Cellini Mirror, between art and legend
An object can be magical, and it can tell us stories that overtake the reality.
One of those objects is “Cellini Mirror“: through its shape it shows us a magnificent world, back to the baroque time.
Therefore Cellini Mirror by Spini is a carved-wood mirror, inspired by the great artists of mannerism and baroque. The mirror is entitled to Cellini, the famous Florentine artist that still influences generations of craftsmen.
The inspiration for creating this gorgeous mirror does not come only from the Cellini’s techniques; when Spini’s craftsmen made it, they wanted to create an homage to Tuscany nobility of the Seventeenth-century, and in particular to one of the most controversial Tuscany legends, the story of Lucìda Mansi.
The legend of Lucìda Mansi
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- Lucìda Mansi
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- Mansi’s Villa
Once upon a time a beautiful but vain noble woman, Lucìda Mansi, who lived in a wonderful villa in Lucca. She was one of the most beautiful girls of the city, a real femme fatale. Therefore men adored her and desired to be with her.
She was beautiful as she was cruel, indeed she used to kill her lovers when they bored her.
Lucìda was obsesses by her beauty. She had a lot of gorgeous mirrors, that covered the walls of her room. Those colossal and shining mirrors were made by the best craftsmen of the country.
But time ravages beauty and Lucìda understood it when she saw a little wrinkle on her beautiful face. She knew that she got old and she could not do anything for changing that. She could not accept to lose her youthful good look, so she decided to made a deal with the Devil.
The Devil and Lucìda agreed that in exchange of her soul, the Devil would have given her thirty years of additional youth. After thirty years of fancy life and numerous lovers, the Devil turned back to claim Lucìda’s Soul. She tried to avoid her destiny, but she failed: thus the Devil took Lucida with him, and he brought her to Hell.
Today it seems that Lucìda did not even manage to find peace after her death; you can still see her Ghost around the city of Lucca. Some people see Lucìda in her palace, some others in the botanical garden’s lake, where you can see the reflection of her face in the water.