Serpottiana

Giacomo Serpotta (1662-1732), stuccatoro eccellentissimo, is the pretext for my last and long overdue excursion into a Palermitan old-town quarter. I'm not even sure if two of the oratories on which he worked his stucco magic are even strictly within the bounds of La Vucciria, once celebrated for its market (less so now, I was told by our masterchef hostess Nicoletta Lanza Tomasi, who prefers to shop in the Capo and the Ballarò). A third, which tells a sorry tale, certainly isn't. The Oratory of San Lorenzo sits alongside the monuments-rich church of San Francesco near the Piazza Marina.

In that atmospheric quarter, the Antica Focacceria San Francesco faces the church in a little square. Sadly neither that nor its nearby gelateria were  open for business, but may have been so by the time Easter arrived, to judge from the preparations within.

The church has splendid Romanesque decoration in the arch beneath its rose window

and has been mostly de-Baroqued within,

one chapel to the right of the presbytery excepted.

Among its side chapels is elaborate early Renaissance work - not so common in this city - by Francesco Laurana. I liked the air of modest piety, with plenty of Easter week worshippers at prayer. But the greater treasures, or what's left of them, are within the oratory next door, approached by an attractively planted courtyard.

The only major Caravaggio in town, a Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis above the altar, was stolen in 1969 along with many of the figures in the fascinating little stucco theatres which seem to have been a speciality of Serpotta, his brother and his son. No doubt the painting sits in the house, or vault, of some Palermitan mafioso.

The restoration took place in 2003, funded like work on the other oratories by the baroque expert who loved his Serpotta, Anglo-American Donald Garstang. He did more than anyone to make sure that Palermo honoured its finest artist since the Normans. I'm reliant on a wiki-image for the interior shot, since this is the only oratory where photography isn't permitted, and the details that follow come from the only postcard on sale.

Fortunately the stucco masterpiece of the building, Serpotta's amazing depiction of St Lawrence on the gridiron, remains intact on the west wall, and repays close study.

The Serpotta trail in La Vucciria begins behind the grandiose, mafia-favoured church of San Domenico - closed all day on our visit - in the church's lavish Oratorio del Rosario. Here the altarpiece Meisterwerk, Van Dyck's Assumption, remains intact

and is decked around, in Serpotta's work of 1710-17, with statues of the allegorical Virtues supposedly modelled on society ladies, like Justice with raised sword

The Virtues are interspersed with the Mysteries of the Rosary (not being a good Catholic boy, I'm largely ignorant of those). Some of the paintings come close to the Van Dyck in quality.

I'm not a great fan of rococo excess, but Serpotta's putti who assist the noble dames certainly have character. This one is bizarrely tonsured as a monk

while another carries a lamb aloft to Purity

and in the presbytery another plays a bassoon.

Nearby Santa Maria in Valverde was covered in the kind of baroque marbles we'd admired in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the Capo, but as a service was being conducted for the small Romanian community, we carried on along the street to the Oratory of Santa Cita (Zita). The church, reached by a small connecting cloister with another specimen of the Brazilian Chorisia I'd admired in the botanical gardens,

seems to have been as badly damaged in the Second World War as the neighbouring Palazzo Lampedusa, our friend Giuseppe Tomasi's pride and joy which he was forced to abandon for Via Butera 28. The piano nobile passageway still has some very beautiful floral Sicilian tiling

but the oratory's the thing, Serpotta's most imposing achievement, dating from 1685-90: the whole of the west wall is covered in theatres (see up top), at the centre of which is a depiction of the Battle of Lepanto. The Oratory was dedicated to the Virgin in the 16th century for her 'intervention' in said battle.

The theatre scenes around it here include the road to Calvary

and a well-composed Flagellation

while the flanking figures are just as remarkable, including the boys below the battle scene

and a fine figure of a man.

Again, the putti are remarkable, if you care for that sort of thing (J decidedly didn't, and I'd have preferred more of the above). These two struggle manfully, if that's the right word, with a lion in the presbytery.

The rain of our only squally day, that ultima colpa della coda dell'inverno, as the paper put it, which made travelling on to our agriturismo outside Castelbuono that afternoon somewhat fraught, was intensifying. So we took a quick walk around the scaffolded Palazzo Lampedusa, passed the Vincenzo Bellini Conservatory of Music, popped in to the well restored renaissance church of San Giorgio dei Genovesi to see a fine Giordano of the Madonna of the Rosary, and headed up to the main drag to buy provisions for our trip outside Palermo. Here, my debt to an unforgettable week isn't quite paid: Monreale, Cefalù and Castelbuono have yet to be honoured. Meanwhile, I continue to disturb myself post-Wozzeck with John Dickie's indignation-fuelled study of the Sicilian mafia, Cosa Nostra.

