Christopher Ciccone, an artist and interior decorator who worked closely with his older sister, Madonna, during her rise to global stardom in the 1980s and 1990s, died Friday. He was 63 years old. The cause of death was cancer.
According to a statement from her family, Ciccone died peacefully, surrounded by her loved ones, including her husband, British actor Ray Thacker.
On Instagram on Sunday, Madonna paid tribute to her brother with a post that celebrated their close bond and acknowledged the sometimes turbulent nature of their relationship.
“He was the closest human being to me for a long time,” the pop star wrote. “It is difficult to describe our bond. But it came from the realization that we were different and that society was going to give us a hard time for not following the status quo. “We held hands and danced through the madness of our childhood.”
Ciccone was the fifth child and third child of Silvio and Madonna Ciccone and was raised in Rochester, Michigan, where both his personal and creative identities flourished to reveal a tremendously artistic soul,” according to his family.
After studying dance at university, he moved in 1982 to New York, where Madonna, two years his senior, was already making a name for herself in the downtown arts and music scene. He was a backup dancer in the video for their single, “Lucky Star,” and played an important behind-the-scenes role in their successful tours.
Ciccone started out as a dressmaker, helping Madonna make quick wardrobe changes between numbers, but rose through the ranks to become art director of the provocative Blonde Ambition tour in 1990, chronicled in the documentary “Truth or Dare.” He was also the director of the Girlie Show tour in 1993. Ciccone decorated several of Madonna's homes and pursued a career as an interior designer. He was one of several gay men who had a formative influence on Madonna's aesthetic and pop persona.
The brothers' relationship cooled at some point in the late '90s. Ciccone published a memoir, “Life With My Sister Madonna,” in 2008, in which he claimed that their relationship was strained by creative and financial differences and his marriage to British filmmaker Guy Ritchie. But in 2012, Ciccone said he was back on good terms with his sister.
In more recent years, he returned to Michigan, where his family operates a vineyard, and continued working as a painter and interior designer.
Ciccone's death comes just two weeks after her stepmother, Joan Ciccone, died of cancer. His older brother, Anthony, died last year. His mother died of breast cancer shortly after his birth in 1963.
Ciccone is survived by her sister Madonna, her husband Ray Thacker and her father Silvio Ciccone.
