The Galleria di Palazzo Abatellis is a set of staging inventions and conceptual attentions. First, for space requirements and fruition, we have identified a selection of the most significant works to be exhibited. Few works, so the visitor does not remain confused and bewildered. The works not on display are placed in the warehouse, on specially designed racks for easy consultation from the scholar and those who are interested.
A series of measures are adopted to guarantee the best “exposure” to the works: the paintings, for example, are placed on the supports, leaving a gap between the support and the wall, so a thread of air can circulate; the frames are arranged to allow easy detailed inspections. The layout of the Galleria is a fundamental text for the Italian museology history.
Through the creation of a path, starting from the main entrance, through a walkway in the courtyard covered by curtains, the visitor of the museum retraces Scarpa’s mental itineraries, letting himself be guided by the architect’s instinctive artistic taste, which he is led through chosen stops.
Triumph of death
Along the way, a continuous dialogue is woven between the interior and the courtyard, an alternation of views and glimpses if the openwork architraves of the mullioned windows that stand out against the blue sky. The continuous osmosis become problematic, when it is necessary to ensure that visitors can return to the cloakroom to collect their trinkets, without them getting wet, if the weather, as rarely happens in Sicily, is rainy.
It is important to reconstruct, for a better understanding of Carlo Scarpa’s design ideas, the obligatory path according to which guests and authorities are present in the museum on the inauguration day; where and to what extent the choice of works affect the structure of the museum and how much the set-up is truly consequent to the selections.
To indicate the succession of rooms, in the plan of the two parts of the building published in “L’architettura – cronache e storia” in 1955, Scarpa, uses a numbering. Room I is highlighted with two arrows, one that marks the door, the other that guides the path. Starting from the courtyard, it is not unique. The plan design leads to the four corner, strong ad dense with elements: the stairways, the loggia, the wonderful Malaga vase which can been seen under the arch. Room II, following the tour, is dominated by the bulk of Trionfo della Morte, whose size dominates and crushes the visitor: the proportions are enhanced by the view from below, consequently accentuating the surprise; moreover, the same fresco can be observe from a loggia on the first floor, where the visitor can sit and contemplate it. The arrows continue to guide, according to narrow forced passages, until they frame the bust of Eleonora d’Aragona; coming from that side, you can see it from the back and trocar, backlight of the window behind it. It is the worst point of view to reveal Eleonora and there is no need to refute the theory that Scarpa wanted to invite the visitor to walk around her.
Madonna of the Snow by Antonello Gagini
If you enter from the central door that opens onto the courtyard, you see an enfilade of objects framed by the door, according to a view that could hastily be considered a reinterpretation of the building’s layout. A door, the Madonna dei Gagini, another door, the Eleonora and the colored background of the final panel while a skillful scan of side lights marks the time of the route.
If weather permits, you can go out into the courtyard to go up the staircase; “in case of rainy weather”, it will be better to go through a new stone staircase designed by Scarpa, with cantilevered steps with a compressed hexagonal section: a refined game of volumes that, without interpenetrating, barely hint from one to the next.
On the second floor, the rooms follow one another seamless. The triptychs of the Thirteenth century, the cross of the Giunta, then on the right the showcase that fits between two walls to keep the virtuosity of an Arab Platero; beyond the hall of the Fourteenth century, the main hall extends. Upon entering the party hall, Scarpa decides to place the two large Fourteenth-century crosses there, orders the plaster from the main walls to be peeled off and the texture of the original ashlars exposed: on these there are the frescoes, like ancient tapestries, suitable for a salon of that time. On the short sides, however, the thicker plaster gives prominence to the walls, treating them as slabs, framing them and detaching them from the orthogonal walls: on those “panels” he will arrange polyptychs. With the curtains on the windows, the great room shines, as in the past, with new light. The door that divides the hall of crosses from the next room misses the wooden carving of a banner that stands out against a green background. The banner is a reminder of Antonello’s early works for a community of Messina people far from their homeland.
Portrait of Eleanor of Aragon
The visitor moves outward, trying to frame the banner and align his visual focus with the door’s one. In this way, the beauty of Antonello’s Annunziata appears enchanting to his gaze.
“Excellent light for Antonello”, says Scarpa in the plan and wonders if the degree of incidence would have eliminated the reflections. The glass that protects it makes it difficult to see the Annunziata, although Scarpa has chosen a vermilion velvet to make it stand out.
Diagonally, behind the Annunziata, Scarpa invents a wooden divider, concluded obliquely by a panel on which the three saints rotate, to compress the space and then accentuate its depth, breaking through it with two strong diagonals. Scarpa arranges the pieces on orthogonal planes to the windows; in this way he orientates the Eleonora d’Aragona, the Madonna of Gagini, the crosses and the refined filigree of the Malvagna triptych. With the circular cloth on the Trionfo della Morte, with the veil and the triple lancet windows in the hall of crosses, it softens the Mediterranean’s sunlight. If the sunlight is soft, you can read the details, but the ductus, the traces of paint and gold decorations on the statues, become visible only with an oriented light. This is what happens to the Testa di Paggio of Antonello, “the best known and most gifted among Domenico Gagini’s sons”, which is placed in profile on a black background, off-center compared to the pedestal; when the head is turn to the window, the golden decoration that cover it finally appear.
