Article: From Gustav III’s Rome to Stockholm Interiors: The Italian Renaissance Reimagined in Gold by Zack Zublena
From Gustav III’s Rome to Stockholm Interiors: The Italian Renaissance Reimagined in Gold by Zack Zublena
The Italian Renaissance changed forever how the world understands beauty, the human body, light, space and emotion. Centuries later, its visual language is still very much alive. It is not a historical style to copy, but a source of inspiration to reinterpret. Sweden has carried on a long love affair with Italy. In 1783, King Gustav III set off on a journey to Italy and spent months in Rome. He came home with a collection of classical sculptures that became one of the first public art museums in Europe. A century earlier, the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger had studied in Rome. He gave Stockholm a Royal Palace shaped by the great palaces of the Eternal City.
For the French-American artist and photographer of Italian descent Zack Zublena, the Renaissance becomes a contemporary visual dialogue. Through photography, collage and mixed techniques, he takes classical figures, golden light, mythology and sculptural forms out of their original context and gives them a place in the interiors of today.
Discover the Italian Renaissance collection: works that sit between classical beauty, mythology and golden light.
This approach does not try to recreate Renaissance painting. It asks a different question: what happens when the visual language of the Italian Renaissance is seen through the lens of contemporary fine art photography?
When Photography Meets the Renaissance
The Renaissance was an age of extraordinary experimentation. Artists explored anatomy, perspective, proportion, architecture, mythology and the relationship between the human figure and the space around it.
In Stockholm, you can follow that dialogue across the water. At the Nationalmuseum on Blasieholmen, Sweden's museum of art and design keeps a remarkable collection of old master drawings, many of them gathered by the 18th-century collector Carl Gustaf Tessin. On Djurgården, Fotografiska has made the city one of the great capitals of photography. Sweden also gave the world the Hasselblad camera, the camera that photographed the Moon landing.
Photography offers another way to explore the same ideas. In Zack Zublena's work, the camera is a tool for building images, not just recording reality. The human figure can look monumental, mysterious, almost architectural. Gold turns skin into something close to gilded sculpture. Shadows create the depth of a fresco.
Archangel Michael, Golden Guardian brings several of these ideas together: the monumental figure, the symbolism of wings and the power of gold. The work speaks to Renaissance iconography while remaining unmistakably contemporary.
Light as a Language
In Renaissance art, light was never just a technical element. It was a language. A face emerging from darkness could become the centre of an entire composition. A hand lit against a shadowed background suddenly became symbolic.
Few people understand light like the Swedes. Life here moves between the endless brightness of midsummer and the long blue darkness of winter, when every candle and every lamp matters. Gold, too, has deep roots in Swedish soil. Beneath the Swedish History Museum in Östermalm lies the Gold Room. It is one of Europe's richest collections of prehistoric gold, with nearly 3,000 gold objects, including the great gold collars of the Migration Period. Zack Zublena works with controlled light and deep contrast that give his images an almost painterly quality. The gold recalls gilded frames, ancient treasure and the warm glow of a winter interior. In photography, it takes on a new physical quality: reflective, atmospheric and contemporary.
Anatomy of the Soul explores the relationship between the human body and the atmosphere around it. The figure stops being the portrait of a specific person. It becomes a study of form, identity and the link between the physical and the symbolic.
The Human Body as Sculpture
One of the strongest connections between the Renaissance and contemporary fine art photography is how they treat the human body. Renaissance artists studied anatomy with extraordinary precision, inspired by the sculpture of antiquity.
Photography approaches the same subject from another direction. Through pose, light, framing and composition, a photographed figure becomes sculptural. Without unnecessary detail, the eye focuses on silhouette, muscle, gesture and empty space. Sweden has its own master of the body in light: Anders Zorn. He painted figures by the water in Dalarna with a freedom and a luminosity that still feel modern.
Winged Essence takes this idea further. It joins the human figure with wings and a bold visual language of gold and blue, colours every Swede will recognise. The work recalls religious and mythological imagery without belonging to a single era.
Wings, Myth and the Renaissance Imagination
Wings have lived in the imagination of Western art for centuries. Angels, messengers and allegorical figures fill Renaissance painting and sculpture. In Sweden, no artist gave wings more grace than Carl Milles. At Millesgården, his home and sculpture garden on Lidingö, his angel musicians float on tall columns against the sky above Stockholm. In front of the Nationalmuseum, his sculpture The Wings shows a boy lifted by an eagle.
Wings can also be read in a more abstract way: as an image of freedom, transformation, desire, transcendence, or the longing to go beyond the physical world.
Wings of Desire plays with this symbolic vocabulary. Film lovers will recognise the title of Wim Wenders' classic. Here the wings are far more than ornament. They make the figure ambiguous, suspended between earthly beauty and something almost celestial.
That ambiguity is at the heart of contemporary readings of the Renaissance. The goal is not to imitate the past, but to let its symbols take on new meanings.
