Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo(11 May 1871-3 May 1949)

Portrait of Mariano Fortuny y Marsal, father of Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, 1875 by Goupil and CieParis

Henriette Negrin(1977-1965), wife of Mariano Fortuny

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (11 May 1871 – 3 May 1949) was a Spanish fashion designer who opened his couture house in 1906 and continued until 1946. He was the son of the painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal. Mariano Fortuny is mostly known for his Delphos dress made of pleated silk.

​Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (Granada, 11 de mayo de 1871 - Venecia, 3 de mayo de 1949) fue un pintor, grabador, fotógrafo, diseñador textil, diseñador de moda y escenógrafo español, nacionalizado italiano.

Biography

Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo was born in Granada Spain on 11 May 1871, in a prestigious and artistic family. His father Maria Fortuny y Marsal (1838-1874) was an important oritentalist painter of his time and an avid art collector, and the family of his mother Cecilia de Madrazo was in the service of Spanish King.  Her father was the director of Museo Prado in Madrid Spain.

Mariano has herited the passion of painting from his family, and started to paint since an early age.

When he was 3 year old, his father died, his mother Cecilia took him and his brother from Rome to live in Paris.

Since 1889, Mariano moved to Venice with his mother Cecilia de Madrazo. They lived in Palazzo Martinengo, along Grand Canal.

It was in Venice that Mariano started to be involved with theatre and opera. He seemed to love every aspect of this world of spectacle, in particular the designing of decor and lighting effects, with a painter's eyes and inventor's brain, he invented an indirect lighting which gave the background of the plays a much more profound illusion.

Later, in order to achieve a fine harmony between the decor he designed for the plays and the artists who performed, he also started to create costumes for them, creating new textiles as well printing motifs he painted himself.

His passion for opera grew more intensely when he found Richard Wagner through the Spainish painter and musician Rogelio de Egusquiza, which became a life long love and obssesion.

Black sleeveless Delphos dress by Mariano Fortuny

1907, the most famous creation of Mariano Fortuny, the first Delphos gown was created in the attic of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, It was a pleated silk taffeta gown reminiscent of the Greek Ionic chiton, and was named Delphos in tribute to the severe Charioteer, a bronze statue found at Delphi in 1896.

It was Mariano's long time muse and later wife Henriette Brassart who invented a unique way of pleating the silk taffeta fabric, so that it gave volume, texture as well as character to the otherwise flimsy fabric, it was also her who invented the silk dyeing technique using natural dye around the world.

Mariano met Henriette Negrin, an experienced dressmaker, in Paris in 1897, and she soon became his muse as well as his collaborator, they worked together on all of the significant creations of Mariano as costume and fashion designer.

In 1924, Mariano married Henriette, the two artistic lovers became husband and wife.

​From 1902 they lived in the Palazzo Pesaro Orfei in Venice, which Fortuny filled with the artwork of his father, art that his father collected, and other art and artefacts that inspired him. He called the palazzo his "think tank" where he had many rooms set up for experiments and inventions as well as rooms for inspiration. Fortuny drew from styles of the past for his fashion design as well, inspired by the light, airy clothing of Greek women that clung to the body and accentuated the natural curves and shape of a woman's body.

Fortuny rebelled against the style lines that were popular during his time period. In 1907 he and Henriette created the Delphos gown, a shift dress made of finely pleated silk weighed down by glass beads that held its shape and flowed on the body. The pleating that he used was all done by hand and no one has been able to recreate pleating that is as fine as his or has held its shape like his dresses have for many years. He also manufactured his own dyes and pigments for his fabrics using ancient methods. With these dyes he began printing on velvets and silks and dyed them using a press that he invented with wooden blocks onto which he engraved the pattern.

His clients include Isadora Duncan, Clarisse Coudert, Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe and her daughter Élaine Greffulhe, Eleonora Duse, Peggie Guggenheim, Ellen Terry and Oona O'Neill, etc. And his most famous client is Gloria Vanderbilt, who is also one of the biggest collectors of Mariano Fortuny's Delphos dresses.

