Il ruolo della memoria normanna nella cultura architettonica siciliana della prima età moderna

The Norman domination in Sicily in the eleventh and twelfth centuries can be considered a pivotal point in the history of the island, regarding its influence in subsequent cultural, ideological and political memory. After centuries of the Muslim domination, the Hauteville (italianized Altavilla) dynasty took the role of the founding fathers of a Christian, monarchist, independent kingdom at the origin of the socio-economical structure of feudal-gentry-based Sicily. The intent of this paper is to shine a light on how the historical memory of the Normans influenced the affirmation of classical culture in Early Modern Sicily. Between the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, we can recount a number of relevant testimonies which attest to the fact that the typical graves of landed nobility accurately imitated the sarcophagi of famous Normans : under the reign of Roger II, those were made of red porphyry according to Roman design. Furthermore, the column, thought as the main architectural ornament rather than architectural support, as Leon Battista Alberti clearly expressed, would find in Sicily a later legitimacy in the prestigious religious buildings built by Norman monarchs, which buildings would become, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a reference model for three-naved basilicas as well as quincunx centralized plan, that were imitated by twelfth-century churches such as San Teodoro or Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio in Palermo, commissioned by George of Antioch, admiral of Roger I of Hauteville.