Cannoli in the Albergheria

'Leave the gun. Take the cannoli', says the character Peter Clemenza over the body of a driver he's just had murdered in The Godfather Part One. In Part Three - much the weakest of the trilogy - Eli Wallach's Don Altobello dies from a poisoned cannolo while watching Cavalleria Rusticana at the Teatro Massimo. And what self-respecting mafioso could resist these delicious tubes of fried pastry dough filled with ricotta (usually candied)? The cannolo originated in Palermo, supposedly created as a kind of phallic symbol during carnival season. Photos of our consumption don't make for pleasant viewing, so I revert to Paolo Piscolla's Wikishot of the traditional cannolo. Surely the chocolate in the background is a step too far.

The best place to buy cannoli is at the very modest Rosciglione bakery in Palermo's toughest, most run-down but very characterful old town quarter, the Albergheria.

In fact, when we first visited, an Italian customer enthusiastically pointed out that the brothers Rosciglione's cannoli and other cakes are exported all over the world. On our second visit, the two delightful ladies up top were behind the counter - the one on the right, coyly blushing, had to be persuaded that she would adorn the picture. Wrapped-up easter cakes and chocolate sculpures sit on the shelves behind them.

Avoiding cheese for the most part, I had only a mouthful of cannolo and became addicted instead to the pastine di mandorla, almond biscuit/cakes like none I've ever tasted. J ate two cannoli and after a subsequent late, heavy lunch had to go and lie down. Mind you, we were both a little wiped out by our one day of sirocco.

Just up the same street, we came across a group of guerrilla gardeners, local neighbourhood greeners, call them what you will.

I was later chuffed to read about the grass-roots activism of the fabulous Letizia Battaglia, photographer-chronicler of the mafia over 20 years - two of her old pictures helped prove that the ghastly spider Andreotti  had actually met the capos in Palermo when he always denied having even gone there - as well as Green party representative on the city council and later parliamentarian. What a woman!

In Midnight in Sicily, Peter Robb goes off with Battaglia (image above by photopartner Franco Zecchin) on one of her trips with council workers to create green spaces in the heart of the crumbling old city. And here were people carrying on the same good work. When we returned to Rosciglione four days later, the garden included a shrine of sorts to Palermo's beloved Santa Rosalia.

The Albergheria, which some think takes its name from the rulers of Sind known as Ap-Vallaraja because of the Indian spice traders who once gathered here, has more shrines than any of the other quarters. Here are another to Santa Rosalia

and down a street where I'd be very happy to settle, the Via Porta di Castro, a lovingly tended one to the Virgin.

In marked contrast is the bronze statue by Scipione Li Volsi celebrating the victorious return of that anti-Protestant zealot Charles V from Tunisia in 1535. It stands on the edge of the Albergheria in Piazza Bologni.

Palermitans have pride in the outstretched arm of the King and Holy Roman Emperor, without, I suspect, dwelling too much on his deeds. The marble pedestal by Cirasoli and Geraci with bas reliefs by Giovanni Tagliavia, moved here in 1631, has a many headed monster carved on the south-facing panel.

This turns out to be Charles's arch-enemy the 'Lutheran hydra' written about on the opposite side.

There was a fascinating parallel to this, which J saw and I missed, in the contemporary art gallery of Castelbuono's castle, in which the artist depicts those truly heroic 20th century pursuers of justice Falcone and Borsellino fighting the hydra of the Casa Nostra. Quite a different fable.

Piazza Bologni is currently a building site; there's a lot to do on the Palazzo Villafranca. A plaque records that on 27 May 1860, Garibaldi rested his 'weary limbs' here for a mere two hours. Needless to say, trenchant graffitisti (if there's such a word, if not I just made it up) have left their mark in the piazza with protests against, among others, 'ingrained paedophile priests'.

Round the corner is another spontaneous artwork.

Many of the buildings in the Albergheria are in varying degrees of dilapidation, some picturesquely so,

and some were clearly once very grand, including this one near Roscigilione, in front of which we stood and listened to a recorded carillon from the Torre di San Nicolò pealing out Schubert's Ave Maria

though no expense has been spared on the splendid Palazzo Sclafani constructed in 1335 by the count of that name.

It subsequently underwent transformation as a 15th century civic hospital and a 19th century barracks. Today the military lodges here. The fine portal includes the Sclafani coat of arms and an eagle to denote the family's nobility sculpted by Bonaiuto Pisano.

In less good nick is the church of Santa Maria del Carmine at the heart of the Ballerò market (no less atmospheric than its Capo counterpart, incidentally, but we've had enough market pics in the entry for that quarter). The predictably grandiose Jesuit Church was reconstructed, rather impressively, after its bombing in the Second World War, but that one's Palermitan baroque as usual. Few books or web entries have much to say about this rather more interesting, clearly much used building other than to note its majolica dome, seen here from the cloisters which seem to be home to some evangelizing organisation.

