Altalena di Gelsomino

In the Altalena di Gelsomino wallpaper I find the breath of an Indian miniature brought to the wall, a work that belongs to the Rajput school of painting and keeps its chromatic splendour and the rigour of its drawing intact.

The subject is precise: a divine couple, he with his skin painted an intense lapis lazuli blue, she golden as warm bronze, seated close together on a wide wooden swing hung from four gilded chains threaded with jasmine and marigold. She leans towards him, one hand raised to steady a swinging rope of flowers; he rests his arm on the carved balustrade. Both wear jewelled diadems, pleated skirts and transparent scarves that curl into painterly loops over their shoulders. The pale stone pavilion that holds them, with its multifoil arch and slender columns, keeps them at the exact centre of the scene, crowned by a dome with a gilded finial. Around them, a stylised garden of flowering trees, tendrils and pairs of birds fills every space, with not a strip of ground left bare.

It is an image of devotion made play, love turned into rite and quiet turned into festival: two presences passing the weight of the world between them in a light gesture, the swaying. Every petal of the garlands, every stippled jewel on the wrists speaks of a hand that was never in a hurry.

In our atelier, the Altalena di Gelsomino wallpaper is reproduced faithful to its own painted body, ready to become the wall that gives a room its voice, whatever its nature.