on a dull Sunday morning in 1967, Italian artist Enrico Baj and his wife, Roberta, were shown an abandoned Art Nouveau–style villa in Vergiate, a bucolic town in Lombardy’s Alpine foothills. It was an enchanting house, with a linear, down-to-earth silhouette, a traditional interior layout, and a vast garden, where, according to Enrico, “lush nature got the upper hand.”
For the newlyweds, who were seeking an escape from the late-’60s tumult of Milan, the house would transform life from black-and-white into color. “It was truly like falling in love,” recalls Roberta Cerini Baj, the artist’s widow, who remains under the home’s seductive spell to this day. “I suppose that is the better way of making a choice. One takes a risk, but if it is for love, it is worth…
