The Renaissance in Sicily represents the progressive development of Renaissance culture and art in the island, starting from its centers of diffusion Florence, Rome and Naples, and the consequent artistic outcomes that often represented a compromise between Renaissance classicism, the late cultural substratum medieval and the Flemish and Gothic influences. In fact Messina, city part of the Hanseatic league, developing a strong cultural link with the Flemish as well as the migration of Flemish workers who settled in Sicily. This strong Flemish presence continued in the following centuries. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Sicily was first subjected to the Aragonese government and then became part of the Hapsburg Empire of Charles V and of the Kingdom of Spain of its successors.
The history of the slow affirmation of the renaissance language on the island can be conventionally started in the decade between 1460 and 1470 with the presence in Sicily of Antonello da Messina, Francesco Laurana and Domenico Gagini, sometimes present in the same places, with mutual influences.
Historiographic premise
Until a few years ago, artistic historiography, and not only that, agreed to consider the Sicilian culture in an isolated and marginalized condition during the Spanish domination, thus delaying to study the art produced in Sicily during the Renaissance and beyond. Nineteenth-century Risorgimento thought weighed against this prejudice, aimed at demonstrating the interruption of relations between Italian culture and Sicily from the period of the Vespers to the nineteenth century. This prejudice survived until the twentieth century and conditioned the understanding of artistic phenomena. In fact, from this assumption it came to see the poverty of Sicilian art. In the last decades of the twentieth century the observation that the artistic phenomena of Sicily, and other southern regions, were still largely to be discovered and historical research concerning the complex relations between the island and the whole of the Mediterranean between the XV and XVIII centuries century, led to a deep historiographical revision, but remained at a specialized and sectoral level. The first studies and the first revaluations have affected the Baroque period, but later the studies have greatly expanded the artistic panorama of the Renaissance period, in Sicily and generally in southern Italy, characterized by the immigration in Sicily of numerous artists frompeninsula and the formation of important local shops.
The disappearance of works
It should be noted how, in the underestimation of the Sicilian artistic expressions of the Renaissance period, it has counted the substantial destruction of works and testimonies by earthquakes. Particularly unstable is the persistence of the testimonies present in the city and in the area of Messina (earthquakes of 1562, 1649, 1783, 1894 and 1908) which also represented the territorial reality more open to novelties, for the leading role in trade and economy, but also in other areas of the island such as the Val di Noto (earthquakes of 1542, 1693, 1757, 1848). The reconstruction of a complete panorama of artistic and especially architectural production is therefore problematic and artistic historiography, especially for architecture, is fragmented in front of countless works that have disappeared or dramatically changed. Exemplary in this regard is the architectural production of Andrea Calamech and Camillo Camilliani, virtually canceled. These gaps also concern documentary documentary evidence, which was also missing due to earthquakes or negligence. As a cause of the fragmentation of the historical path, especially architectural, there must also count fires and above all the overlapping of stylistic renewals that had particular development in the eighteenth and which can be exemplified in the destruction of the Sicilian 16th century manifested work: the tribune of the Cathedral of Palermo by Antonello Gagini. In addition to the destructive action of earthquakes, it should be kept in mind that, unlike the current situation, Sicily was, until two centuries ago, a commercial and cultural crossroads. This has caused a dispersion of artistic artifacts and entire collections outside the region if not, more frequently, outside the current Italian territory, as evidenced by the known events of the late Renaissance and seventeenth-century collections.
Literary humanism
Sicily participated in Renaissance humanistic culture with a great fervor of Greek, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew studies and with an intense search for ancient codes. Sicilian intellectuals such as Antonio Beccadelli, known as Panormita, Lucio Marineo Siculo, Giovanni Aurispa, Antonio Cassarino and Pietro Ranzano, worked and were known outside Sicily, but did not deeply influence the island culture and artistic production. In Messina, Constantine Lascaris was active for a long time and Pietro Bembo was also for a short time, as proof of the particular cultural vivacity of the city.
Four hundred
The beginning of the fifteenth century is characterized in Sicily by the Franco- Provençal and Pisan – Sienese influence on the artistic figurative culture that find the highest expression in the fresco of the Triumph of Death late Gothic masterpiece. The major artists of the period are Gaspare da Pesaro and his son Guglielmo Pesaro.
