It is amusing to read Dominique Vivant Denon’s account of Noto in his Travels through Sicily and Malta. The artist, diplomat, art historian, and future director of the Louvre Museum expresses what an aesthete enamored of classicism thought about the rebuilt town: “It is a matter of regret here, as well as at Catania, that so much expense, and such splendid materials as those to be found at Noto, should have been laid out with so little judgment; and that a city almost new should, to the disgrace of the arts, be erected in such a manner, in an age, when there are such efforts made to study and imitate the beautiful models of simple, elegant, and well planned architecture.” Simple, noble, et sage: a far cry indeed from what was beginning to be called “baroque” at the time. The word derives from the Portuguese barroco, designating a pearl of irregular shape. For the enlightened lovers of the classical style, this extravagant, “irregular” architecture with its profusion of contrasting decorations, was indeed the “disgrace of the arts.”
And yet, in the land of Michelangelo and of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, of the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent that advocated the worship of saints, icons, and relics, art necessarily went hand in hand with the essentially irrational exaltation of passion and emotion; and also with a grandeur conceived as an offering, or an attempt—not without a sense of pathos—to get closer to heaven. With extraordinary dramatic genius, Bernini executed the commissions of Pope Urban VIII, including the monumental canopy over the high altar of St. Peter’s. Numerous baroque churches were being built in Rome, as were spectacular princely palaces, not least those of popes Urban VIII (Palazzo Barberini, the work of Bernini and his future great rival Francesco Borromini) and Innocent X (Palazzo Pamphili, by Carlo Rainaldi).
In Sicily, it took the earthquake of 1693 and the ensuing reconstruction for Sicilian baroque to flourish, especially from 1730, in an even more passionate style rich in influences that distinguished it from continental baroque. While the island was under Austrian rule (1718–34), churches and palaces were initially influenced by Viennese architecture, as can be seen in the Villa Palagonia in Bagheria, near Palermo. But Sicilian architects soon broke free from Austrian and even Roman influences and began designing buildings with exuberant ornamentation, full of stairs, columns, balconies, stone carvings, and statues, often in a rollicking polychrome mixture of marbles and majolica, behind curved façades. The island’s black volcanic rock was also used to create striking contrasts and enhance effects of light and shade. Into this decorative kaleidoscope, Sicilian baroque sometimes introduced touches of Norman Gothic—and also a Spanish influence during the reign of Charles III, King of Sicily and Jerusalem from 1735 to 1759, visible in the cathedral of Catania.
Villa Elena naturally embraced the prolific imagination of Italian baroque, which can today be admired in the majestic Grande Galerie, large enough to serve as a ballroom, or a throne room. When Jacques Garcia acquired the site, barns occupied this space—probably once the monastery’s main hall. Once he had recovered the room’s original volume, he drew inspiration for its decoration from the splendid baroque interiors of the three great Roman palazzi that he loves above all: Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, Doria Pamphilj, and Colonna. Setting eyes on its painted ceiling, on the profusion of ancient busts and vases, bronzes, antique marble door frames, tapestries, consoles, and eighteenth-century Italian chairs, one is indeed instantly reminded of those palaces. Everything here is reminiscent of Rome and the lavish lifestyle of its princely families.
To reinvent this majestic décor, Garcia began by designing the ceiling structure, which was determined by the presence of spread eagles: seventeenth-century Italian sculptures, which he had re-cast to punctuate the highly baroque cornices and decorative spurs edging the ceiling. The eagles are flanked by overdoors with recessed Greco-Roman busts—as in the Casino dell’Aurora at the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, whose vaulted ceiling carries Guido Reni’s famous Aurora fresco. Other fundamental elements that determined the décor as a whole were the three large portraits of Saint Helena dating from the seventeenth century, by a painter in Rubens’s circle. Acquired several years ago and recently listed as historical monuments in Italy, they hang at each end of the room—and gave the villa its name. Why this choice? Garcia likes to imagine that when, in the fourth century, Helena brought back a relic from the True Cross in Jerusalem to Rome, she came through Sicily. The villa thus pays tribute to the long journey undertaken by the mother of Emperor Constantine.
A series of other portraits hang in the Grande Galerie: several of cardinals of the Brancaccio family, dating from about 1700. The first, who lived in the twelfth century, was sent by Rome to Sicily to evangelize the island that had fallen to the Normans after the period of Arab rule. Below these portraits hang four large seventeenth-century Flemish tapestries depicting the romance of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Dotted around the Grande Galerie, and sometimes moved around on the whim of the master of the house, are a bronze Laocoön Group by Luigi Valadier (late eighteenth century), an imposing statue of Athena from the fifth century BCE, two magnificent seventeenth-century Sicilian altar frontals in marble, and three cardinal’s thrones, among other pieces.
The decoration of the fireplace is typical of the great Roman palaces, whose owners always had one or two popes in their family; a chair for the pope was placed before the fireplace, its back more lavishly embroidered than the front. On each side of the fireplace hung a cushion on which to kneel before the Holy Father, and the traditional ombrellino that was held over him. Garcia has recreated this décor with period pieces. In front of the fireplace, he placed a fine seventeenth-century fire screen in old silk and gilt wood, also from a Roman palazzo, and acquired from an antique dealer in Palermo.
Extracted from Jacques Garcia, A Sicilian Dream: Villa Elena by Jacques Garcia and Alain Stella (Flammarion, 2022). Buy a copy here.