A Beauty That Does Not Age
Renaissance images still move us because they see beauty as something bigger than fashion. Their faces, bodies and gestures speak of universal themes: desire, mortality, spirituality, identity, love and the search for meaning.
Symphony of Her Soul approaches the figure through emotion and atmosphere. With its Venetian mask and sheet music, the image creates a contemporary story in which music, movement and the body merge. The mask has a very Swedish echo. Gustav III, the king who loved Italy and opera, was shot at a masked ball at the Stockholm Opera in 1792. Giuseppe Verdi turned the story into Un ballo in maschera. Gustav's passion for the stage lives on at the Royal Domain of Drottningholm, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its Palace Theatre of 1766 is the only 18th-century theatre in the world where the original stage machinery is still regularly used.
From the Italian Masters to Contemporary Interiors
The great masters of the Renaissance created for architecture: churches, palaces and private residences. Their compositions were designed to speak with the space that held them. Sweden's royal palaces carry that heritage. UNESCO notes that Drottningholm Palace itself was created with strong references to Italian and French architecture.
Contemporary fine art photography can play the same role. A large-format work becomes an architectural element. It can live in a turn-of-the-century apartment in Östermalm or on Strandvägen, a villa on Djurgården or Lidingö, or a seaside home in Saltsjöbaden. It suits a residence in Gothenburg's Vasastan or Örgryte, a loft in Malmö's Västra Hamnen or a summer house in the Stockholm archipelago or Båstad. It also belongs in a ski lodge in Åre, a boutique hotel in Gamla Stan or the lobby of a grand hotel by the water. A monumental figure sets the scale. A restrained palette creates atmosphere. Gold brings warmth and light without overloading the space with colour, in natural dialogue with pale oak, limestone, linen and the soft grey light of the North.
The Gladiator Philosopher shows this relationship between classical visual language and contemporary interior design. The work carries the monumental presence of classical and Renaissance figures while working as a statement piece for today.
The Renaissance as a Living Language
Perhaps the most interesting way to look at the Italian Renaissance today is not as a closed era, but as a visual language that keeps evolving. That language is made of the human body, dramatic light, mythology, architecture, symbols, gold and gesture. It is also made of the relationship between beauty and emotion.
These elements can be photographed, built digitally, turned into collage and reinterpreted. They can even be deliberately detached from their historical context. Sweden did exactly this in the 1920s with what the world now calls "Swedish Grace". Architects such as Gunnar Asplund took columns, rotundas and classical proportions and stripped them down to their purest form. His Stockholm Public Library, with its great cylindrical reading room, remains one of the most beautiful proofs that the classical language can be made entirely new.
Serpent of Light introduces another archetypal symbol: the serpent. Sweden knows it well. Across the country, Viking-age runestones are carved with long serpents whose bodies carry the runes in graceful bands. In Norse myth, the great serpent Jörmungandr encircles the whole world. Set against a Pompeii fresco, the work brings together mythology, transformation and mystery. It builds a bridge between ancient imagery and contemporary fine art photography.
The Body, Light and the Classical Ideal
The Renaissance fascination with the human body was deeply tied to the classical world. In Sweden, that ideal has a home inside the Royal Palace. At Gustav III's Museum of Antiquities, opened in 1794, the sculptures the king brought back from Rome still stand in the stone galleries. Its centrepiece is Endymion, the beautiful shepherd of myth, sleeping eternally in marble.
Contemporary photography can revisit this ideal without turning it into an absolute rule. The body becomes material for composition: a line, a silhouette, a volume and a source of light.
Golden Tension explores this relationship through the male figure. The tension between body, light and shadow gives the image a sculptural strength and places it firmly in contemporary fine art photography, in the lineage of Endymion and the classical nude.
A Meaningful Gift for the Festive Season
Finding the right gift for someone who loves art, design, architecture and beautiful interiors is not easy. A work of art is different. It is not just a gift to unwrap, but a piece that becomes part of a home and keeps its meaning for years.
In Sweden, the darkest weeks of the year are also the warmest at home: candles in every window, long dinners and gifts chosen with care. For those drawn to the beauty of the Italian Renaissance, to classical figures, mythology and golden light, a contemporary fine art photograph inspired by this tradition is a deeply personal choice for the festive season and the year-end celebrations. For collectors in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Uppsala, Lund or Båstad, it is also a way to bring a piece of European art history into a contemporary interior. Gold light in the middle of winter is a gift in itself.
If you are looking for a unique gift for someone who already has everything, an original work of art can be one of the most personal choices there is.
The Past, Seen Anew
The Italian Renaissance does not need to be recreated to stay relevant. Its ideas can be transformed. Its symbols can be questioned, simplified and reinvented. Its fascination with the human body can become contemporary photography. Its dramatic use of light can become a new atmosphere, and its mythology can be the starting point for entirely new stories.
Through gold, light, bodies, wings, mythology and emotion, Zack Zublena explores this vocabulary. He creates works that look to the past while belonging fully to the present.
Discover the Italian Renaissance collection: contemporary fine art photography inspired by classical beauty, mythology and the timeless visual language of the Renaissance.