In architecture the intense building activity is characterized by adherence to late-Gothic forms with the Iberian imprint (especially in the Val di Noto), and the persistence of decorations and planimetric patterns that are repeated from the Norman era.
Palermo and Messina, among the main cities, crossed a phase of demographic and economic growth in the fifteenth century thanks to the presence of the port and numerous communities of Pisan, Venetian, Lombard and Genoese merchants. Even the social structure of the city was renewed with a class of officials and traders who joined the nobility building noble palaces and chapels and requiring refined artifacts of great value.
These premises, thanks to the arrival of numerous artists from the peninsula, and the influence of the Neapolitan artistic environment of the period of Alfonso II, allowed the renewal of artistic language in Sicily.
Antonello and painting
The giant figure in the cultural panorama of the early Renaissance in Sicily is Antonello da Messina who with his complex formation between Naples, Venice and Flanders demonstrates the circulation of ideas that characterized the era. His works for the island commissions and his definitive return home, around 1476, represented the first affirmation in the island of Renaissance painting, thanks to a crowded workshop that introduced in the traditional production the new taste for the human figure, the pictorial genre of the portrait and a new role of the artist no longer just an anonymous craftsman. Among his family who will continue the workshop (his son Iacobello and his nephews Antonio di Saliba, Pietro di Saliba andSalvo d’Antonio) and among his students and direct and indirect followers (Alessandro Padovano, Giovanni Maria Trevisano, Giovannello da Itala, Marco Costanzo, Antonino Giuffré, Alfonso Franco, Francesco Pagano), some of whom were also active in Veneto, nobody became a great artist, but their production, which also included copies of Antonello, spread to Sicily and Calabria, where there are many works of the school of Antonello, although difficult to assign, given the lack of studies on many painters of his circle. The most advanced of the Antonellians was Antonio Salvo who updated his style with influences not only from Venice but also from Ferrara.
In Palermo the pictorial environment was less lively and the major artist at the end of the century is Riccardo Quartaro, trained in Naples, which influenced many local minor artists.
I Gagini, Laurana and sculpture in Palermo
The Renaissance sculpture instead came to Sicily by the work of Francesco Laurana who worked in Sicily for some years starting from 1466. He opened a workshop in Palermo influencing many artists (Domenico Pellegrino, Pietro de Bonitate, Iacopo de Benedetto) spreading the forms of the early Renaissance.
The place that best represents this crucial moment for Sicilian art is the church of San Francesco d’Assisi in which Laurana and Pietro da Bonitate created the fully Renaissance Mastrantonio chapel. The tomb of Antonello Speciale, attributed by some to Laurana but most probably attributed to Domenico Gagini, is still present in the same church. Both artists came from Naples where they had worked at the Triumphal Arch of the Castel Nuovo in an important building site for many artists and crucial for Renaissance art in southern Italy.
In fact, in 1463, after having been perhaps a pupil of Brunelleschi, and having worked in Naples with Laurana and others, Domenico Gagini had arrived in Sicily, who stopped at the island and gave life to a shop and a dynasty of sculptors who characterized the Sicilian sculpture for a long time. He imported on the island the various cultural influences that had characterized his formation and even the use of Carrara marble. His first activity on the island is linked to the church of San Francesco (altar of San Giorgio and the dragon) where the Laurana was also active and which therefore represents a key place for the introduction of Renaissance taste on the island.
In addition to the Gagini, many Lombard marble workers (including Gabriele di Battista, also from Naples) and Tuscans opened their shops in Sicily, especially in Palermo and Messina. The marmorari of Palermo (many were Carraresi) became a guild in 1487. Their activity gave life to the execution of altars, portals, windows, columns that updated, albeit in an episodic way, the decorative language of architecture, according to the increasingly demanding requests from the client, but making the late-Gothic architecture and the Renaissance architectural sculpture live together.
The sculpture in Messina
Among the most interesting artists active in Messina Giorgio from Milan, Andrea Mancino, Bernardino Nobile and the Carrarese Giovan Battista Mazzolo, owner of an important shop, which was joined by the Messina Antonio Freri (also active in Catania), without counting the presence of Antonello Gagini, son of Domenico, in Messina between 1498 and 1507.
