'Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-Stricken of Palermo'
Anthony van Dyck, 1624
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Since the spread of the Corona virus, I've been struggling to figure out how to continue with my blog posts on Palermo, Sicily, and Pantelleria without appearing insensitive or flippant. While there is no question that the situation will continue to get worse and more lives will be lost, that some businesses of all kinds will close, and that life as we once knew it will likely not be quite the same, I am by nature an optimistic person and I think that without hope for better times I would shrivel up and die. I am buoyed by what others have written: consumer advocate Christopher Elliott, writing for Forbes.com, stated, "Ask experts and they'll tell you that travel will come back quickly. Probably faster than anyone expects." Writer Francesca Bezzone contributed a piece to L'Italo-Americano in early March, and noted, "A virus won't stop the heart of Italy." Additionally, United Airlines announced last August that it would be offering direct flights from Newark to Palermo, which will presumably resume at some point, and The New York Times included Sicily on its '52 Places to Go in 2020' list.
The answer to my dilemma arrived in the Weekend Arts section of The New York Times this past Friday 27th, in the front page piece by critic Jason Farago. Farago's excellent article is about a particular painting (pictured above) created at a particular time in Palermo's history, during the plague. Art historian and lecturer Allan Langdale, author of Palermo: Travels in the City of Happiness, says it's believed that 10,000 people died between May and December 1624. He recounts that the plague arrived aboard a ship from Tunis, and within two months the lazzaretto (quarantine hospital) was filled to overflowing. After Santa Rosalia's relics were paraded through the streets of Palermo, "its atmosphere thick with the stench of putrefying corpses," the plague lifted, and ever since she's been Palermo's patron saint. Rosalia is believed to have been the daughter of Sinibaldus, a nobleman of King William I's court. She decided to renounce worldly materialism after witnessing the decadence of the courtiers around her, so she hiked to the (then) wilderness of Monte Pellegrino, on a hill north of Palermo that Goethe described as "the most beautiful headland in the world." (Today it's a popular spot for weekend picnicking and hiking, and the cave-chapel of Santa Rosalia receives a great many female visitors who believe in Rosalia's power to help them conceive; other visitors are lovers whose families don't approve of their union, "thus ensuring her continued reputation with new generations for whom the menace of bubonic plague no longer holds compelling sway.") Rosalia found a spot, a cave-grotto, where she could worship in peace. She died there and her body was gradually entombed in a crust of limestone from the cave's drippings of mineralized water. Fast forward to the plague: a man in Palermo had a dream of a white dove that led him to Monte Pellegrino, and when he awoke, he climbed the mountain and found Santa Rosalia's forgotten relics in the cave-grotto. The crust had to be chipped away to get at the bones, and these were carried through the streets of Palermo. Langdale debunks this legend by saying it's extremely slim that the bones found in the cave were those of a medieval female saint. More likely is that they were the fossilized bones of a dwarf elephant or mammoth, "animals that were common on pre-Neolithic Sicily. Dwarf elephants and pygmy hippopotami have been found on many other Mediterranean islands, such as Malta, Crete, and Cyprus. When humans arrived on these islands they found these defenseless creatures easy prey and good sources of meat, hunting them to extinction in a few centuries. The bones were often disposed of in heaps."
Flemish painter van Dyck was among the crowds when Rosalia's relics were exhibited in the streets of Palermo. He had been commissioned to paint the portrait of the Spanish Viceroy Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy (Sicily was at this time ruled by the kings of Spain by governors and viceroys). Van Dyck's painting of Filiberto is in the collection of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London (the painting was used as a starting point in a 2012 exhibit, 'Van Dyck in Sicily'). Filiberto succumbed to the plague, dying only a few moths after his portrait was finished. Langdale writes that "It's been said that when the portrait was finished and hung in the palace it fell to the floor a few days later. Filiberto had rightly taken this to be a bad omen."
La Festa di Santa Rosalia (known as U Fistinu in Sicilian dialect) is the most important festival of the year in Palermo. On the evening of 14 July, a huge float in the shape of a boat (a new one is made every year) carries a statue of Rosalia (known as the santuzza, "little saint"). The boat is pulled by oxen who make their way from the old town to the marina, where there is a fireworks display. On the 15th of July, Rosalia's relics are carried through the streets of Palermo and they end up at the Cathedral, where they are blessed by the Archbishop of Palermo. Then, on the 4th of September (the day of Rosalia's death), there is a pilgrimage to her sanctuary on Monte Pellegrino. When I was in Palermo in mid-September, a church on via Butera was still hosting celebratory events nearly every day of the month.
Jason Farago informs us that van Dyck painted other images of Rosalia while he was in quarantine (he was in Palermo for six months): Apsley House in London, the Prado in Madrid, The Menil Collection in Houston, and the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico all have a van Dyck Rosalia; but Farago didn't mention one in Palermo's excellent Palazzo Abatellis museum, 'Santa Rosalia incoronata da Angeli' ("Santa Rosalia crowned by Angels"), and Jacqueline Alio, the Sicilian author I mentioned in two previous posts, wrote to me that there is still another one in the collection of the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth Texas. The Met's painting is part of the museum's big anniversary exhibition, 'Making the Met: 1870-2020,' which was set to debut tomorrow, the 30th of March. I'm very much looking forward to the exhibit when it opens.
