File:Mediaeval Sicily, aspects of life and art in the middle ages (1910) (14778471052).jpg

Identifier: cu31924081258430 (find matches)
Title: Mediaeval Sicily, aspects of life and art in the middle ages
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Waern, Cecilia, 1853-
Subjects: Art Art, Medieval
Publisher: London, Duckworth & co
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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nce front. In place of this windowthere is now a modern fireplace for which two ofthe wild beasts of the old fountain have beenpressed into service. The walls are sheeted withmarble and enriched by costly columns, mostlynew, and inlaid borders of parcel mosaic. Mosaicson a gold ground Spread over the entire upper partof the room. They have been very much restored ;those in the ceiling in the thirteenth century, asshown by the introduction of the Suabian eagle ;those over the north door quite recently. The representations of archers, wild beasts, suchas real lions and spotted leopards, tame birds andluxuriant Asiatic trees belong to the same rangeof subjects as those in the Zisa, and seem to showin the naive arrangement in superposed zones,differing from the Byzantesque medallions of theZisa, what might possibly even be an old Assyriantradition lingering, maybe, in Persia. The studyof Sicilian art is full of these dazzling glimpses ofhistoric continuity, owing to so much having been126
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ARABO-NORMAN PALACES preserved there—such as these princely halls—thatis lost elsewhere. The room with pretty pointed arches openingout of this, now fitted up as an exceedingly uglydining-room or smoking-room with a skylightworthy of an English suburban vilkj was inNorman times a little court open to the sky. * ** The sumptuous mode of interior decoration employed for these palaces is further shown by some fragments, now in the Museum, of bands of white marble used for framing doorways, with bold Cufic inscriptions inlaid in porphyry and serpentine, by the fine carved wooden doors at the Martorana and by the still finer door, or rather framework of a door, now in the Museum, found in the house of GofFredo Marturanu, adjoining the Church of Santa Maria dell Ammiraglio. Two sides of the cortile of this charming house are still visible, bearing witness to the taste and elegant luxury displayed in the private houses of the day —copies of the palaces on a smaller scale with a vaulted

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