Divine Illumination

How Mariano Fortuny's foray into stage lighting begot a range of fashionable fixtures

- HANNAH MARTIN

It was the lackluster mise-en-scène of a Wagner opera that ignited Mariano Fortuny's interest in lighting. The painter, fashion designer, and innovator couldn't understand why in 1893, despite the recent invention of the light bulb, outdated sets were still being lit with gas lamps. In his attic studio in Venice's Palazzo Martinengo, Fortuny tinkered, discovering that when light reflected off a piece of paper, it could illuminate an entire room; use a colored surface and you could bathe the sets in a hue. Voilà: indirect lighting.

"It is not the quantity, but the quality of light that makes things visible," mused Fortuny, who would soon take his findings offstage and into the home.