The Human Factor (Palazzo Bellomo)

Member Name: michaelhudson

Product:	Palazzo Bellomo
Date:	10/06/03 (219 review reads)
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I slouch through the heat down a high, narrow street to a set of five stone steps opposite a church tower and fenced in lemon trees. Inside is cool air, a 13th century residence, and eighteen rooms of a Regional Museum of Medieval and Modern Art chock full of 15th and 16th century paintings, Sicilian folk art and Greek, Arab, Norman and Byzantine artefacts.

The first room is to the right of the entrance. Lit by two arched windows and four corner lamps its high ceiling and rough, bubbling walls accentuate the smooth, finely shaped Byzantine stonework dotted around the floor and lower wall space. Most of the exhibits were taken from the cathedral, the harbour or the church dedicated to the city's patron saint, Lucia.

A glass door opens into a hushed courtyard; muffled voices complementing the ceaseless splatter of water falling back down into the small fountain at the foot of the wide staircase. Light green shrubs and wriggling dark red fish provide specks of colour in a square of shadows, stone and marble. The unused, musty second room and some small lockers are to the right, the toilets and rooms three and four to the left. The third room looks like a storeroom of misplaced treasure in a draughty Norman castle, with marble sculptures staring out from corners and intricate altars eyeing each other across the empty space in the centre. A huge marble work by Mazzolo - a 1525 funerary monument for Eleonara Branciforti - dominates the far wall, and a Gagini sculpture of a breastfeeding Madonna holding a chuffinch bird overlooks a reclining cavalier, cut off at the knees and seemingly lost in a daydream with weatherbeaten face cupped gently in one hand.

The few steps across the courtyard are flanked by a three-metre high Greek column from the nearby Temple of Apollo, smaller stone fragments fixed to walls with rusting brackets, and a long 1483 relief carving of Saint Lucia and two accompanying angels, their facial expressions warped by centu
ries of erosion. A path to the right of the fourth room - locked on all my visits - circles a small lawn and two towering palm trees. Coats of arms tilt from the surrounding walls and a room to the left houses temporary exhibitions.

Room Five - at the top of the staircase and immediately to the right of the entrance - holds just two paintings in a high-ceilinged, slightly off-white coloured space of bare neutrality. A small wooden bench faces Antonello da Messina's 'Annunciation' across a low rope. Against a backdrop as vague as a passport photograph, the damaged painting is as aged and wrinkled as old skin, the patches of erosion lending it a resemblance to an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. What remains of the work is a masterpiece of fine detail, most of which is highlighted in enlarged sections on an adjoining wall.

Pedro Serra's 'Madonna and Child', mounted on a vivid scarlet board that almost touches the ceiling, features a dramatically oversized mother and baby adorned with gold and towering over peripheral figures with an expression of utter serenity.

Walk across the corridor to room six, a dimly lit rectangle of gold - flecked paintings and Giovanni da Rimini's six scenes showing 'The Transfiguration of Christ'. Carvaggio's 'The Burial of Saint Lucia' has a wall to itself. Lit from the bottom, the high painting is at once bathed in light and shrouded in darkness. The martyred saint lies half hidden on the floor, the bent limbs and lowered heads of two gravediggers in the foreground framing her illuminated head in a wide circle of light. View the painting from the far wall first, then advance to the rope where hidden background figures slowly appear out of the shadows.

Lucia herself shares the view from a painting hung next to the doorway - an island shaped section of her head and torso gazing out of an otherwise blank, entirely featureless space almost as if someone randomly rub
bed at the centre of a frosted up window.

Room Seven is a return to bright colours and modern fittings. A slightly damaged 16th century painting of 'The Dispute of St. Thomas', with encroaching emptiness stretching like claws from its base, hangs between Padovano and Trevisano's 1507 'Madonna di Loreto' and a beautifully illustrated bible laid out on a velvet cushion.

The eighth room is little more than a space between two doors. Paintings of post-crucifixion scenes are daubed on to heavy squares of wood resembling tables in 19th century taverns and a Cesare di Napoli work shows a child soaring above maniacal masses, enveloped by angels and a protective mother.

Room Nine is long and lined with huge works, none better than the opening 'Death of the Innocents', a highly measured scene of utter chaos. Helpless mothers shield wailing babies from raised swords and plunging daggers, their terror almost palpable. Amidst the violent scrum dead infants lie in the dirt and a half-hidden king sits unmoving on a central throne. The barbarism is juxtaposed with an adjacent work showing Christ being helped from the cross by a throng of angels, a single dove dominates the centre of the work inside an oval of pale yellow light.

A trio of circular Costantino Carasi biblical scenes run in a line from a bust of Saint Regolo, which looks almost as if it should be suspended from the prow of a fairground pirate ship, and Minniti's wonderful 'Martyrdom of Saint Lucia' hangs opposite, a swirl of red cape, a background lost in black and a dagger swinging towards the heart of the kneeling martyr.

The next three rooms are arranged along the corridor to Room Thirteen. Religious artefacts and silver crosses give way to hundreds of carved figurines detailing pastoral scenes and Sicilian peasants.

The final rooms, which are currently closed for refurbishment, can be quickly encompassed. The thirteenth r
oom displays religious garments, a warrior like Archangel Michael slaying Satan, and David nursing a deathly pale Goliath.

Fourteen has a small selection of antique furniture and gold clocks, while the next room - bright and modern with harsh strip lighting and a whirring air conditioner - holds blue and white pottery in square display cases. The shadowy sixteenth room, with its large Monteleone painting of the three kings kneeling before the new born infant, leads to etchings of Siracusa and an interesting 3D overview of Ortigia in wood by Giovanni di Nojain. Finally, eighteen brings us back to the beginning - the corridor separating da Messina and Carvaggio lined with black and white scenes of Siracusa and colourful Madonna's.

DETAILS

ADMISSION 4 euro

OPENING TIMES Tuesday - Saturday 9-7 Sunday 9-2 Closed Mondays.

ADDRESS Palazzo Bellomo, Via Capodieci, Ortigia.
(Signposted from the Fontana Aretusa)

TELEPHONE 0931 69511

WEBSITES

http://www.regione.sicilia.it/bbccaa/Dirbenicu lt/musei2/engbellomo.htm

http://www.apt-siracusa.it/uk/pag1.html

http://www.ortigiaonline.it/museo_bellomo.html

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