Palazzo Abatellis is the most important art museum in Sicily and one of the most intellectually stimulating museum visits in southern Italy, two works justify the detour from Palermo's more famous sights, and both are in the same building. The Trionfo della Morte (Triumph of Death), a massive fifteenth-century fresco (detached from its original wall and remounted) depicting Death on a skeletal horse trampling the rich and the powerful while the poor and the sick beg for the release of death, is the most unsettling and most technically extraordinary late-medieval fresco in Italy outside Pisa's Camposanto. The Annunciazione (Annunciation) by Antonello da Messina, the small panel painting that revolutionized Italian Renaissance portraiture through the specific technique Antonello imported from Flemish oil painting practice, is one of the finest Italian paintings of the fifteenth century and one of the least visited by international tourists.
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The Two Masterpieces of Palazzo Abatellis
Trionfo della Morte
The Triumph of Death fresco (anonymous Sicilian or Franco-Flemish artist, mid-fifteenth century, originally in the courtyard of Palazzo Sclafani in Palermo) depicts: a skeletal figure mounted on a skeletal horse launching arrows at a group of nobles and clergy in their finest dress, while in the lower left the poor and the sick, the ones who actually desire death, are ignored. The specific social commentary: Death chooses the privileged, not the suffering. The iconography has precedents in the Pisan Camposanto fresco (Black Death-era), the Palermo version adds a specifically Sicilian social critique that reflects the specific conditions of fifteenth-century southern Italian feudal society. The fresco fills an entire room of the palazzo. Standing in the room with it in the specific late-morning light is one of the most charged art museum experiences in Italy.
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Antonello da Messina (c. 1430-1479), the Sicilian painter who learned Flemish oil painting technique (possibly from Jan van Eyck's workshop, certainly from Flemish paintings he encountered in Naples) and transmitted it to Italian painters, specifically to Giovanni Bellini in Venice, through whom it entered the entire Venetian tradition, is represented in Palazzo Abatellis by the Annunciazione (c. 1476). The painting: the Virgin Mary at the moment of the Annunciation, her right hand raised in the specific gesture of acceptance ("Ecce ancilla Domini") and her eyes directed outward toward the viewer with a directness and individuality that is entirely unprecedented in Italian Annunciation painting. The Flemish technique is visible in the specific quality of the light on her blue mantle and the veil, the oil paint layers produce a translucency that tempera can't achieve. This specific work is the clearest evidence of why Antonello's arrival in Venice changed Bellini and, through Bellini, changed Titian.
Q&A: Palazzo Abatellis
How long should I spend at Palazzo Abatellis?
One hour for the two principal works (the Trionfo della Morte and the Annunciazione) plus the fifteenth-century Sicilian sculpture collection (the alabaster reliefs, the late Gothic Sicilian busts) that occupies the ground floor. Two hours for the full collection including the Byzantine and Norman period works and the later Sicilian Renaissance paintings on the upper floors. The palazzo building itself. Gothic-Catalan architecture of 1490, one of the few remaining examples of this specific Sicilian architectural style, is worth 10 minutes of attention independently of the art collection.
Where is Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo?
Via Alloro 4, in the Kalsa quarter (the medieval Arab-Norman-era neighborhood between the historic center and the sea front). Open Tuesday-Saturday 9am-6:30pm. Sunday 9am-1pm. Closed Monday. Admission approximately €8. Located 10 minutes' walk from the Quattro Canti (the central intersection of the historic center) and 5 minutes from the La Martorana church and the Palazzo Normanni complex.
Internal Links
- Italian Renaissance Art: Antonello in Context
- Sicilian Baroque: After the Medieval Collection
- Palermo Archaeological Museum: The Greek Metopes
- Palermo Street Food: Near Palazzo Abatellis
- Palermo's Hidden Quarters: The Kalsa Beyond the Museum
- Sicily Museum Free Days: First Sunday
- Palermo Walking Map: Museum to Museum