Santa Maria del Carmine has one glory, or rather a cluster of glories: the extraordinary if not exactly beautiful twisted baroque pillars with stucco work by the amazing Serpotta firm in the chapels either side of the high altar.

The Vucciria entry will be the time and place to wax lyrical about the Serpotta phenomenon in Palermo, but in the meantime the little 'theatres' we saw elsewhere are placed here at the foot of the pillars, around which are depicted Biblical scenes including an annunciation

and more decorative birds and flowers.

If you think that's odd, you ain't seen nothing yet...

Capo, duomo and cappella

It's second quarter time in the ongoing Palermo saga. Day two in the great city, now that I think about it, was one of total cultural overload. We began in the vicinity of our lovely lodgings in Via Butera with the church of San Francesco and the oratory of San Lorenzo just along the street: cue first discovery of the great baroque stucco master Serpotta. But his wonders belong to the eventually forthcoming entry on the Vucciria district. Later, in the mid afternoon, we caught a bus to Monreale. The chronicle here deals with what we saw in between.

We needed to hit the streets of the Capo in good time, as recommended by our masterchef hostess Nicoletta as the best of the three old-town markets. So we had the strongest of coffees - Palermitan espresso seems to me uniquely strong and deliciously bitter - in a fine bar on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and arrived at the great junction of the Quattro Canti, a colossal homage to the rather more lovable four fountains by Borromini's San Carlo in Rome and built under Spanish occupation at the beginning of the early 17th century. Each 'corner' of the octagon has a Spanish king, a patroness and a seasonal fountain: hence, on this west Capo/Seralcadio side Philip II, Santa Ninfa and summer.

Winding our way without reference to the map through the narrow steets of the Capo felt different to the Kalsa because here it's a matter of climbing and descending various hills. As you hit the Via Sant'Agostino the market zone begins - not food as yet but tat and furnishings. Sant'Agostino turned out to be Serpotta'd too, and again I ought to keep his (or his studio's) contributions to the relevant entry. No harm, though, in taking a look at the depiction of Abraham stalled by the angel as he prepares to sacrifice Isaac.

The 13th century west door and latticed rose window above - not dissimilar to the one for San Francesco which we'd just seen, but less richly ornamented - are the main remainders of the Chiaramonte and Sclafani family's foundation.

Within are various chapels in white and one especially splendid monument of Francesco de Medici sculpted by Ignazio Marabitti in 1771. I think - I should have noted it down - there was reference to a medical connection, hence what I take to be Asclepius's cockerel on top and the volume of Hippocrates.

The cloisters are very lovely and, yes, that inescapable word inscribed in a million church visitors' books, peaceful, though nothing to what we were to see later in the day at Monreale. The arcades are 16th century, attributed to Domenico Gagini, a name we'd come across a fair bit.

The portico to the cloisters from an atmospheric, candlelit chapel, though, seems to be from the time of the church's foundation.

Sant'Agostino was in frequent use by its congregation in Holy Week - much coming and going, and a well-tended shrine to the bound Christ.

All this, of course, was in contrast to the main drag of the market, teeming with fruit and vegetables. Artichokes were very much in season,

and everywhere we saw marketeers stripping them down to the usables, as up top. In the thick of all the marine profusion shaded pinky-red by the awnings,

a fishmonger was chopping up chunks of swordfish.

Later, I was reminded how this is one scene that hasn't changed over millennia. In the Mandralisca Museum in Cefalù, there's a fourth century BC crater or drinking bowl showing a seller carving tuna for a customer - not great art, but an invaluable document of everyday life. I believe I'm entitled to reproduce it from ancientartpodcast.org's photostream on Flickr.

Bang in the middle of the main market street there's an ideal refuge from the hurly-burly - the Church of the Immaculate Conception. This is another of those Palermitan institutions gone baroque-crazy in its polychrome marble unity. The altarpieces of each chapel, all unified as variations on a theme, seem inspired by the orient in their candied depiction of various fantasy edifices. These, if I understand a rare entry on the web, are 'the Triumph of Religious Orders' executed by Olivio Sozzi around 1740.

We strolled up and down the street several times and bought - as Sebastian had told us to look out from them -  a punnet of remarkably early fragole di bosco, wild strawberries.

As the market fizzled out, the cathedral in all its confused splendour appeared from a less than picturesque car park. I was reminded of a rather overelaborately inscribed postcard from a friend of ours on her first trip to Moscow: 'the Kremlin domes are visible from a Dickensian slum of mindblowing squalor'. I'll just stick to the picture, thanks.

The dome is a very unfortunate 18th century addition to the Norman splendour of the whole, which in any case wasn't finished for centuries. Extravagant towers are multiplied by more on the Bishop's Palace,

connected to the cathedral proper by impressive arches.

