Artist Salvador Dalí, sporting his signature turned-up mustache, in a Parisian café, 1970.
Lord Head’s whooping crane attacks Lady Diana Cooper’s Chihuahua lapdog on her visit to Throope House, near Salisbury, England, 1969.
Prominent art-gallery owner Leo Castelli poses in front of a Jasper Johns American flag painting, in New York, 1982.
Vogue writer André Leon Talley and photographer Lord Snowdon model fur coats by Fendi in the courtyard of Rome’s Ruspoli Palace, 1987.
Gendel’s shadow projects onto Rome’s Via Appia Antica, Queen of Highways, before the ruins of ancient tombs, 1950.
Italian aristocrat and statesman Mario d’Urso poses self-mockingly on the throne of the Savoys, in Turin, Italy, 1997.
Spider Quinnell dances solo on the west front of Petworth House for her husband, Peter, Pamela Egremont, and Judy Montagu Gendel, 1965.
Roman countess Anna Laetitia Pecci Blunt in the garden of her villa, in Marlia, Italy, 1967.
Italian artist Maurizio Mochetti sees eye to eye with his carbon-steel “Arrow” in the collection of Giovanni Carandente, in Rome, 1978.
Guests of Lord Lambton enjoy one of his many picnics outside his 17th-century villa, in Cetinale, Italy, 1979.
Prince Philip lies at the foot of a tree on the grounds of Balmoral Castle, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 1976.
Queen Mother stands at a window of her country home at Royal Lodge, Windsor, 1982.
The indoor swimming pool at Windsor Castle occupies just one of its 900 rooms and is heated by solar energy.
Lady Margaret (background, far right) stops at a roadside bar in Florence with Sir Harold and her goddaughter, 1974.
The fashionable Lady Egremont feeds the deer that have gathered outside her home at Petworth House, in West Sussex, England, 1969.Photos: Milton Gendel’s Society Portraits
A fixture in the postwar social world of the European elite, photographer Milton Gendel used both the refinement and the extravagance of his private life as the material for his high art. Gendel’s prolific portfolio chronicles his many friendships (with such aristocrats as Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret), marriages, and residences over the years, as he made his career out of capturing the beauty and transience of fleeting moments. To coincide with the openings of the “Milton Gendel: A Surreal Life” exhibition at Rome’s Museo Carlo Bilotti, on October 4, and “Milton Gendel: Portraits” at the American Academy in Rome, on October 19, VF.com takes a look back at some of his most iconic subjects and scenes.
