Procopio Serpotta e la tecnica dello stucco: un episodio sconosciuto a Monreale, iconografia, attribuzione

This paper intends to present a church located in the heart of the city of Monreale - Maria SS. degli Agonizzanti - hidden from the tourist road, but mostly neglected by art history studies of Sicily. Its interior decoration, thanks to a recent restoration, offers the opportunity to discover the iconographic program tied to the purpose of its construction: the site of a religious confraternity with the aim of offering alms, care of the sick and the burial of the dead. This study provides iconographic and stylistic comparisons between the stucco sculptures of the church of Monreale with those of the artistic activity of Procopio Serpotta (1679-1755). These comparisons leave no doubt about the authorship and the realization by the sculptor, until now never confirmed with certainty. Furthermore, these sculptures and the entire iconographic program and theological have been studied in this paper with the allegories of the book of Cesare Ripa Iconologia, published for the first time in Rome in 1593, the most extensive repertory of allegorical images taken in the visual arts. The great success of this work - the author of five editions of living, eighteen posthumous seventeenth, eighteenth fifteen - marks the modern revival of interest in the world of symbols and images that, combined with the word of men of letters, they become in effect a new language. It was Donald Garstang to rediscover critically Giacomo Serpotta (1656-1732) and his school of plasterers with the publication of the monograph in English, written in 1984 by passionate and admired full participation of important contributions documentaries, even without a direct knowledge of some works within the island.