Fornasetti Tema e Variazioni - No 281 Porcelain Wall Plate, 1950s
Fornasetti Tema e Variazioni - No 281 Porcelain Wall Plate, 1950s
A striking 1950s Fornasetti Tema e Variazioni porcelain wall plate, featuring the iconic face of the celebrated opera singer Lina Cavalieri. Instantly recognisable and endlessly inventive, this celebrated series transformed Cavalieri's classical beauty into one of the most enduring images in 20th-century decorative art.
The plate is finely crafted in porcelain and decorated with a stylised portrait of Cavalieri, whose poised expression, dramatic eyes, and elegant features became the central subject of Piero Fornasetti's celebrated variations. Each design in the Tema e Variazioni series reimagines the same face through a different visual idea-playful, surreal, theatrical, or mysterious-creating an endless dialogue between classical portraiture and modern design.
Lina Cavalieri, often described in her lifetime as one of the most beautiful women in the world, provided Fornasetti with the perfect muse. Her image was discovered in a 19th-century French magazine and became the foundation for a vast body of work that remains synonymous with the Fornasetti name. The resulting designs are at once decorative, witty, and unmistakably sophisticated.
Dating from the 1950s, this early example has particular appeal for collectors of mid-century Italian design. It works beautifully as a wall-mounted decorative object, where its graphic black-and-white imagery creates an immediate focal point, or as part of a larger group of Fornasetti plates.
A highly desirable piece of Italian design history, combining artistic imagination, porcelain craftsmanship, and the enduring glamour of the Tema e Variazioni series.
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