Some are sniffy about the jarring note of the Gothic-Catalan portico, erected in 1465 by the Gaginis, but it's a marvel in its own right.

Its first column on the left - the one in the shade - belonged to an original mosque on the site - another of those Arabic inscriptions to be found everywhere in Palermo's old town - and to the Byzantine basilica which was erased in 1172 by the English archbishop, Gualtier Offamiglio (Walter of the Mill). We'll see what happened at Monreale when the jealous Norman King William II tried - and within, at least, managed - to surpass his insolent priest's glory. The most intact part of the archbishop's original design is the east end with its semicircular apses, a little bit in shadow early in the afternoon. You can just about see the very beautiful design on one of them.

As there's a school just opposite, you would expect more trenchant graffiti of the kind I illustrated in Piazza Magione, and sure enough this commentary on regional attitudes to culture does not disappoint. We were to find a striking embodiment of its objection when we learned that the aforementioned Mandralisca Museum has been starved of funds, with the still-devoted staff not having been paid for ten months and closure looming.

Inside, the cathedral is horribly disappointing, victim of a dingy 18th century makeover. It's not without its treasures, and a key curiosity is the bronze meridian line running north-south with signs of the zodiac. We two visitors were happy to find our astrological twins and lion duly paired.

 The official entry explains all this better than I can:

The Cathedral has a heliometer (solar "observatory") of 1690, one of a number built in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries. The device itself is quite simple: a tiny hole in one of the minor domes acts as a pinhole character, projecting an image of the sun onto the floor at solar noon (12:00 in winter, 13:00 in summer). The...Meridiana[line's]...ends mark the positions as at the summer and winter solstices; signs of the zodiac show the various other dates throughout the year.

The purpose of the instrument was to standardise the measurement of time and the calendar. The convention in Sicily had been that the (24 hour) day was measured from the moment of sun-rise, which of course meant that no two locations had the same time and, more importantly, did not have the same time as in St Peter's Basilica in Rome. It was also important to know when the vernal equinox occurred, to provide the correct date for Easter.

Palermo has quite a link with the astronomical sciences: as we'll see, the princely great-grandfather of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa who's the model for his Leopard was quite a stargazer, and had an observatory in his palace.

Well, we can't go out on a disappointing interior. We didn't make the Cappella Palatina of the Norman Palace further up the hill until our final day in Palermo on returning from the mountains, but despite having already experienced something of the same wonders in the Martorana Church and out at Monreale, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Within the walls of this not especially grim edifice, which now houses the parliament, various parts of the palace can be seen according to what's going on in Palermitan politics. I was rather regretful that we weren't going to be admitted to the Sala di Ruggero with its frescoes of animals and mythological creatures. But the small, perfectly formed Palatine chapel of Roger II constructed between 1132 and 1143 is the thing. The loggia overlooking the Fountain Courtyard may only be lined with 19th century mosaics, but it offers a handsome entrance.

Within, which we had almost to ourselves - clearly not often the case to judge from the ropelines - other than a group of Italian officials clearly being deferred to, is Sicily's most remarkable balance of Arab and Norman motifs. Somehow a unity is woven between the painted wooden ceiling of the nave with its exquisite muqarnas of multifaceted niches and the mosaics beneath.

It's difficult without binoculars to see the painted secular scenes of the ceiling, executed it's now thought by Egyptian artists. The artwork of the aisle ceilings comes a little closer to the visitor. Not all the artwork is original - the latest, loving restoration with German funding was completed five years ago - but at least it's consistent with the Egyptian style.

The dome above the presbytery is where you'd expect to find the mosaics, and it's not disappointing, even if the angel wings aren't as wonderful as those of the Martorana

but the real glories are all over the nave and side chapels, as at Monreale. Indeed, many of the same Biblical scenes are common to both, including the Creation in the top level and further Genesis tales including Noah's nakedness and the Tower of Babel below.

The two aisle walls are decorated with the lives of Saints Peter and Paul. The latter takes his name at his baptism after the Damascene conversion in the South Aisle

while on the opposite side Peter and Paul (unseen in this shot) dispute with Nero and Simon Magus before the latter's fall.

I've only touched the tip of the narrative iceberg, happy to have a splendid Miribilia Italiae guide to peruse back home. And as Catriona reminds me below, there is so much more to be said about the Norman court with its seemingly easy co-existence of religions, its co-opting of Arab workmanship (the script appears not just in the roof but also on the garbs and scrolls of the Biblical participants).. Just one more detail, of the Moorish style below the mosaics. Any other chapel which boasted only this and the gorgeous pavement would still be on a list of grand Arab-Norman designs.

Not only that, but the chapel was being prepared for Easter services, with the heady scent of floral arrangements and the sacristan preparing a singular cross. I wish we'd still been in Palermo to witness the finished results.