Villa Valguarnera

The Villa Valguarnera is a country castle in Bagheria in Sicily .

Client

In 1712 Maria Anna del Bosco Gravina commissioned the architect Tommaso Maria Napoli to design and build one of the largest palaces in Bagheria. The client was the daughter of the Prince of Gravina , her first marriage to Giuseppe, Count of Assoro and Prince of Valguarnera and Gangi. In her second marriage she married Giuseppe del Bosco, Prince of Cattolioca . Signora del Bosco Gravina had acquired the plateau located on a 200-300 meter high hill from the Branciforte family , the princes of Butera , with whom she was related. The estate was inherited by the current owners, the Alliata , Principi di Villafranca.

In contrast to most of the villas in Bagheria, this complex was never used for agricultural purposes, but exclusively as a luxurious alternative to the city palace in Palermo.

Building description

In his design for the villa, Tommaso Maria Napoli draws on elements of the Roman Baroque , which he combines with the architecture of Austrian and northern Alpine palaces.

The (later closed) colonnades of the oval entrance courtyard are on the one hand typically Sicilian, on the other hand, however, the oval shape clearly cites the colonnade of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in front of St. Peter's Church in Rome . In the villa building itself, the influences of northern Alpine palace buildings dominate.

The semicircular central part of the building corresponds to the semicircular courtyard. Two open staircases, pulled far forward, lead to the piano nobile . A marble relief with a portrait of the client above the loggia . The roof balustrade shows the coat of arms of the princes of Valguarnera and putti by Ignazio Marabitti . The garden front, structured by a central risalit , pilasters , balconies and segmented gables above the windows, is completed at the top by a marble relief with the portrait of Prince Emanuele di Valguarnera.

After a generation change of owners and the death of the architect, the stonemasons Gaspare Ferro and Francesco Lanza from Trapani and around 1740 the architect and Camillian monk Emanuele Caruso were commissioned to continue the construction work. Numerous changes to the building concept delayed the completion by adapting the exterior and the rooms to the respective tastes of the owners.

After Giovan Battista Cascione and his colleague Vincenzo Fiorelli had already taken over the completion of the outdoor area and the facade, in 1780 he was entrusted with the construction of the oval ballroom in the piano nobile. The ceiling of the hall was decorated by Elia Interguglielmi between 1785 and 1790 with the classicist fresco Triumph of the Enlightened Ruler and the walls with tondi depicting scenes from the life of Heracles .

In the year of his death, 1759 , Gaspare Serenario had completed a series of family portraits, which now found their place in the ballroom. The other rooms were decorated with mythological scenes and landscapes by the lesser-known painter Luzzardi and Pietro Paolo Vasta created two pastels . In the past, the villa was surrounded by a spacious baroque park, which was redesigned in a classicist style towards the middle of the 18th century and provided with sculptures and pavilions.

A mural by the map painter Antonio Bova (1688–1777, active in Palermo from 1723) in Palazzo Gangi-Valguarnera in Palermo gives an impression of the late baroque complex .

literature

Angeli Zalapi: Palaces in Sicily . Könemann Verlag, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-8290-2117-8 .
Maria Giuffrè: Baroque Sicily . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2006, ISBN 978-3-86568-264-2 .
Salvatore Boscarino: Sicilia Barocca, architetture e città 1610–1760 , Officina, Rome
Eliana Calandra: Breve storia dell'architetture in Sicilia , Laterza Edizione, Bari 1938

Remarks

↑ There Celeste

Web links

38.0763984 13.5151034Coordinates: 38 ° 4 ′ 35 " N , 13 ° 30 ′ 54.4" E

[1] There Celeste