I palazzi del Seicento a Palermo in una raffigurazione pittorica della collezione Alba di Siviglia

Today just few fragments of some facades or single portals still exist as a testimony of the 17th century palermitan palaces. Within this difficult theme, an important cognitive instrument is represented by one of the drawings of the Alba collection of Seveille, painted by un unknown author in a uncertain date (anyway between 1694 and the first decade of the 18th centu¬ry) and representing a procession during the feast of Santa Rosalia among seats of power, churches and palermitan palaces. The picture is a sort of collage of different buildings that have been drawn one next to each other, without respecting their real urban position, but nevertheless its documentary value is unquestioned. For example, it represents the only iconographical source of the original design of the palace of the Counts of San Marco, that can be considered as an emblematic work of the new tendencies of that period for the marked length of the main front as well as for the use of two planning criteria that seem to be common in Palermo in the 17th century: the facade simplification and the sculptural qualification of some architectural elements, such as portals with telamoni and the use of balconies supported by big highly jutting sculptural consoles along the two upper levels. The use of balconies supported by consoles characterized by an heavy plastic decorativism was quite diffused in the international context during the 17th century and considered, up to the present, basically irrelevant to the palermitan architectural culture and related instead to other Sicilian context, particularly to the southeastern area. That's why the Seveille picture opens new scenarios and suggest for the 17th century in Sicily a wider sharing and circulation of architectural themes even among different cultural areas that will follow in the next century different ways.