popularizing the Roman salute, military…