Pearls in the mountains of Sicily

Рет қаралды 325

6 ай бұрын

A few kilometres from our destination we saw mountains of white marble on the right side of our course. It was an amazing sight. The temptation to see up close how marble is extracted was great. The gates of the quarry are open. No-one's there. We stayed at Holiday Home Nicola Santoro. Detached villa. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, large living room with kitchen, huge terrace, you can see the sea. It is 500 metres away. Twelve olive trees. Fantastic view of Monte Cofano. And a little to the right is the view of the marble mountain with the "Pearl of Sicily" mine. This is the name of one of the world's most famous marbles. It turned out that it is mostly mined literally next to us between the mountains of Monte Cofano and Monte Sparaggio on an area of only three square kilometres in the area of the town of Custonaci, where there are about two hundred marble quarries, the largest Sicilian mining district and the second largest in Italy. The name "Pearl of Sicily" comes from the round spots of calcite that cover the surface of this marvellous ivory-coloured stone: in fact, with their bright white appearance they resemble the mother-of-pearl surface of shells. Thanks to its incredible aesthetic and technical qualities (resistance to all temperatures and trampling), Perlato di Sicilia is used both inside and outside to create floors, vertical coverings, staircases, as well as sculptures. However, this was not always the case. Many centuries ago, the "jewel" of Sicily was a very different marble. From the end of the 16th century, Italian architects began to actively use in construction and decoration not only the long-known marble from Carrara, but also other stones supplied from more distant areas from the mainland. During these years, the extraction of marble, especially red libescio and yellow marble from Segesta, boomed in Sicily. "It is difficult to find another breed of marble that could rival Libeccio Antico in its natural properties and beauty. Its palette of shades is astonishingly varied: its greenish, purple and golden tones seem to burst forth from the depths, becoming a colourful and captivating multicolour. This Trapani marble is particularly good for the creation of columns and for the construction of chapels and basilicas", as described in Marzo Ferro's textbook on one of the most valuable Sicilian marbles from the Custonaci area. In those distant times, marble inlay techniques continued to develop and the use of libeccio was combined with the development of the art of the so-called "marble blending", the first examples of which can be found in the Church of Jesus in Palermo. Libeccio antico was very popular in the decoration of the corner pilasters of chapels. Together with geometric patterns, the masters made extensive use of floral motifs characteristic of the Renaissance. In the Crocifisso Chapel in the Church of Jesus, libeccio antico serves as a backdrop for pinkish-beige winged sphinxes supporting graceful floral vases. During several decades of the 17th century, the magnificent colonnades of many Sicilian churches continued to be made mainly of libeccio, whose intense tones attracted the eye and invariably turned the succession of columns into the compositional centres of the temples. Thus in the San Giovanni Battista Chapel in the church of Sant'Ignazio all'Olivella, the dense veins and shimmers of the marble columns adorning the altar are marvellously combined with the inlays of the side pilasters. The art of marble workmanship made it possible to create such colourful columns as can be seen in the Church of Jesus in Palermo. Paolo Almato, who was Palermo's chief architect from 1687, made extensive use of the richness of the marble palette in the church of Santa Maria di Valverde. Working on its architecture, he structured the church with twisted libeccio columns and filled the spaces between them with sculptures of biblical subjects, frescoes, mouldings and bas-reliefs. It was decided to frame the magnificent altar with two groups of multifaceted multicoloured columns with richly inlaid bases. In the church of the Jesuit boarding house in Trapani, created with the participation of Paolo Rizzo and completed by his pupils, libeccio was used to make an elegant balustrade along its side walls and luxurious pilasters framing the hall. When luxurious polychrome architectural decorations with combinations of white, black and red marble went out of fashion, libeccio continued to be used, but in the form of large wall slabs. The completion of the apse of the Church of Jesus in Palermo can be attributed to this period. The aforementioned architectural objects cannot, of course, cover all examples of the use of this marble. Libeccio Antico can be considered the most "baroque" of the Sicilian marbles, which corresponds perfectly to the creative tension underlying most of the works of this architectural trend. Today,libeccio can be found in small quantities, mostly in a small number of rich colours

Пікірлер: 9

@stasyivina4153 6 ай бұрын

Видео классное, очень красивое, спасибо. Только пожалуйста не путайте слова "аспид" (змей) и "апсида" (полукруг алтарной части)

@proetcontra7675 6 ай бұрын

Прошу прощения. Оговорка. В титрах правильно. Моя ошибка.