Clarisse Coudert, wife of Condé Nast, in a Mariano Fortuny Delphos dress

His dresses are seen as fine works of art today and many survive, still pleated, in museums and personal collections.

Green silk velvet evening cape by Mariano Fortuny

​The Fortuny Museum is housed in the Venetian Gothic Palazzo Pesaro Orfei in Venice. It contains work by Fortuny in the fields of textile design, fashion design, painting, sculpture, photography and lighting, and also a number of paintings by his father Mariano Fortuny y Marsal.

Lady Mary Crawley wearing an original Mariano Fortuny Peplos gown in Downton Abbey

In 2012, the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in New York City mounted an exhibition of his work.

Biografia

​Nació en Granada en 1871, en el seno de una familia volcada por completo en el mundo del arte. Su padre era el pintor español Mariano Fortuny y su madre, Cecilia de Madrazo, también provenía de una familia de artistas pues era hija del también pintor Federico de Madrazo y hermana de Raimundo de Madrazo. Su abuelo, Federico de Madrazo (1815-1894), era un reconocido retratista y fue nombrado director del Museo del Prado en 1861.

​A los tres años de edad su padre falleció y su madre decidió trasladarse con sus hijos y su hermano Raimundo a París. Allí, Mariano pronto destacó por su talento artístico y empezó a pintar con Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. También estudió dibujo y química en Francia y Alemania.

​En 1888 se mudó al palacio Martinego, en Venecia, donde se interesó por la gran colección de tejidos antiguos atesorada por su familia.

Movido por sus inquietudes artísticas desde joven, Fortuny viajó por toda Europa a la búsqueda de artistas que admiraba, entre ellos el compositor alemán Richard Wagner. Su talento abarcó también la investigación en diferentes campos, como en pintura, fotografía, escultura, arquitectura, escenografía o técnicas de iluminación para artes escénicas.

Expuso por primera vez sus cuadros en Londres en 1894 y en 1897. In 1897 Conoció en París a Henriette Negrín,  la mujer con la que se casaría. Más tarde haría exposiciones en París (1899), Milán (1900) y Barcelona (1922).

Fortuny reflejó en sus obras el estilo del modernismo y su espíritu ecléctico. Colaboró en los vestuarios y escenografías del teatro de la Scala de Milán, para obras como Tristán e Isolda, La valquiria o La vida breve.

Son especialmente importantes sus creaciones en el mundo de la moda, recuperando el gusto por la indumentaria de la Antigua Grecia.

Hacia 1906 abrió su taller en el Palacio Pesaro degli Orfei junto a su esposa Henriette Negrin y creó telas y trajes originales utilizando técnicas secretas.

Destaca su traje Delphos, que recupera las largas túnicas hechas de telas ligeras. Para la ejecución del Delphos era necesario completar el plisado de forma manual y la intervención de una máquina semimecánica formada por un sistema de poleas y rodillos capaz de conseguir el ondulado transversal de su superficie. También se implicó en el diseño textil, innovando en el tintado de las telas y en los estampados para hacerlos parecer de la Antigüedad. Por ejemplo, el efecto plateado de sus telas se obtenía mediante la aplicación de sustancias metálicas de polvo de aluminio. La obtención de transparencias y colores únicos para cada pieza obedece a técnicas consistentes en el bañado, capa a capa, de las telas en numerosos tintes.

Entre 1909 y 1910 Mariano registró dos patentes en París. En 1911 creó la sociedad Mariano Fortuny para comercializar tejidos y, en 1919, la Sociedad Anónima Fortuny en la isla de la Giudecca para imprimir mecánicamente papeles pintados, fotografías y tejidos, a excepción del terciopelo y la seda.
 
Murió en 1949 en su palacio veneciano y fue enterrado en el Cementerio de Verano de Roma. Su viuda donó parte de su legado y el palacio, que actualmente acoge el Museo Fortuny, a la ciudad de Venecia tras haber sido rechazado por el estado español.

Parte de sus vanguardistas e, incluso, rupturistas diseños de moda se exhiben en la Sala Fortuny del Museo del Traje de Madrid junto con otras telas y vestidos orientales que él mismo coleccionó.