Duilio Cambellotti is rightly considered one of Italy’s leading lights in the Art Nouveau style.

He was at once engraver, woodcutter, painter, stage designer, architect, decorator, interior designer, sculptor, ceramicist and illustrator.

After attending the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Rome, he embarked on a career as a designer, working with theatres and Rome and in Sicily including those of Syracuse and Taormina, where he spent several months.

No less important for Cambellotti’s career than his ties with the theatre, was the bond he felt with the rustic world: themes of a rural nature (such as the famous ear of corn that appears on his furniture and in other works) were recurrent features throughout the whole of his artistic career.

In 1905 he founded the first schools for peasant farmers on the edge of Lazio’s ancient marshland.

He deplored the countryside’s state of decay and organised an exhibition entitled “Mostra delle Scuole dell’Agro Romano” to tie in with the International Expo of 1911.

His artistic output expanded to include the theme of work and the “conquest of the land” in the years following the marshland reclaiming scheme.

In the course of his lifetime, he also turned his hand to architecture and designed homes for peasant farmers as well as a number of private houses.

He also created superb stained glass windows, his finest and best-known including, without question, those in the Casina delle Civette in Villa Torlonia in Rome.