Full wallpaper from piviale, planet, two dalmatics

Author: Sicilian manufacture

Date: End sec. XVII – beginning sec. XVIII

Material: Satin embroidered in gold and polychrome silks

Size: 145×300 cm (piviale), 95×130 cm (dalmatica), 120×58.5 cm (planet)

Place: Milazzo, church of San Domenico or the Holy Rosary

The sixteenth-century church of Our Lady of the Rosary, with the adjoining convent of the Dominican Fathers, is one of the oldest and most valuable in the city. Located in the district of the Borgo, it has remained free from the destruction and reconstruction that have affected especially the churches of the lower town over the centuries. Already in the seventeenth century, the convent appeared “magnificent and well endowed by the public […] so increased of factories that you can not wish […] and today it is one of the study centers of the province”. Also the church “beautiful and well adorned”, was endowed by important local families: the Spadafora, the D’Amico, the Colonna, the Cumbo, the De Alarcon, but also by Spanish castellani, as the Cubifar, “noble family of the kingdom of Navarre”, who had the ius patronatus on the chapel of St. Michael archangel. Other rents came from the two speakers, one of “the brothers of the SS company. Rosary that is kept with much decency to be de Nobili”; and the other “of disciplinanti aggregate of craftsmen under the auspices of S. Domenico. In the area of sacred walls, the convent belongs to one of the oldest and most interesting embroidered complete of the city, which has survived to our days.

Composed of piviale, tunicelle, planet, has a dense baroque decoration with golden girdles that enclose flowers and birds with bright chromatism, exotic taste, which finds a counterpart in other similar parables of the province of Messina, such as the planet of Rometta, considered by the same embroiderer of Milazzesi’s works. The large, extremely stylized flowers – chrysanthemums, anemones, carnations, irises, roses, tulips – dissected and broken down into essential hues – from yellow to brown, from pink to carmine, from blue to blue – accompanied by leaves, clearly denote their symbolism, It can be seen, for example, in the flower that comes from an open pomegranate tree, a Christian symbol of the Resurrection, visible at the centre of the tonacella. In this the design has a greater amplitude and spatiality, branching from a central head in gold from which flower girdles flow out, while in the lower area, there is a composition of three flowers – the rose flanked by two red carnations – Lying on a golden table in the form of console, which is influenced by the fashion of teaching designer elements and furniture in some Sicilian embroidery of the first half of the eighteenth century.

The decoration of the planet is more dense, divided into three columns, with smaller flowers rising from thick curved girdles and interspersed by exotic birds, whose symbolism has been linked since antiquity to that of the soul. The symbolism of animalistic representation is clearly revealed in the piviale, on whose hood is a peacock, assimilated to the risen Christ and the immortality of the soul, so that the object of the ancient belief that his flesh does not decompose, but regenerate.
 
Buda V., Lanuzza S. (a cura di), Tesori di Milazzo. Arte sacra tra Seicento e Settecento., Milazzo 2015