Essere architetto «romano» nella Sicilia del Settecento: il cantiere della chiesa dell’Abbazia cassinese di San Nicolò l’Arena a Catania dopo Giovan Battista Contini e lo svelamento dell’architetto «Incognito»

Through a new reading of documentary and iconographic sources, the essay addresses the issue of the professional reputation of Sicilian architects active in eighteenth-century Catania, as well as the widespread distrust expressed by certain patrons toward their training. Such skepticism was manifested, for instance, by the Cassinese Benedictine monks of San Nicolò l’Arena and by the civic Senate, both of whom preferred to rely on the authority of Roman architects or on the judgment of the members of the Accademia di San Luca in order to resolve disputes and to assess new projects. Conflicts of this nature indeed emerged within the eighteenth-century construction site of the Catanese abbey, initiated in 1686 on the basis of a design by the architect Giovanni Battista Contini, who had been summoned to the Sicilian city by the Order. The prolonged debate concerned above all the construction of the church and culminated in the so-called “competition” of 1775, launched in relation to the design of a more modern and monumental façade. The internal dynamics of this competition, the submitted drawings—evaluated by “Roman” academicians—and the expert reports produced call for further clarification and reassessment. Despite the presence of a project sent from Rome, the selected façade was proposed by an architect from Catania, who signed himself “Incognito” and who has long since been identified by historiography. The present study aims to advance an alternative hypothesis regarding the attribution of the anonymous winning design, on the basis of which a portion of the present, unfinished façade was subsequently erected, while at the same time addressing additional issues related to authorship among the architects involved and to the strategies of professional self-assertion employed to overcome the constraints of localism, competition, and the pursuit of commissions.