As in Palermo, these Tuscan and Lombard artists brought to the city and surrounding areas up to Calabria, the rich repertoire of classicist architectural decorations. However, throughout the fifteenth century, despite some interpretations now outdated, architecture continued to follow the late Gothic tradition despite the presence of decorative Renaissance episodes. However, it should be noted that the destruction of seismic events has altered the possibility of fully investigating this period.
Examples of the dialectical relationship between architecture and sculpture can be cited the Renaissance portals of the mother church of Santa Lucia del Mela (late fifteenth century), attributed to Gabriele di Battista and the side portal of the mother church of Mistretta, (1494), attributed to Giorgio from Milan.
Architecture
The renewal of language therefore did not immediately involve the entire building organism. The main Sicilian architect of the fifteenth century was in fact Matteo Carnilivari who used a personal language with still Gothic and Catalan elements, as in the Church of Santa Maria della Catena in Palermo. His prestige as a builder was one of the obstacles to the affirmation of Renaissance language, outside the decorative repertoire of marble workers.
In addition to the few traces left by Laurana, at the end of the fifteenth century, Renaissance language can only be found in minor episodes such as the Ventimiglia chapel in the church of San Francesco in Castelbuono.
Permanent characters
Since the fifteenth century some permanent features of the Sicilian culture of the period have been defined: the pre-eminent role of the clergy as commissioning; the presence of many artists belonging to religious orders, often formed within the orders; the artistic and cultural differences between the great cities of the island (Messina and Palermo, but also Catania and Siracusa); the arrival from outside of artists; the training trips of local artists in a circularity of men, works and knowledge.
First sixteenth century
Renaissance episodes in architecture
The progressive absorption of elements of Renaissance classicism in architecture proceeded slowly and took place mainly in an episodic way such as the sacristy of the Syracuse cathedral or in small buildings such as the central-plan chapels attached to the cult building.
These include the chapel Naselli in San Francesco in Comiso, the chapel of the Confrères in Santa Maria di Betlem in Modica, the chapel of the Dormitio Virginis in Santa Maria delle Scale in Ragusa. the Chapel of the Sailors in the Church of the Annunciation in Trapani, by Gabriele di Battista.
In Renaissance style the facade of the Duomo of Syracuse, destroyed in the earthquake of 1693, was created by the grandiose tribune of the cathedral of Palermo by Antonello Gagini, destroyed at the end of the 18th century, probably the most significant Renaissance work in Sicily whose construction will last several decades, from 1510 to 1574, and that after the death of Antonello in 1537, will be completed by his sons Antonino, Giacomo and Vincenzo.
For Antonello Gagini it is probably also the project of the church of Santa Maria di Porto Salvo that despite the use of some pointed arches introduced by local builders, has a spatial fully Renaissance.
Painting
In 1517 the painting by Raffaello Andata al Calvario (later called the Spasimo di Sicilia) arrived in Palermo and influenced many artists, both painters and sculptors. Almost simultaneously, from 1519 Vincenzo da Pavia was active in the city. In this way the modern “manner” was introduced into the city, even in an environment still quite tied to fifteenth-century ways.
Already in the first phase of the century came to Sicily several artists from Naples as Mario di Laurito. The flow of artists was not one-way and Sicilian painters were active outside the island: Giacomo Santoro in Rome and Spoleto, Tommaso Laureti in Rome and Bologna.
Other Mannerist painters from the peninsula were active in Palermo, like Orazio Alfani.
Among the Sicilian artists of the first half of the century Vincenzo degli Azani.
In the first two decades of the sixteenth century he stayed twice in Messina Cesare da Sesto bringing a style between Raffello and Leonardo that will influence the artistic environment of the city and in particular Girolamo Alibrandi, an artist well known at his time but of which few works remain scarce news.
