"This is Babel": Sicily, The Mediterranean Islands and Southern Italy (1450-1550)

This essay focuses on period from the 15th to the 16th centuries, a period, moreover rich in documents that can be related to many still extant monuments. This period regarded as a critical phases from European civilization, offers the opportunity to sched light on equally striking artistic achievements in the heart of the Mediterranean area: in Southern Italy, Sicily and the nearby islands. The topic of ornament is particolarly suitable for explicating the key features, boundaries, and tensions characteristics of this region, as well, as for addressing the presents of vernacular elements that ought to find their place in the larger artistic histories of the period. the choise of the subject highlighting the coexistence of a plurality of formal vocabularies and of a geografic area representing a "periphery" from the perspective of a European "center"aims to counter the tendency to use artistic production to support a rhetoric of identity.