Highlights of Palermo

Porta Felice, Palermo City Gate 1637 (RomeArtLover)

Porta Nuova Palermo City Gate, rebuild in 1667 after a gunpowder explosion (AtlasObscura)

 Highlights of Palermo

I recently returned from a 12 day tour of Sicily, the island off the south western coast of the Italian peninsula. Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, is considered a part of Italy but it also has its own autonomous government and language. While Italian is based on a Latin structure, Sicilian is based on Greek, Spanish, French, Catalan, and Arabic, and has differences in grammar and structure.

There is always a bit of jet lag, and a feeling of being overwhelmed when you visit a new, far-away place. Everything is different and you cannot communicate with the people there very well. Add to that a somewhat intimidating maze of streets where graffiti is abundant, there's a lot of trash around, and stories of the mafia are floating around in your head. That was my first impression of Palermo. Not the best I'm sorry to say. After three days of staying there and being introduced to the wonders and uniqueness of Palermo, I was reluctant to leave for the next portion of our journey.

Sicily, by virtue of its location, throughout its long history has been in the cross hairs of those wishing to conquer and get gain. The Greeks came, they established settlements, they built fantastic buildings that have lasted for over 1000 years, and yet they fought among themselves over different parts of the island. Then the Romans replaced the Greeks, deforested the island to build ships of war and turned it into a place that would serve as the 'breadbasket' growing wheat to service the Roman Empire. They converted the Greek theaters where moralistic and philosophical plays were performed into places of blood and combat. The Arabs came, they dominated the western portion of the island, especially in the Palermo area, they brought citrus plants, eastern wisdom, and distinctive cuisine. The Normans, the Lombards, the Spanish, and then finally the House of Savoy came, with the Northern Italians and a plan to unify the peninsula with the island.

Each and every one of these governing bodies has pretty much shafted the people of the island in favor of their own self interest, so if anyone is wondering why Sicilians might have a bit of a fatalistic point of view and be reluctant to accept everyone's great new ideas for improvements in society, now you have some kind of understanding of why. I tell all of this to give you an idea of what makes Palermo tick and why it is like it is today. It sits at the intersection of several differing and conquering cultures and has made a one of a kind distillation of all of those differences to become what Palermo is today. 

 

Gems of Palermo: Capella Palatina- The Palatine Chapel

The Sanctuary of Capella Palatina showing Christ as "Pantocrator" (my photo).

In 1132, Roger II, a Norman king of Sicily desired a grand chapel to be built on the site of a former church in the royal palace. This chapel took about 8 years to build and the intricate mosaics decorating it took about 10years to complete. The mosaics are the charms of this chapel, the ceiling and the walls are covered with them. Featured in them are stories from the Bible and depictions of Saints and Apostles. The mosaics in the Palatine Chapel are believed to be the largest example of Byzantine mosaics in the world. The palace has been put on the UNESCO world heritage list because of the unique blending of architecture and the historicity of the site.

Interior of Capella Palatina (my photo).

The chapel is dedicated to Peter the Apostle (also known as St. Peter, Simon Peter), and features a domed basilica with three apses with six pointed arches off the nave. The architecture is a harmonious melding of Norman, Arabic, and Byzantine. The arches are distinctly Arabic and another feature of Arabic design is the 8-point star which is used abundantly in the chapel and the stars are arranged on the ceiling forming a Christian cross. The ceiling of the chapel is an example of carved wood known as muqarnas, a three dimensional version of a geometric design. This is a form of ornamented vaulting used on a ceiling and is an intrinsic part of Arabic/ Islamic architecture. 

Interior showing the muqarnas, antique wood ceiling in the Islamic style (italianways.com)               

 

The nave features texts in Arabic, Latin, and Greek. In the sanctuary there is a depiction of Christ known to Christian iconography as “Pantocrator”. You can see he is holding his hand a certain way. The Palatine chapel is considered a supreme example of Byzantine artistic style and has the distinctive flair added to it with the blending of Sicily's, and Palermo's in particular melting pot culture. It is seen as a shining example of multicultural cooperation. The royal palace is currently the seat of the regional government of Sicily.

Detail of mosaics in Capella Palatina (Italianways.com)

Detail of mosaics (my photo).

San Cataldo Church

(Chiesa di San Cataldo)

San Cataldo church, showing the distinctive pink-red domes (my photo).

 

This is an example of Arab-Norman architecture and also part of the UNESCO World Heritage site in Palermo. This church was founded in 1160, by Maio of Bari, the Chancellor or Prime Minister of Norman ruler William I (known as “The Bad”). Unfortunately the Chancellor was assassinated and that resulted in the interior of the chapel never being finished or decorated, and it has remained that way for over 800 years. Yet, it is an intriguing and distinctive building that is brilliant in its austerity. The most distinctive feature being the three pinkish-red cupolas or domes.

