An introduction to Neapolitan and Sicilian furniture

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2004 by Helen Costantino Fioratti

Sicilian clients also favored fine, time-consuming gilded wood carvings, sometimes combined with lacquer. An early example from Palermo is a finely carved pedestal by Giacomo Amato and Antonio Grano of 1696, now in the museum in Palermo.

Sicilian furniture of the best quality often has equidistant compound curves, and the bronzes are sober, often reminiscent of Dutch design, due to the link between Dutch and Flemish sources under Spanish rule. The mounts are flat, usually of intricate design, and made of bronze or gilt-copper. The marble tops for smaller pieces were often made to set into these bronzes. Sicilian marquetry furniture is immediately recognizable by the rosettes with eight petals, similar to the quatrefoil of Genoa and the star of Naples.

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The famous Palagonia villa in Bagheria, near Palermo, was constructed in the first half of the eighteenth century and furnished in the 1770s and 1780s with seat and case furniture probably made in Palermo to very original designs, as was the decoration of the villa itself. The follies of Palagonia--fantastic animals, anthropomorphic figures, and caricatures, all in stone--attracted Goethe, who marveled at the creative originality of Sicilian artisans, who even using reverse-painted glass were able to realize walls simulating agate. Examples of seat furniture with reverse-painted glass decoration from the palace are in a number of museums. (4)

During the Napoleonic period, much of the furniture made in Sicily included military and ancient Roman motifs. A klismos stool, painted white with gilded carving of wood quivers and arrows, is a typical example.

Naples and Sicily offered--and offer--great contrasts from the glorious to the squalid, which prompted Goethe to remark after his visit in the 1780s: "It is without question that the Neapolitan would be another man if he didn't feel himself to be a prisoner between God and Satan." (5)

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(1) Alvar Gonzalez-Palacios, Il tempio del gusto: Le arti decorative in Italia fra classicismo e barocco: Roma e il Regno delle due Sicilie, vol. 2 (Longanesi, Milan, 1984), pp. 170-171.

(2) Ibid., p. 293.

(3) Joseph Forsyth, Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters, during an excursion in Italy in the Years 1802 and 1803 (London, 1813).

(4) These are the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt.

(5) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey, in George Henry Lewes, The Life and Works of Goethe (1855; Dent, London, 1965).

HELEN COSTANTINO FIORATTI, a graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York City, is the president of L'Antiquaire and the Connoisseur, an art and antiques gallery in New York City.