A few tips for doing up your house, Mr Renzo Mongiardino-style.

The work of the late Italian architect and interior designer Mr Renzo Mongiardino could not easily be called “light”, “airy” or “subtle”. But its genius lies in its complexity. Mr Mongiardino, who died in 1998, was a man who could plaster a room in antique floral tapestries, add geometric-patterned wallpaper, finish it off with striped curtains (and a matching sofa), and somehow make it all work. Sought out in during his lifetime by the bold and aesthetically minded – his clients included aristocrats, the art world elite and fashion designers, among others – his Midas touch is plain to see in The Interiors And Architecture Of Renzo Mongiardino: A Painterly Vision, a new book on the designer’s work published by Rizzoli and edited by Cabana Magazine founder Ms Martina Mondadori Sartogo.

“We do not want this to be yet ‘another’ volume on Mongiardino,” writes Ms Mondadori Sartogo in the book’s introduction. “We have looked at Renzo’s work today… and have [photographed] his rooms in a more intimate way, focusing on decorative details, architectural elements, and perspectives – ultimately wanting to very gently inspire, or emotionally move, our readers through his rooms and his illusions.”

Perhaps it’s because of the maximalist mood in style at the moment, but this all looks rather wonderful to us at MR PORTER, as we sit in our rather restrained black-and-white HQ. Maybe it’s time to redecorate? If you’re feeling the same way – scroll down for some pointers on how to emulate Mr Mongiardino’s quintessentially Italian style.

It is wholly unsurprising to learn that before he designed interiors, Mr Mongiardino created film and theatre sets. Known for being a master of illusion, Mr Mongiardino was fond of incorporating trompe-l’oeil landscapes into his rooms, and painted walls to make them appear as if they’d been panelled. In the book’s foreword, the opera director Mr Patrick Kinmonth writes, “If his sets for [productions] seemed as permanent onstage as his interiors, it is because his interiors have a theatrical quality: interpretive, moody, and dramatic.”

Light is a crucial feature in any room, but Mr Mongiardino gave it particular due in his interiors, especially in relation to lamps. Mr Kinmonth writes that, although lampshades are often the “Achilles’ heel” of the interior designer, Mr Mongiardino knew what to do: “He made the most perfect and inventively shaped wire frames and dressed them down with Indian saris cut up, old Chinese silk shawls, and fragments of Italian taffetas and French 18th-century dress materials. The eye of the master is an eye for detail.”

“Never crowded, yet wonderfully rich, [Mongiardino’s] use of pattern breathes elegance, and his rooms encourage intimacy,” writes Mr Kinmonth. Indeed, Mr Mongiardino’s arresting patterns are of the most defining features of his work; in a restored 13th-century castle just south of Milan, for instance, has its walls designed in geometrical patterns inspired by medieval art to reference the history of the building. Sometimes, one pattern just wasn’t enough – for the American socialite Ms Lee Radziwill, Mr Mongiardino covered the entire dining room of her former country home Turville Grange with some flea-market foulards, and then had the artist Ms Lila De Nobili paint floral motifs over them.

Mr Mongiardino took influences from old European masters and historical Italian iconography, but also borrowed from much further afield. He was known for decorating with Indian and Persian fabrics, combining them with European designs in a kind of east-meets-west, worldly aesthetic. For one client (incidentally, Ms Mondadori Sartogo’s mother), Mr Mongiardino suggested they begin a Japanese Imari plate collection, which came to occupy a whole wall in the dining room.

Far from replicating an era as one might in a museum exhibition, Mr Mongiardino eschewed historical accuracy and focused instead on reinventing the lost ambience of the time. For instance, in a Roman palace room opposite the Colosseum, decorated by Mr Mongiardino in the 1970s, tables are topped with granite obelisks, their leonine legs gilded in gold and flanked by life-sized porcelain Renaissance figures. Ms Mondadori Sartogo writes of the room, “Instead of being disorientated, the visitor has a very pleasant sensation of having been transported, by magic, into the fascinating atmosphere of the 17th-century grand tour.”

The Interiors And Architecture Of Renzo Mongiardino: A Painterly Vision (Rizzoli) by Ms Martina Mondadori Sartogo and editors of Cabana Magazine_, photographed by Mr Guido Taroni, is out now_

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