It will not only open but it will be worthy of celebration. Sicily, too, will reopen, so I will now proceed to post without apology. After all, as Farago writes, "Plagues are random. They are merciless. They are, I'm now learning, most terrifying for their uncertain duration. Yet Rosalia, floating over Sicily like a hot-air balloon, promises that the horror of epidemic will lift eventually, and beauty will return."
The answer to my dilemma arrived in the Weekend Arts section of The New York Times this past Friday 27th, in the front page piece by critic Jason Farago. Farago's excellent article is about a particular painting (pictured above) created at a particular time in Palermo's history, during the plague. Art historian and lecturer Allan Langdale, author of Palermo: Travels in the City of Happiness, says it's believed that 10,000 people died between May and December 1624. He recounts that the plague arrived aboard a ship from Tunis, and within two months the lazzaretto (quarantine hospital) was filled to overflowing. After Santa Rosalia's relics were paraded through the streets of Palermo, "its atmosphere thick with the stench of putrefying corpses," the plague lifted, and ever since she's been Palermo's patron saint. Rosalia is believed to have been the daughter of Sinibaldus, a nobleman of King William I's court. She decided to renounce worldly materialism after witnessing the decadence of the courtiers around her, so she hiked to the (then) wilderness of Monte Pellegrino, on a hill north of Palermo that Goethe described as "the most beautiful headland in the world." (Today it's a popular spot for weekend picnicking and hiking, and the cave-chapel of Santa Rosalia receives a great many female visitors who believe in Rosalia's power to help them conceive; other visitors are lovers whose families don't approve of their union, "thus ensuring her continued reputation with new generations for whom the menace of bubonic plague no longer holds compelling sway.") Rosalia found a spot, a cave-grotto, where she could worship in peace. She died there and her body was gradually entombed in a crust of limestone from the cave's drippings of mineralized water. Fast forward to the plague: a man in Palermo had a dream of a white dove that led him to Monte Pellegrino, and when he awoke, he climbed the mountain and found Santa Rosalia's forgotten relics in the cave-grotto. The crust had to be chipped away to get at the bones, and these were carried through the streets of Palermo. Langdale debunks this legend by saying it's extremely slim that the bones found in the cave were those of a medieval female saint. More likely is that they were the fossilized bones of a dwarf elephant or mammoth, "animals that were common on pre-Neolithic Sicily. Dwarf elephants and pygmy hippopotami have been found on many other Mediterranean islands, such as Malta, Crete, and Cyprus. When humans arrived on these islands they found these defenseless creatures easy prey and good sources of meat, hunting them to extinction in a few centuries. The bones were often disposed of in heaps."
Flemish painter van Dyck was among the crowds when Rosalia's relics were exhibited in the streets of Palermo. He had been commissioned to paint the portrait of the Spanish Viceroy Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy (Sicily was at this time ruled by the kings of Spain by governors and viceroys). Van Dyck's painting of Filiberto is in the collection of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London (the painting was used as a starting point in a 2012 exhibit, 'Van Dyck in Sicily'). Filiberto succumbed to the plague, dying only a few moths after his portrait was finished. Langdale writes that "It's been said that when the portrait was finished and hung in the palace it fell to the floor a few days later. Filiberto had rightly taken this to be a bad omen."
La Festa di Santa Rosalia (known as U Fistinu in Sicilian dialect) is the most important festival of the year in Palermo. On the evening of 14 July, a huge float in the shape of a boat (a new one is made every year) carries a statue of Rosalia (known as the santuzza, "little saint"). The boat is pulled by oxen who make their way from the old town to the marina, where there is a fireworks display. On the 15th of July, Rosalia's relics are carried through the streets of Palermo and they end up at the Cathedral, where they are blessed by the Archbishop of Palermo. Then, on the 4th of September (the day of Rosalia's death), there is a pilgrimage to her sanctuary on Monte Pellegrino. When I was in Palermo in mid-September, a church on via Butera was still hosting celebratory events nearly every day of the month.
Jason Farago informs us that van Dyck painted other images of Rosalia while he was in quarantine (he was in Palermo for six months): Apsley House in London, the Prado in Madrid, The Menil Collection in Houston, and the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico all have a van Dyck Rosalia; but Farago didn't mention one in Palermo's excellent Palazzo Abatellis museum, 'Santa Rosalia incoronata da Angeli' ("Santa Rosalia crowned by Angels"), and Jacqueline Alio, the Sicilian author I mentioned in two previous posts, wrote to me that there is still another one in the collection of the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth Texas. The Met's painting is part of the museum's big anniversary exhibition, 'Making the Met: 1870-2020,' which was set to debut tomorrow, the 30th of March. I'm very much looking forward to the exhibit when it opens.
It will not only open but it will be worthy of celebration. Sicily, too, will reopen, so I will now proceed to post without apology. After all, as Farago writes, "Plagues are random. They are merciless. They are, I'm now learning, most terrifying for their uncertain duration. Yet Rosalia, floating over Sicily like a hot-air balloon, promises that the horror of epidemic will lift eventually, and beauty will return."
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