Detail of San Cataldo

Interior of San Cataldo

Agatha Patron Saint of Palermo, Quattro Canti

Qattro Canti- The Four Corners of Palermo

 

The old historic district of Piazza Vigilena is known as Quattro Canti, it is a baroque square where the two main streets of Palermo cross (Via Maqueda and Corso Vittorio Emanuele). This square was commissioned by a Spanish Viceroy with a very long name about 1610. Four palaces ring the square with convex facades. On the facades you can see four different levels, representing nature and ascending up to heaven. The first level consists of fountains representing ancient rivers of the area, next, there is a figure on each palace which represents one of the four seasons, with Doric columns framing the sides of the figures. The next level on each of the buildings names a Spanish ruler (Charles V, Philip II, Philip III and Philip IV), set off by Ionic columns. The top level of each one shows a depiction of one of the patron saints of Palermo, Agatha, Nymph, Olive and Christine, set off by Corinthian pilasters. 

Quattro Canti, showing the top level depicting a Saint.

View of Quattro Canti from above showing the four convex facades.

 

Piazza Pretoria, Fontana Pretoria or otherwise known as

The Fountain of Shame (circa 1554)

This elaborate fountain is done in the high renaissance style features a bunch of naked people in various poses along with all kinds of animals, sea creatures, nymphs, monsters, sirens, and other real or mythical creatures. It was created for a Spanish nobleman, Don Luigi de Toledo, as the mother of all fountains to decorate his estate in Florence. When Don Luigi died he left his son with a mountain of debt, so his son sold the fountain to the Palermo Senate. The fountain was taken apart and transported by boat to Sicily, all 644 pieces of it! Some of the statues were damaged during transport and the Palermo Senate also found out that Toledo's son kept a few of his favorite statues for himself. It is called the fountain of shame because of the nude statues which happen to be visible from the church and the nunnery across the square. It is rumored the nuns used to try to put clothes on the statues.

What's in a portrait?

Roman, Greek or Egyptian?

Is the answer in the eye of the beholder?

After a recent trip to Italy and to the ancestral village of my paternal grandparents, I embarked on a quest to find more about the experience of being a hyphenated American, in this case, an Italian-American one. Living in the Rocky Mountains, as I do, far away from the East Coast of my youth, I often feel like I have lost part of my heritage by living where I do. While perusing articles of what it meant to be an Italian American, I found a piece where the author stated that the Fayum Portraits all looked Italian to him. Never having heard of these portraits before, despite having studied two courses of Art History, I decided to learn more about them. 

(The article mentioned:(https://themillions.com/2019/02/what-is-italian-america-its-complicated.html) by Ed Simon.)

My quest to discover something unique about heritage became an art and culture exploration, and depending on who you ask, those assessing the look of the portraits all seemed to attribute them to their own or to their desired idea of an ethnic group. They look Roman! They look Greek! They look Egyptian! To me they look like an amalgamation of the cultures of that specific time and place. DNA and dental studies of the Fayum mummies have shown more solidarity with their Egyptian heritage but one can also see Mediterranean features in the portraits. The most striking feature seems to be their enlarged eyes and the realism represented in the portraits.

The Fayum Portraits are a group of naturalistic portraits painted on wood and attached to mummies found from the time that the Roman Empire controlled Egypt. They are classified as 'panel painting' in that they are painted on flat wood panels. The paint is generally done in encaustic style with wax mixed pigments or an egg based tempura. Mummy portraits have been found across Egypt, but these particular portraits date to the time of the Roman occupation of Egypt (approx 1^st century BC to 1^st century ad and after). The wood portraits are placed in the wrappings of mummies where the face would be, giving personality to the person wrapped within. They are very realistic but all seem to emphasize the face with very large eyes. They have surprisingly contemporary hairstyles and are quite individualistic showing expressions, clothing styles and jewelry, all done in vivid color with even gold inlay on the jewelry. They are in a Greece-Roman style, rather than Egyptian. About 1000 of these portraits exist in various places around the world, such as The British Museum, The Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at various colleges and institutions. Most of the portraits have been removed from their mummies. It is speculated that the dry Egyptian climate helped preserve them and the wax mixed pigment technique helped preserve the colors and also aided in preservation.

In the 1800's British, French and Germans scouted them out for art collectors, museums, and even used them for firewood on cold desert nights when on digging expeditions. Some recovered portraits were lost at sea when being transported from Egypt to Europe. Few who sought them out properly documented the portraits or the circumstances of their recovery, so it makes their relevance, as far as academics are concerned, have less value than they otherwise might have.

In 1887, a British archaeologist, Flinders Petrie, excavated at Hawara Egypt and found a Roman necropolis from which he originally recovered about 80 of the portraits. Petrie was one of the few who did document and publish his findings about the portraits. Petrie did another excavation in 1910-11 but by the time this second dig occurred the French, Germans, and Egyptians were also looking for the portraits to sell to art collectors and they did not document their findings. Several of the portraits found in the British museum arrived there under shadowy undocumented circumstances. It makes you wonder how many might be collected in the mansions of the ultra rich that no one really knows about, and if these were plundered, their historical significance has been lost to the world forevermore.

The portraits depict persons from childhood to old age and were set into the mummy wrappings, the artistry shows skilled use of light and shade, 3-d appearance, and all depict large eyes, bringing about speculation about them being similar to icon paintings, whether they were painted before or after the person's death, whether they are truly realistic or are idealized conceptions of the person they represent. They appear to be a combination of Roman and Egyptian funeral tradition, for the wealthy, and only appear after the Romans established Egypt as a province. They look like paintings of the old masters but were in reality done 1500 years earlier.

Sources: Smithsonian.com, Wikipedia, Mikedashhistory.com, themillions.com