So Grand, So Gaudy, So Versace

The Medusa heads have all been removed from the fences, tiling and around the pool. And that vast 12-bedroom, 13-bath Mediterranean-style mansion on Ocean Drive has been sold--for $19 million. All that remains of the contents of the hedonistic pleasure palace Gianni Versace called Casa Casuarina, his Miami Beach home, has been shipped to Sotheby’s New York, where it hits the auction block tonight through Saturday. The three-day auction is expected to fetch up to $7 million. It also will include a series of theatrical costumes, ready-to-wear designs, evening gowns and costume sketches, proceeds from which will be donated to charity. The rest of the money will go to the family.

If you’re looking for a masterpiece, don’t bother heading here. There isn’t one in the entire collection, though the closest is the painting “The Death of Cenchirias, Son of Neptune” by Sophie Rude--a protege of Jacques-Louis David--estimated at $125,000 to $150,000. Most of the paintings, which tend to depict dramatic, sometimes violent scenes plucked from mythology, are expected to bring between $4,000 and $30,000.

The furniture is also mostly more showy than pricey, with a few exceptions, including a mid-19th century Anglo-Indian settee made of rosewood inlaid with brass and bone and inset with portrait medallions of Mughal rulers, estimated at $70,000 to $90,000. Most of the furnishings are heavily gilded pieces, some of them reupholstered in the designer’s Technicolor hues and wild prints.

Subtle style statements, these are not. But then who would expect different? It’s not about the power of individual objects but, rather, personal style, a vision that evokes the likes of Andy Warhol, Napoleon and Liberace. Sifting through fancifully adorned multicolored pillows and bronze Deco nude figures, it’s evident that Versace lived as he designed, with great flamboyance and fanfare. From the overstuffed theme rooms to the quiet and delicate micro-mosaics, Casa Casuarina, more than any of his homes, was the ultimate statement of Versace’s mythology-a-go-go style. It also became the symbol of Miami Beach’s renaissance.

It’s where he entertained Sting and Cher, invited Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant after the Divine Brown affair and partied with Princess Diana, Elton John, Mike Tyson and Madonna. He also shot his star-studded campaigns in its courtyard, attracting rock stars and top fashion photographers such as longtime friend Richard Avedon.

More than anyplace else, Casa Casuarina was Versace’s show palace, set in a tropical paradise, decorated with images of Greek gods and marble stairwells, tile floors and dramatic murals, blown glass and trompe l’oeil murals. His residences in New York and Italy’s Milan and Lake Como may have been more formal; Miami was where he let his hair down.

“It was an amazing stage set,” says Mitchell Owens, interior design director at Elle Decor. “It was all about being loud and flashy and nouveau riche and having a damned good time doing it.”

Though the Sotheby’s staff is tight-lipped about which of Versace’s celebrity friends and fashion peers might bid on such items as his lounge chairs complete with Versace print towels to his turquoise-colored seashell motif china to his many framed profile medallions of Caesar, some have already stopped by in person. Elton John, who had his own suite at Casa Casuarina, previewed the collection a week ago. Designer Mary McFadden came by Friday.

“It feels a little like Andy Warhol’s auction,” says Gillian Arthur, a specialist in French and Continental furniture for Sotheby’s. “And there are some similarities between the two of them. Both men died young and suddenly.” Warhol died at 58 in 1987 of complications from a gall bladder surgery; Versace was 50 when he was murdered at Casa Casuarina in 1997.

“They were creative types who surrounded themselves with celebrities and inspired a cult following. But that’s where the comparisons end. Warhol was rather an indiscriminate pack rat--he saved everything. Gianni Versace was a passionate collector, but he was creating a consistent vision through his home.”

The 600-lot Versace auction is a wildly eclectic assortment that includes everything from Empire furniture and Neoclassical urns and obelisks to Venetian Rococo-style colored-glass mirrors to a 19th century Japanese export gilt-decorated, mother-of-pearl and abalone black-lacquer table that once belonged to Lady Slim Keith to paintings of sphinxes and cherubs, wild beasts and gladiators. His home decor spanned the globe and history, imparting a sense of largess reminiscent of Hearst Castle or Norma Desmond’s home in “Sunset Boulevard.”

“It’s all gilt and pectoral muscles,” says Owens. “It’s hyper-masculine and homoerotic. I think we would have all been very disappointed if he had had a collection of Williamsburg colonial furniture. This is exactly what he should have collected. I don’t think there’s a painting in the house where someone is fully clothed.”

Versace also had what Owens refers to as “horror vacui”--fear of empty spaces.

“Every square inch of wall had to be covered,” Owens says. “He became defined by his objects, and the more he could cram in, the more impressive he was.” This excessive, hyper-masculine, flashy and fun, grand and gaudy, classical and kitsch decor spawned the Versace home collection.

“Gianni had this bold, fearless understanding of how pattern and print could work together, clash and even be choreographed all together,” says Ingrid Sischy, editor in chief of Interview magazine and a close friend of the late designer. “When you saw everything together, by which I mean how he painted the walls, the ceilings, the floors and how he arranged the furniture and the decorative objects, the way it all worked together for me was this real lesson in interior decoration.”

Simply put, if you find something like the signed Jacob mahogany ormolu bureau-plat (desk), one of the most expensive items--estimated at $100,000 to $150,000--imposing enough on the 10th floor of Sotheby’s, just imagine how it must have looked in Versace’s study, surrounded by dramatic murals, Roman-style tile floors, a multitude of paintings and walls festooned with gold leaf.

“It’s the same sort of taste Napoleon came to use,” says Owens. “Like Napoleon, Versace came from a humble background--he was from Calabria--and his home became a way to prop up an image.”

Whether you love or loathe that Southern-Italian-by-way-of-Hollywood image, you can’t deny Versace’s spirit. “Diana Vreeland once said, ‘I don’t mind bad taste, I hate no taste,’ ” says fashion author Valerie Steele, acting director of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. “And as we look back at the designers of the late 20th century, he is definitely one of the most prominent ones in terms of having a clear style vision.”

Who will buy this stuff is hard to predict. Sotheby’s isn’t banking on too many dot-comers as Versace collectors. “This is the first generation of new money that hasn’t felt the need to buy into old French paintings and furnishings for self-validation,” says Sotheby’s Arthur. “I don’t think there will be a lot of young collectors.”

On the other hand, it’s just that nostalgia-driven, star-obsessed crowd that might want to claim a piece of Versace--the man, the myth, the murder victim. “I’m just glad they didn’t include the tissue boxes or trash cans,” says Owens. “But I would set a table with his china in three seconds.”