Von Stuck built his villa in 1897-98 and enlarged it in 1914-15. He conceived and executed it with unerring vision and remarkable flair. Pursuing the fin-de-siècle dream of the Gesamtkunstwerk—the total work of art famously envisioned by the composer Richard Wagner in which separate disciplines, including architecture, painting and sculpture, act in concert to create an aesthetically unified whole—Von Stuck, something of an artist-prince of his age, oversaw every aspect of the exterior and interior. He designed frames and furniture with equal rigor and decorated his rooms with both classical sculptures and his own paintings; cinnabar-red silk curtains; gold-mosaic and mirrored walls around a green serpentine fireplace; silk-damask upholstery; ivory-painted chairs and bergères; a mosaic parquet floor.