page_title: Sicilian Baroque
section_title: High Sicilian Baroque
hierarchical_section_title: Sicilian Baroque / High Sicilian Baroque
caption_attribution_description: English: Siracusa cathedral, Sicily Deutsch: Kathedrale von Siracusa, Sizilien NOTE: This image is a panorama consisting of 2 frames that were merged in Hugin. As a result, this image necessarily underwent some form of digital manipulation. These manipulations may include blending, blurring, cloning, and color and perspective adjustments. As a result of these adjustments, the image content may be slightly different than reality at the points where multiple images were combined. This manipulation is often required due to lens, perspective, and parallax distortions. Boarisch&#160;| Български&#160;| Dansk&#160;| Deutsch&#160;| Zazaki&#160;| Ελληνικά&#160;| English&#160;| Esperanto&#160;| Español&#160;| Eesti&#160;| Suomi&#160;| Français&#160;| Magyar&#160;| Italiano&#160;| 日本語&#160;| Македонски&#160;| മലയാളം&#160;| Nederlands&#160;| Polski&#160;| Português&#160;| Русский&#160;| Slovenščina&#160;| Svenska&#160;| Türkçe&#160;| 中文&#160;| Українська&#160;| +/− This image was created with Hugin
context_page_description: Sicilian Baroque is the distinctive form of Baroque architecture which evolved on the island of Sicily, off the southern coast of Italy, in the 17th and 18th centuries, when it was part of the Spanish Empire. The style is recognisable not only by its typical Baroque curves and flourishes, but also by its grinning masks and putti and a particular flamboyance that has given Sicily a unique architectural identity.
  The Sicilian Baroque style came to fruition during a major surge of rebuilding following the massive earthquake in 1693. Previously, the Baroque style had been used on the island in a naïve and parochial manner, having evolved from hybrid native architecture rather than being derived from the great Baroque architects of Rome. After the earthquake, local architects, many of them trained in Rome, were given plentiful opportunities to recreate the more sophisticated Baroque architecture that had become popular in mainland Italy; the work of these local architects – and the new genre of architectural engravings that they pioneered – inspired more local architects to follow their lead. Around 1730, Sicilian architects had developed a confidence in their use of the Baroque style.
context_section_description: Around 1730, the Baroque style gradually began to break away from the defined Roman style of Baroque and gain an even stronger individuality, for two reasons: the rush to rebuild was subsiding and construction was becoming more leisurely and thoughtful; and a new clutch of home-grown Sicilian architects came to the forefront. This new generation had watched the rebuilding in the Baroque, and studied the engravings and architectural books and treatises arriving ever more frequently from the mainland. However, they were not like their predecessors (the former students of the Romans), and consequently were able to formulate strong individual styles of their own. They included Andrea Palma, Rosario Gagliardi and Tommaso Napoli. While taking account of the Baroque of Naples and Rome, they now adapted their designs for the local needs and traditions. Their use of resources and exploitation of the sites was often wildly inventive. Napoli and then Vaccarini had promoted the use of the external staircase, which was now taken to a new dimension: hilltop churches would be reached by fantastical flights of steps evoking Vaccarini's mentor Francesco de Sanctis's Spanish Steps in Rome.
  Façades of churches often came to resemble wedding cakes rather than places of worship as the architects grew in confidence, competence, and stature. Church interiors, which until this date had been slightly pedestrian, came especially in Palermo to be decorated in a riot of inlaid marbles of a wide variety of colours. Anthony Blunt has described this decoration as "either fascinating or repulsive, but however the individual spectator may react to it, this style is a characteristic manifestation of Sicilian exuberance, and must be classed amongst the most important and original creations of Baroque art on the island". This is the key to Sicilian Baroque: it was ideally matched to the Sicilian personality, and this was the reason it evolved so dramatically on the island. Nowhere in Sicily is the development of the new Baroque style more evident than in Ragusa and Catania.
caption: Illustration 11: Cathedral of Syracuse, Andrea Palma's cathedral façade (begun in 1728). Based on the formula of a Roman triumphal arch, the broken masses within a columned façade create a theatrical effect.
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