Scarpa’s show is also judging, giving depth with different reliefs and different highlight, supporting a culture and a personal taste that complement each other. His judgment underlines twice with the wooden supports the worthiest works; it frames the Pisan cross with a box that goes far beyond the function of a simple support; it simply supports, where it does not deem it necessary to give more emphasis. His handing come to conceal: by showing something else, he hides what he does not likes; it happens in the Antonello room where, behind the Annunziata, there is a Madonna and child, a minor work attributed to the Venetian Marco Basaiti, linked to the former only by “remote relationships”.
Portrait of a Young Man by Antonello Gagini
Beyond these cuts and these decisions, the architect covers the material and design supports to support the works; on the solid ebony, the marble of the bust of Eleonora remain suspended on the two brass rear cylinders and sink into a corrugated lead sheet under the weight of the marble mass. Elsewhere, lead tau stop and support the decorated marbles; woods, irons and stones are modeled according to designs suitable for the material, sometimes to be set, sometimes to supports heavy pieces that seem to float in suspension. Hinges and joist of little volumes allow the rotation of the supported pieces.
The Antonello’s Tre Santi, Quartararo’s painting, the Trionfo della Morte, can rotate around the pins, each in search of its own “better light”.
In the courtyard of Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo there are two parts of an Arab epigraph from the year 1000 that Carlo Scarpa placed on the ground in the portico, so the visitors can use them as benches to rest and meditate. The inlay of porphyry and serpentine of the inscription on the white marble, before singing the praises of Allah and his prophet, conceals a secret in its left-handed: “(T’ approached), kiss the song of this (building) after having embraced it and contemplates the beautiful things it contains”.
In the courtyard, Scarpa perfected the proportions and redistributed more usefully the openings facing internally both on the portico and on the loggia, improving the conditions of the relative rooms. The plasters in the other three facades of the courtyard are painted by alternating slight of the same color, in harmony with the natural tone of the stone and the intensity of the light; a smart trick to not shock the eye with the chromatic monotony of the surfaces.
Salon of the hexagonal staircase
Salone della scala esagonaleOpened in the masonry the few gaps necessary to imprint the exhibition spaces, with the formula of the clockwise verse, the functional continuity of the visit required, the need for an internal vertical connection must be resolved. Skillfully hewn in Carini stone, the hexagonal compressed steps testing on the linear metal structure of an open staircase, with the stone slabs hovering the void, join the ground floor with the landing of the external staircase, leading to the first floor.
The movable closures are also renewed in the building: the grating used in elegant screens is solid but permeable to the view. The wooden score in the windows with small columns, punctuated by a rhythm in quarters with skillful pauses, is set back because “the fixtures allow you to see the ornament of the triple lancet windows even from the inside”; in the other windows, the rhythm of the frame alternates between the track and the ternary.
The internal surfaces are treated, with patient manual laboriousness of craftsmen, with putty and opaque stucco. To exhibit the works, the architect thinks of changing tonal backgrounds with natural luminous vibrations.
Scarpa’s sensitivity to respect for the Fifteenth-century building requires to dismantling of the faux-antique wooden false ceiling installed in the living room, abolishing the artificial and replacing it with a new lining that was no longer built.
Laurana Hall
Reduced the number of works of art to be exhibited, identified by the person in charge of scientific organization to the character of the collections and the size of the space, large and accessible warehouses are organized for the other works. The paintings are collected for storage and consultation by metal racks sliding within guides, arranged on the ground in the larger deposit, while on the ceiling in the smaller one. The ground floor of the museum is intended for the exhibition of sculpture, the first floor for the paintings, but without too much scanning stiffness, neither chronological nor typological.
To understand Scarpa’s display devices, it is necessary to reflect on the relationship between the object and the space of the museum, in the places of mutual contact, destined to become special hinges between time and history.
The diaphanous marble bust of Eleonora d’Aragona in the Laurana room on the ground floor, brought upright to a calculated height, floats on a solid ebony wood, shaped by elliptical curves according to precise instructions from the designer. A thin air bearing, reinforced by the polar contrast of the black-white pair, prevents the sculpture from embodying its lower counterweight. Slightly raised at the rear by two brass cylinders, Laurana’s work rests on a lead plate, drowned in a brass plate. Furthermore, the size of the wooden support protects against an unpleasant sense of resection, typical of busts, and its design completes the shape. Penetrating from an orthogonal window behind Eleonora’s shoulder. Slightly protruding from the wall, the colored stucco panels on the back and side of the torso allow the clear female profile to be drawn against a dense chromatic tone. The thin vertical line joining the panels, in Eleonora’s bust, is a precise metric comment. Stuck in the floor, the rod on which ebony and marble rest constitutes a decentralized visual pole for the exhibition spaces. The visitor, who comes from the double-facing room of the chapel, is first attracted by the chiaroscuro effect of the profile, illuminated by three quarters, then he is busy moving around the bust while feeling its volumetric implications, finally directed by the dynamics of the gaze towards subsequent stations of the route.
