The actor-cum-artist Sylvester Stallone returned to his late friend Gianni Versace’s Mediterranean Revival mansion on Tuesday night for the first time in two decades, having spent every weekend there up until the designer’s death in 1997. “It’s the last place in the world I thought I’d be back to,” the Hollywood star told us in a private room off the pool (tiled with 24-carat gold), where he was celebrating his new series of abstract paintings—and a sculpture of a turtle—that he and Galerie Gmurzynska have installed around the mansion. Celebrities such as Madonna and Cher could be found there when Versace was alive, but they have now been replaced by the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Pamela Anderson. “You wonder, would Gianni be happy about this or not? I have to assume he would because he was a gentle, artistic soul,” Stallone said. “Every inch of the house is an artistic statement,” he added, which makes his show “art within art”. And lest we forget that he once played Rocky and Rambo, Stallone clarified with a fitting metaphor: “It’s like a ravioli, an artistic ravioli, and I’m the cheese within the pasta.” Enough said.
