Multicultural island mix: Julian Treuherz reviews a remarkably ambitious exhibition in Germany that traces the complex course of Sicilian art from prehistory to Garibaldi

The organisers of this fascinating exhibition have set themselves an almost impossible task: to cover artistic production in Sicily from 10,000 BC until the mid-19th century. The earliest exhibit is a cast of Palaeolithic incised rock drawings and the latest a bust by Benedetto do Lisi of Garibaldi, whose arrival in Sicily in 1860 led to it becoming part of a unified Italy. The task is particularly ambitious because of the island's extraordinarily varied artistic heritage. Sicily's fertility and its strategic position at the head of the Mediterranean made it highly desirable. It was settled or conquered by successive waves of North Africans, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Swabians and Spaniards. Mainland Italy also provided inspiration through a two-way traffic of artists. This pattern of external influence produced a layering and cross-fertilisation of cultures unique in western Europe.

Apart from Antonello da Messina, a native of Sicily, and Caravaggio, who spent only nine months there, Sicilian art lacks famous names of the kind found in concentration in art centres such as Tuscany or Rome, but its culture encompasses monuments of world stature, such as the Greek temple complexes at Agrigento and Selinunte, the mosaic decorations of the Roman villa at Piazza Armerina, the romanesque mosaics at Monreale cathedral, and the planned baroque town of Noto. These sites cannot of course be brought into an exhibition: this too presented great challenges to the organisers. Whilst a judicious number of major works have been allowed to travel to Bonn, providing focal points for each section, the selectors have also chosen many lesser items to convey the main artistic currents with clarity and flair.

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The exhibition opens dramatically with a film of Mount Etna erupting, complete with roaring noises. Devoted to pre- and proto-history, it includes strikingly shaped Bronze Age ceramics, bronze statuettes and gold jewellery. But it is with the second and third sections of the show, about Greece and Rome, that the exhibition gets into its stride. The wealth of Greek remains in Sicily is well represented by small sculptures, masks, vases and a few larger-scale pieces, all of them found at the city-states and temples founded by Greeks who migrated to Sicily.

These works of art reflect Greek types; some were imported, but many were probably made in Sicily. They raise questions about the nature of Sicilian art, relating to the underlying thesis of the exhibition that as each foreign style was imported it was adopted with open arms and developed a distinctive Sicilian flavour. Amongst the Greek sculptures, two items stand out. A kouros statue of c. 480 BC from Agrigento is very close to Greek types but it is made of Greek marble. Was it made on Sicilian soil as the catalogue suggests? Marble was not readily available in Sicily and many sculptors worked in terracotta or local stone. The second outstanding item, a 6th-century carved stone panel picturing the rape of Europa (Fig. 2), delightfully stylised and full of movement, comes from Selinunte, site of the only Sicilian temples adorned with figurative metopes. Because of the size and number of metopes, it is assumed that there must have been a school of local sculptors working in local limestone. Imported marble was used, however: another intriguing piece from Selinunte is a marble face from one of the other temples where marble was applied to the stone reliefs to pick out faces, hands and feet.

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In the Roman section of the show there are three masterpieces of sculpture: the early-3rd-century BC bronze ram from Castello Maniace (Fig. 3), newly conserved; the statue of the aged fisherman from Syracuse, a sensitive rendering of an old man's body, a Roman copy of a late-3rd-century BC Hellenistic-Alexandrian original; and the 2nd-century AD Venus Kallipygos, a sensational recent discovery excavated in 2005 in Marsala. In Bonn, this is displayed standing, as it should be, rather than recumbent as it was discovered and has been shown in Marsala. The luxury of Roman Sicily is shown by a 1st-century BC fragment of wall painting from a villa at Solunto and by a group of beautiful silver vessels from about the 1st century BC and probably Thracian, but found in Paterno, on the foothills of Etna; they were probably buried to prevent seizure by the rapacious Roman governor Caius Verres, famously denounced by Cicero.

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The central sections of the exhibition cover late-antique, Byzantine and medieval Sicily. These are less satisfactory, because the great monuments, such as the mosaic cycles, the fragmentary remains of Arabic architecture and the medieval castles, cannot be shown in an exhibition. Yet the organisers have managed to find lesser works that still give insight into the special character of Sicilian art. A 9th-century fluted column removed from Syracuse cathedral during early-20th-century restoration work reminds us of the continuity of cultural strata, for the present baroque cathedral still incorporates in its walls the even earlier Doric columns of the 6th-century BC temple of Athena. A document about land ownership from the time of William H, listing names in both Greek and Arabic, demonstrates the famously tolerant attitude of the Norman conquerors, who encouraged a kind of multiculturalism before its time, leading to a unique court culture synthesising Greek, Christian and Arabic learning.

For the renaissance and baroque, a small number of great paintings have been gathered, although it is a pity there are not more. They include Antonello da Messina's Crucifixion (1450-60) from Sibiu, Caravaggio's Adoration of the Shepherds (1609) from Messina and Pietro Novelli's Liberation of St. Peter(c. 1633-4; Fig. 1). Sculpture could have been better served: the workshop piece by the Florentine Francesco Laurana, who visited briefly in the late-15th century, and the sculptures by the Gagini family, whose statues and altar carvings are all over the island, are indifferent examples, and the Florentine sculptor G.A. Montorsoli, who worked in Messina, is not represented at all. The single piece by the 18th-century stuccatore Giacomo Serpotta, a playful group of tumbling putti, cannot adequately convey his unique genius. This, and the pieces of coloured marble inlay, another Sicilian speciality, could easily have been shown with large-scale photographs to give some idea of the scale of this type of work in situ. Architectural drawings give a hint of the decorative inventiveness of the baroque, but the exhibition triumphs in its presentation of the so-called minor arts of this period--metalwork, jewellery and textiles. Outstanding in a rich display of precious and elaborate confections are a 16th-century harness set belonging to one of the viceroys through whom the Spanish kings ruled Sicily, 17th-century Trapani coralwork, and magnificent altar frontals, some in solid silver, some in richly embroidered silk, with gold and silver thread and coral beads.

The concluding part of the show is devoted to the 19th century, concentrating on the popular arts. Oddly, there are no painted carts, but there are puppets, painted shop signs and ex-voto paintings, two of which depict attacks by bandits, the sole reference to the emergence of the mafia. 19th-century academic painting is not shown, apart from a few historical paintings of events such as the Sicilian Vespers. (The catalogue, available in German with an Italian version forthcoming, includes an essay on 19th-century painting as well as essays on many other aspects of Sicilian art). One important element in Sicilian life combining popular culture and art, and still very much alive today, the religious procession, is represented by two outstanding exhibits, a 17th-century full-size processional statue of St Agatha, gaudily decorated and gilded, and a model of an unbelievably elaborate 19th-century tiered float covered in angels, with a statue of Sta Rosalia on top of a mountain of putti.

Sicilian history has its dark side--the stultifying conservatism of the ruling class described by Lampedusa in The Leopard (1958), the poverty and emigration, and the malignant presence of the mafia. Nevertheless, as the organisers state, the coexistence of different cultural strata could be a model for the current situation in Europe. The exhibition must surely encourage more visitors to explore this heady mixture for themselves.

Julian Treuherz who recently retired as Keeper of Art Galleries, National Museums Hverpool, is writing a book on the art and architecture of Sicily.

'Sizilien--Von Odysseus bis Garibaldi" Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, as Januaryas May. +49 [o] 228 9171 200. Catalogue by Giulio Macchi, et al., ISBN 97934-22067462, (paper) 29 [euro] (German trade edition, Deutscher Kunswerlag; Italian edition, Silvana Editore).

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