In 1529, after the Sack of Rome, he settled in Messina, where he remained until his death, Polidoro da Caravaggio, who introduces in Sicily the Roman Raphaelesque figurative modes, but adapting his own painting, in contact with the devotional religiosity typical of the island, accentuating the patheticism of the characters. Polidoro collaborated in the ephemeral exhibitions prepared for the entry of Carlo V to Messina in 1535, an event that did not fail to represent a moment of profound innovation in the figurative culture. The most important pupil of Polidoro was Deodato Guinaccialong active in Messina. A large group of Sicilian mannerists will also operate in Naples, symmetrically with the Neapolitan mannerists active in Sicily. Among the Sicilian artists Stefano Giordano.
Sculpture between Renaissance and mannerism
The 16th century sculpture in Sicily confirmed a leading role in the decisive turning point from the late Gothic period to the Renaissance. This evolution has different characteristics between Messina and the rest of the island. In Palermo, in fact, it operates throughout the century and beyond, the Gagini workshop with a production that alternates repetitive works of shops and prestigious commissions that also involve typical sculptural types of the island, such as marble tabernacles flanked by angels.
The most important exponentè of the workshop is Antonello, son of Domenico, consul of the marble workers of Palermo, an artist with a complex cultural education that also brought him to Rome, alongside Michelangelo and who also worked in Messina. His up-to-date training allowed him to overcome the styles derived from Laurana and his father Domenico, which had become a way. In the Gagini shop, as well as family members, many artists worked, including Giuliano Mancino, Antonio and Bartolomeo Berrettaro, Vincenzo Carrara and Fedele Da Corona.
In Messina instead we witness the arrival of numerous and important Tuscan sculptors, who dominate the cultural landscape of the city for a long time, spreading the mannerist style not only in Sicily, but also in Calabria.
Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli, a student of Michelangelo, after a long wandering settled in Messina from 1547 to 1557, leaving numerous followers, such as Giuseppe Bottone, and important works such as the Fountain of Orion and the Fountain of Neptune.
Martino Montanini, in Messina from 1547 to 1561, collaborator of Montorsoli and his successor as the head of the Duomo, where he sculpted statues, now lost.
Andrea Calamech, a pupil of Bartolomeo Ammannati, settled in the city in 1563 and was the head of an important workshop that included his son Francesco, his nephew Lorenzo Calamech and his son-in-law Rinaldo Bonanno.
Other Mannerist sculptors, above all Tuscan, present in Sicily for more or less long periods were Michelangelo Naccherino and Camillo Camilliani.
In addition to the marble sculpture, the tradition of stucco and wood sculpture continues, giving the most surprising results in the seventeenth century.
According to the Cinquecento
Whatever the accession of Sicily to the Renaissance forms, in more or less late times and in ways more or less conditioned by pre-existing traditions, in the second half of the century the island is perfectly updated to the artistic panorama of the peninsula and in particular of Rome, recependone all the complexity made of late mannerism, classicism, themes of the Counter-Reformation and much more.
In this period the novelties continue to be brought by artists and architects who immigrated to Sicily from the main Italian artistic centers. After this period, this phenomenon stops and the main artists active in Sicily in the seventeenth century are natives of the island, often formed in Rome, as it begins to be already from the second half of the sixteenth century.
Mannerist architecture
Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli and above all Andrea Calamech were used by the city authorities in the role not only of sculptors, but also of architects thus introducing Mannerist classicism to Messina, in works that have now disappeared, such as the Palazzo Reale and the Ospedale Maggiore di Calamech.
The Mannerism in architecture also found Sicilian interpreters among whom Natale Masuccio designer, among other things, the Monte di Pietà of Messina of which remains a portal characterized by the rustic and Jacopo Del Duca student of Michelangelo and active in Rome where he completed some works of the master. Returned home in 1588 he was active for a decade in Messina where he was appointed architect of the city, succeeding Calamech and made several works, almost all destroyed by earthquakes, but important for the subsequent developments of Sicilian architecture.
Painting towards the Baroque
Sicilian painting of the second sixteenth century is updated to all the various trends of Italian figurative culture, but does not have great personalities. The most important painters are Antonio Catalano, Giuseppe Spatafora, Antonio Ferraro and Giuseppe d’Alvino.
During the second half of the century Sicilian artists came from different stylistic ways including the Spanish Juan de Matta, active in the first half of the century, the Flemish Simone de Wobreck, active in Sicily from 1557 to 1587, the Roman Horace Borgianni in the last decade, before moving to Spain.
Source from Wikipedia