The place of affection

By Flavia Tomaello, https://flaviatomaello.blog/, Instagram @flavia.tomaello

Lecce preserves a particular form of beauty, a beauty that is based on light stone and a history that can be read in layers. The light rests softly on ancient walls, filters into silent patios, accompanies a city that has learned to live with time. In this baroque framework, the Fiermonte Museum emerges, a space that brings together art and hospitality under the same breath. Here, creation abandons academic distance and becomes a lived experience, a sensitive refuge, a story that continues to be written.
The origin of the Fiermonte Museum is crossed by an intense history, marked by love, friendship and loss. At the center of that story is Antonia Fiermonte, a painter and violinist born in Puglia, a woman of exceptional sensitivity and free spirit. His life developed between Italy and France, between music, painting and the cultural circles of his time. Antonia was much more than an artist, she was a meeting point, an energy capable of uniting destinies and creative wills.
His figure links two of the most relevant sculptors of 20th century French sculpture, René Letourneur and Jacques Zwoboda. Both shared a deep friendship and an artistic career marked by rigor, formal search and creative ambition. They both loved Antonia, each from a different place, and that complex and passionate relationship became the emotional driving force of much of their work. Decades later, Fouad Giacomo and Antonia Yasmina Filali, Antonia’s grandchildren, decided to recover that legacy and return it to their land of origin. The museum is born from that intimate gesture, as an act of restitution and continuity.
The Fiermonte Museum tour is based on the private collection of the Fiermonte Filali family and proposes an in-depth reading of European art from the first decades of the 20th century. Marble and bronze sculptures, drawings, paintings, photographs, letters, notebooks and books build a narrative that combines historical rigor and emotion. Each work appears linked to a biography, a relationship, a lived experience. The visitor does not face a set of isolated pieces, he enters a human story where art is revealed as a consequence of life.
The museum experience is amplified thanks to the use of contemporary technologies that enrich perception. Holography, immersive virtual reality, stereoscopic panoramas and three-dimensional documentaries accompany the tour, providing sensory layers that allow a more intimate understanding of the artists and their context. Technology acts as a sensitive mediator, promoting an emotional connection with the works and their stories.
Jacques Zwoboda and René Letourneur represent two complementary paths within modern sculpture. Zwoboda began his career in historical figuration to progressively advance towards an increasingly essential abstraction, exploring movement and formal synthesis. Letourneur, for his part, stood out for a production linked to public commissions during the years of reconstruction after the war, with monumental sculptures, sensual curves and a strong physical presence. They both met at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, where a friendship began that was consolidated over time and with shared projects.
One of the decisive moments of their careers was the international competition called in 1929 by the Ecuadorian government to build a monument to Simón Bolívar in Quito. The project, supported by Aristide Maillol, president of the jury, marked a turning point. After winning first prize, the sculptors established their studios in Fontenay aux Roses, where they settled with their families. By then, both had received important recognitions, Letourneur with a medal at the Salon des Artistes Français and Zwoboda with the gold medal at the International Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts. The work dedicated to Bolívar definitively consolidated his international projection.
live art
At the emotional center of this universe is Antonia Fiermonte. A painter with a sensitive look and a passionate violinist, she was a muse, companion and creative force. After moving to Rome with her family, she met René Letourneur while working as a model at Villa Medici. The bond was immediate and led her to Paris, where they married and their daughter Anne was born. Living with Jacques Zwoboda, Letourneur’s friend and collaborator, gave rise to an intense and complex emotional relationship. Zwoboda fell deeply in love with Antonia and expressed that love through countless letters, drawings and sculptures that today form an essential part of the museum’s story.
After years of shared life marked by emotional tension and artistic creation, Antonia decided to continue her bond with Jacques, who had rekindled her creative impulse. That new beginning was abruptly interrupted by his premature death at the age of forty-two, during a stay in Rome. The loss permanently marked Zwoboda, who dedicated the rest of his life and work to keeping Antonia’s memory alive. He tirelessly portrayed her in pencil and charcoal drawings, modeled her bust on multiple occasions and built a mausoleum for her in the Mentana cemetery, fulfilling her wish to rest away from the city, surrounded by light and silence. Letourneur, classically trained at the French Academy in Rome, continued to develop powerful work, with imposing figures and nudes where Antonia’s mark remains latent.
The Fiermonte Museum translates this history into an immersive and vital experience. The exhibition tour invites us to understand the emotional complexity of bonds and the human depth of creative processes. The museum is transformed into an empathetic and poetic space, a bridge between past and present where art is lived as a sensory and emotional experience.
This vocation extends towards a unique museum hotel proposal. Four themed suites allow you to inhabit art intimately, even outside visiting hours. Each one is dedicated to a creative discipline and offers a different experience. The Nocturne Suite celebrates music, evoking the figure of Antonia as a violinist and Zwoboda as a cellist. The Peplum Suite is linked to cinema and the figure of Enzo Fiermonte, Antonia’s brother, boxer and actor with a cinematic life. The Avant Garde Suite pays tribute to the painting and creative gesture of Antonia Fiermonte. The Marble Suite is dedicated to sculpture, direct contact with matter, patient work with marble and bronze.
Each suite is also defined by a precise chromatic identity. Lapis lazuli blue surrounds the Night Suite, Pompeian red characterizes the Peplum, emerald green distinguishes the Avant Garde and powder green defines the Marble Suite. Staying in them means walking through the museum in silence, experiencing the works behind closed doors, immersing yourself in an environment that invites personal creation. Painting, modeling clay, generating sounds or images becomes part of daily living.
The Fiermonte Museum affirms itself as a space where art is lived, shared and transformed. Workshops, artistic residencies, exhibitions and private events coexist with the permanent collection, keeping alive a spirit of exchange and experimentation. In baroque Lecce, this place offers a profound experience for sensitive travelers, lovers of beauty and creative spirits who seek an authentic relationship with art and with the human stories that give it meaning. Here, memory finds form and affection becomes architecture.