Palazzo Nicolaci di Villadorata, Noto, Sicilia (Giacomo Nicolai, Lorenzo Villadorato)

Speranza



The remarkable Palazzo Villadorata in Noto is conspicuous for for the conservatism of its basic design.

The facciata is a long, long, emphatically horizontal rectangle with a simple main entrance framed by plain Ionic columns and with a light cornice devoid of decoration.

But this unassuming composition is merely the background for the most outrageously fantastic sculptural ornament imaginable.

The windows are surmounted by curving pediments and broken cornices supported by female heads emerging from great scrolls, and those of the second floor give on to bulging iron balconies resting on ros of figurative corbels of such intensity that they galvanise the whole facciata into throbbing life.

Cherum with great black eyes leaning forward from a writihing mass of foliage and fruit, winged chargers whose forelegs terminate in sprays of oak leaves, Moors, Chinamen, and winged lions with scaly tails seem to be frantically endeavouring to escape from the stone that holds them.

The Palazzo Villadorata was built by the Sicilian architect Paolo Labisi, assisted by Vincenzo Sinatra.

The sculptors of the brackets were Mule, Mauceri, and Randazzo.

The work was begun in 1737 by Don Giacomo NICOLAI, who supervised its protracted construction until his death in 1737, when it was continued by its successor Prince Lorenzo Villadorato.