SERPOTTA, Giacomo

Serpotta’s figures are often reminiscent of Roman Baroque sculpture, some of Raggi, others of Ferrata. All of them, however, are imbued with a delicacy and fragility, a simple sensual charm and grace far removed from the dynamic power of the Roman High Baroque.

The present terracotta group is a bozzetto for the stucco sculpture of Charity in the Oratorio di San Lorenzo.

Serpotta decorated several oratories with stuccoes in which may be seen all the elements of Rococo style that was to flourish in Germany. He emerged from generations of artisans to become the greatest Sicilian sculptor of his day. He only knew the Baroque indirectly, from prints and contacts with artists who had trained on the mainland, but he achieved a distinctive synthesis of Sicilian and mainland influences, coupled with an extraordinary combination of verve and dexterity.

Serpotta represented Fortitude as female - most abstract qualities are of the feminine gender in Latin. His Fortitude was given a column as her attribute. The emphasis is contemporary, from her plumed hat to her high-heeled shoes.

In the last years of the 17th century the Sicilian sculptor Giacomo Serpotta was commissioned to decorate the Oratory of San Lorenzo. He illustrated the lives of saints Francesco and Lorenzo in high-relief scenes, accompanying these with appropriate allegorical figures in the round. With the scenes of San Lorenzo is one of the artist’s most graceful works, the figure of Humility, represented as a young woman with fluttering draperies, surrounded by four groups of flying putti. Executed, as are the reliefs, entirely in stucco - a material that demands speed in working and allows no vacillation - the group shows the artist’s great virtuosity.

Stucco, a medium particularly favoured by Italian artists, lent itself to startling tautological effects producing a sort of optical vertiginousness that seemed to permeate space. With the great Sicilian sculptor Giacomo Serpotta this incantatory practice of charging every surface with excrescences virtually became a system. Under his hands the writhing, sinuous forms of the Rococo repertoire express the ancient phobia of empty surfaces that characterizes the overly ornate gilt altarpieces of the Iberian peninsula and Latin America. Serpotta, for his part, preferred to give his stucco work the false pallor of imitation marble. The numerous oratories he decorated at Palermo and Messina are testimony to a talent that was able to invent endless variations. The Oratory of San Lorenzo at Palermo combines an indefatigable imagination with a gift for modelling and a keen sense of elegance that transforms female saints into great ladies of Palermo society.

Stucco, a medium particularly favoured by Italian artists, lent itself to startling tautological effects producing a sort of optical vertiginousness that seemed to permeate space. With the great Sicilian sculptor Giacomo Serpotta this incantatory practice of charging every surface with excrescences virtually became a system. Under his hands the writhing, sinuous forms of the Rococo repertoire express the ancient phobia of empty surfaces that characterizes the overly ornate gilt altarpieces of the Iberian peninsula and Latin America. Serpotta, for his part, preferred to give his stucco work the false pallor of imitation marble. The numerous oratories he decorated at Palermo and Messina are testimony to a talent that was able to invent endless variations. The Oratory of San Lorenzo at Palermo combines an indefatigable imagination with a gift for modelling and a keen sense of elegance that transforms female saints into great ladies of Palermo society.

Between 1685 and 1690 Giacomo Serpotta was responsible to enhance the entire environment of the rectangular room with an ecclesiastical iconography based on the exempla of the Mysteries and Virtues. On the side walls the fine stucco decoration, composed of putti, allegorical statues and theaters, illustrates the Sorrowful, Joyful and Glorious Mysteries.

The decoration of this oratory belongs to the long series of church interiors where Serpotta covered the walls with stucco figures.

The Oratory was built around 1570 by the Compagnia di San Francesco on the remains of an ancient church dedicated to San Lorenzo. It was soon entrusted to the friars of the nearby convent of San Francesco who had the task of burying the poor in the Kalsa district. Only later it was embellished by the stuccoes of Giacomo Serpotta. On the altar was preserved the masterpiece of Caravaggio, the Nativity, work of 1609, which was stolen in 1969 and never found again.

The Oratory was built around 1570 by the Compagnia di San Francesco on the remains of an ancient church dedicated to San Lorenzo. It was soon entrusted to the friars of the nearby convent of San Francesco who had the task of burying the poor in the Kalsa district. Only later it was embellished by the stuccoes of Giacomo Serpotta. On the altar was preserved the masterpiece of Caravaggio, the Nativity, work of 1609, which was stolen in 1969 and never found again.

With the decoration of the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo Serpotta inaugurated that long series of church interiors where he covered the walls with stucco figures, and it is for these decorations that he is famed.

Serpotta was a great master of the putto; playing, laughing, weeping, flying, and tumbling, they accompany every one of his decorations, spreading a cheerful and festive atmosphere.

These statues represent Patience, Strength, and Obedience, some of the “Fruits of the Rosary”, i.e. virtues associated with a series of prayers. Serpotta placed his statues inside niches which existed already; they were gilded in order to give more evidence to the heads of the statues. They bring to mind some early Renaissance Roman reliefs depicting niches which also were partially gilded.