Sicilian Baroque

With the publication this year of Maria Giuffre’s The Baroque Architecture of Sicily (Thames and Hudson) it’s time to restore (or perhaps establish) the reputation of one Rosario Gagliardi, the under-admired master of the late Baroque. His work is best admired in the purpose-built Baroque cities of South Eastern Sicily, notably Modica, Noto and Ragusa, and there is no better time to visit – these towns were appointed UNESCO heritage sites in 2002 and a huge programme of restoration have been carried out. While a visit a couple of years ago would have been characterised by swathes of scaffolding, today the buildings are revealed with all their crisp details renewed in richly coloured (yet easily corroded) golden sandstone.

These towns presented one of Architecture’s most glorious opportunities – following the devastating earthquake of 1693, the towns of Scicli, Noto Ragusa and Modica were completely rebuilt, in the case of Noto on a totally new site. The undertaking was of a staggering scale, a phoenix-like triumph that could not be further from the grizzly utilitarian rebuilding experienced after the war. Gagliardi was responsible for a fair number of the towns’ churches and the results are amongst the finest examples of what an artist can achieved when untramelled by compromise and building from scratch.

So, why has he been neglected by art historians? The reasons are fairly prosaic, I’m afraid, though revealing. First, the geographical – Gagliardi, a Syracusan by birth, never left Siciliy. Given the amount of work he (and his many contemporaries) received close to home it is no surprise, but one wonders what impact it would have upon his reputation if he had worked in Rome. There was no sense in which this would represent a stylistic rejection of parochial Southern architecture. It simply means his work was less widely seen.

Second, and most pertinent from an art historical perspective, is the date – Gagliardi was working in the 18th Century. When art historians talk about the Baroque, it is generally in reference to the early part of the 17th Century, the time at which Bernini and Borromini were transforming Rome. Unfortunately, art historians can often have one-track-minds, and by the 1700s and the severe curtailment of the power of the papacy, interest in Italy has faded somewhat in favour of Northern Europe and the glories of the Enlightenment. What good are wildly extravagant churches when man is now at the centre of the universe?

But Gagliardi endures, and the experience of standing before his churches such as San Giorgio in Modica and San Giorgio (popular man) in Ragusa is unforgettable. Particularly for someone who travelled so little (although ideas could be transmitted through drawings), his imagination is immensely ripe, dramatically playing with forms and space, all executed with the most acute attention to detail and drawing. The South’s answer to Borromini.