Il bianco e l'oro

Abstract

Giacomo Serpotta (1656-1732) was a brilliant and highly skilled master of the sculptural art of stucco throughout Europe. He was born in poverty in Palermo, and his father was imprisoned shortly after he was born. The canonical critic and historian Antonio Mongitore praised him for his work and for his confident and almost frantic style of drawing, and for his considerable dilicatezza (sensitivity). He defined Serpottaan“outstandingstuccoist”.Asimilaropinion comes from abbot Gioacchino Di Marzo, who greatly praised Serpotta in his essential essay entitled “The Gaginis and sculpture in Sicily”, published in 1980, and recognised the undoubted influence of the Gagini school, which began with his father Domenico and continued with his son Antonello. For Giacomo Serpotta, white is the colour of purity and of putti and statues par excellence, all of which are of a highly bright“whiteonwhite”.Hispredilectionforthegolden yellow widely used for attributes, festoons and other details is symbolically opposite in meaning to the bright white. His yellow suggests a sense of wealth, power and grandeur not only intrinsic to the sculptures but also to the client and the artist himself. In his entire and abundant artistic production, Giacomo Serpotta often chose this alternation of colour, whose visual perception is amplified—to quote Rudolf Arnheim—not only by the preference for certain colours over others but, naturally, by the luminist, formal, spatial and architectural games in the scene.