A bohemian family home in rural Tuscany
A rambling estate overlooking Florence creates a bohemian home for painter Fiona Corsini di San Giuliano, her husband, and their six children.
One look at Fiona Corsini di San Giuliano’s Instagram (@eyewanderer) and one is transported to bucolic bliss in the Tuscan hills.
Set amongst the olive groves and orchards the family resides in what was once a group of Renaissance-era farm buildings at the edge of the 15-acre property, which also includes an occupied 16th-century villa.
The Greek-born architect Themistocle Antoniadis, who has lived in Florence for decades helped Corsini di San Giuliano conceptualize the transformation from the beginning. The modest structures once housed farm animals and had to be stripped down completely. After discarding the massive, centuries-old rotten beams, the broken roof tiles, and the moldy stucco, Antoniadis recreated the buildings to seem as though as they had remained intact through the centuries.
The decorative elements are created with an artist’s eye and a nod to Corsini’s aristocratic roots. Some of the wonderfully eclectic features include frescoed walls and parquet floors mixed with lamps found in flea markets, and tapestries draped above iron beds, a console inspired by the benches in the train station of Santa Maria Novella and a 1920’s alabaster lamp hanging over a bathtub by the Spanish designer Jaime Hayon for Bisazza.
The elderly couple who sold them the farm died within the last couple of years, so their villa now lies vacant. Corsini intends to create a mid-19th century-inspired interior for the sprawling family and future generations. “I rely on my instincts and my imagination,” she tells The New York Times, “rather than on tradition.”
Credits: New York Times
Photography: Simon Watson