Lighting system of Palazzo Abatellis designed by Carlo Scarpa
Scarpa thinks of a regulated intersection of neon tubes with exposed reinforced concrete beams in the hall of crosses; in the other rooms, he imagines panels fixed obliquely along the high edge of the rooms, space by vertical slits through which the light should have penetrated. Other sheets bear studies for a double theory of crystal bowls, symmetrically paired and suspended halfway up from the ceiling. The sketches are more precise, the bowls take on matter, color and measurements, in a true section; the bowls are made in Venice, by Venini, and sent to Palermo in number of 39, some white, others of an amethyst splendor. They still lie in one of the museum warehouses.
Space in the main courtyard
The value of Scarpa’s detail at Palazzo Abatellis
For the crystalline bust of Eleonora d’Aragona, rotated in a slight twist, Scarpa invents a bronze axis firmly embedded in the floor and a solid base in ebony; then, with a lyrical triumph of matter, he makes the figure immaterial, lifting it with two rear brass cylinders and a corrugated lead plate, on which the marble rests on the front. It is difficult to think of a kinder homage to the ethereal nobility of Eleonora. A sophisticated and unlikely art of details, that one of Scarpa in the Galleria dell’Abatellis, the result of an anachronistic reading of the Viennese experiences of fin-de-siècle.
Among the drawings of the fund, axonometric clarifications abound about the way to build the bases and supports of the work. The sketches bear a large number of inscriptions and specifications around the materials, refined combinations of precious woods, “possibly Belgian and thin or Czechoslovakian mirror glass”, fixed on Venetian pastel panels. The rare presence of measures is surprising in an epigone of the Viennese Jugendstil; the shape, on fact, is no longer generated starting from a rigorous geometry and the proportions between the parts are not all regulated by mathematical reasons. The commodulatio is missing, reported in a Central European climate, that arithmetic transcendence that manifests itself through the control of the form. There is nothing more Viennese than the regular and cadenced nailing of the panels in Antonello’s room, nothing less casual than the cutting of the screws of the grating, aligned vertically; on the other hand, there is only a very thin trace, just a note, of the golden proportions that measure the late nineteenth-century nostalgia for the art of truth, on a sketch of marginal evidence. In deprivation, however, in the process of loss of meaning that accompanies the circulation of meaning when it becomes current, an eminently plastic character emerges, radically tectonic, of thinking about things by designing. Designing by imagining a substance that generates the form, the material that must allow the idea to take place. Nothing is accidental in Scarpa’s project, nothing manages to free itself as a pure idea without having come to terms with the possibility of being real.
Hexagonal scale
Vigni, on returning from a period of absence, is forced to have a Fifteenth-century architrave reassembled that Scarpa had wanted to replace with a new designed one and immediately photographed fearing retaliation. If, on the one hand, the atmosphere of the courtyard with the squared plastering and the smooth orthogonal lines obtains an abstractly metaphysical breath, on the other hand, this silencing, this freezing in the frames, the surviving fragments of the ancient factory results in the denial of any historical verisimilitude. The overall effect reinforces Scarpa’s poetic of the caesura, highlighted by Tarufi. The careful analysis of the drawings allows us to introduce a small addition. The entire project is designed on the variations of shape, that of a flattened lozegne, which folds like a book to become the base of a marble, is excavated and transformed into the steps of the famous staircase, reappears as an architrave, atrophies in the rounded edges of the doors and simultaneously informs the opening of the fixtures and the showcase of the monstrance. The Leitmotiv is transformed into a desperate delirium of form, into a distressing obsession that overcomes both the nostalgia of the fragment and the irony of the figures. An exasperated research that, reaffirming the inconsistency of Scarpa’s plus dicere, beyond the undisputed technical magisterium, can only be explained through a complex series of plastic reason. Magisterium which appears as the only way of salvation: on the one hand, the burden of the past, on the other, from the uncertainty of the future. Through the labored work around of the material, the continuous and tormenting cutting out, digging, stealing from the thicknesses of the masonry, the confrontation as titans is an unequal struggle against the body of a building rooted and strong already of an ancient existence, which accompany the entire course of work, the effort necessary to give rise to a project manifests itself. The incessant work of adaptation forces in strictly architectural terms the initial project of a unique exhibition, a fierce contest between an idea and a solid presence of matter.