Terra e Ombra: the bespoke art of Villa Castellina

Each Prime home is guided by a phrase, and here it was terra e ombra. “It means land and shadow,” Francesca explains. “We wanted every piece, from the furniture to the art, to be rooted in the landscape and the wider hills of Chianti. We drew on the cotto floors and vaulted ceilings, the olive groves and the vineyards on the horizon, and translated that into a layered, textural interior. Grounded, but never rustic.”

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That sense of place begins at the front door. In one corner of the entrance stood a small fireplace, modest for a space of this scale. Painted above it was a crest of a crowned eagle on a field of yellow, the emblem of the Contrada dell’Aquila. The Contrada is one of the seventeen city districts of Siena that compete each summer in the Palio, the historic horse race around the Piazza del Campo.

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“The crest was softened by years of smoke and marked with fine cracks,” Francesca recalls. “We wanted the entrance to feel grander, so the fireplace had to change, but we were never going to let the crest disappear with it.” In its place, a taller chimney breast is taking shape, its gentle curve echoing the arches that run through the home. The crest itself has been recreated by an artist on a framed canvas, its age and wear faithfully kept, and will return to the same room.

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“It respects the history of the house and brings it back in,” Francesca says. “Because it carries that sense of age, it never reads as something new.” It is this kind of detail that gives an August home its depth: grounded in the history of its region and, in this case, in the story of the house itself.

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Across the drive from the main villa stands the annex, once the place where the estate's wine was made and stored in great vats. Open to the elements at high level, it was built with a pattern of brickwork that let the air move freely while keeping the rain at bay. That brickwork became the starting point for the hall. 

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"It's a beautiful detail, and we wanted to carry it into the main villa," Francesca explains. "From where the pieces will hang, you can look down the corridor and across the drive to the brickwork that inspired them."

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The corridor itself is long, and too narrow for furniture, with nothing to soften its surfaces of stone and plaster. A textile felt like the natural answer. "The tapestry brings a softness to the space," she says. "And because the brickwork is three-dimensional, the piece needed to be too. Threads of different weights weave in and out to create that depth."

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The work is arranged as nine framed squares, some patterns repeated and turned, so that the grid moves with the rhythm of the brick. "Nine squares give it that repetition," Francesca says. "Three in a row would never have had the same presence."

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Finalising the piece took time and patience. Over three to four months, the weaver and the StudioRL exchanged samples and photographs, refining each square in turn. An early tufted version was set aside in favour of a finer woven approach. "It wasn't right for the home," Francesca reflects. "Several iterations later, the woven piece is exactly what we hoped for." With the final squares approved, the pieces are now being made, ready to take their place along the corridor.

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The oil paintings began with the views from the house. Trusted artists worked from photographs taken by StudioRL, a set palette and a careful brief. "They know the quality we look for," Francesca explains, "and they translate each view into something softer and hazier in oil."

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The largest bespoke piece in the home hangs in the dining room, and it turns the familiar view on its head. "It's a reverse view," says Francesca, "the house as you would see it from the far end of the vineyards, looking back." Cypresses line the horizon, and the vineyards fall away in long, ordered rows. "There's a quiet geometry to the vine rows and the patchwork of fields, and that's what gives the painting its abstract style. It's the only piece painted this way, but like the others, it begins with the landscape."

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Its colours are also drawn from the room around it. "The palette comes from the room itself: the veining in the marble table, the chocolate velvet on the chairs, and the terracotta of the vaulted ceiling," she says. "It's a darker room, so we kept lighter tones in the painting so it never feels heavy."

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Upstairs, the paintings grow softer. In the principal bedroom, the light from the front of the house is carried inside. "The softest, haziest light falls across the front of the house, down the cypress-lined drive," Francesca explains. "We wanted to carry that warmth into the principal bedroom."

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In bedroom three, a pair of paintings holds the room's own sunset. "It's that moment when the sky turns hazy and glows, with the vineyards below and two tall trees in silhouette," she says. "We wanted that view to stay with the room, day or night." The two are designed to hang together, though each holds its own. "At installation, we can let the room decide."