World-class art, no crowds
One of the best things about travelling in Sicily in November is that you have many of the island’s art and architecture gems relatively to yourself. I’m always happy to let the summer crowds battle it out at the Uffizi, the Vatican and Cinque Terre while in Sicily I enjoy equally marvellous sites, paintings and landscapes with a big dose of chill on the side.
One work that continues to live in my imagination is the fresco Trionfo della Morte (Triumph of Death), which our group saw on our visit to the Palazzo Abatellis. This arresting, monumental fresco was painted by an unknown artist in Palermo, and was possibly Catalan. In this post I’ll share some of the history of the Trionfo and its connection to Palermo, the Black Death, Pablo Picasso, and to us today.
As excited as I was to use my then brand-new phone camera on our 2022 tour, I know it cannot capture the power, terror and beauty of what one art historian calls “the most significant and emblematic artistic expression of the late Gothic era.” You will simply have to see it for yourself! Join me on our November 2025 tour Sicily: The Key to Italy for a world of wonders at a relaxed pace.
Reflecting the world, reflecting Sicily
Art historians date the fresco to between 1440 and 1450, about 100 years after the Black Death killed millions of people and reshaped parts of Europe and Asia socially, economically and culturally. I’ll talk more about the way this terrible plague is connected to the Trionfo della Morte in just a moment. Beyond its style and subject matter, its provenance reflects the multicultural vibrancy of Sicily. The fresco was painted for the Palazzo Sclafani, built in 1330 by the count Matteo Sclafani.
The palace was eventually abandoned following Sclafani’s death and various power struggles, until in 1435 the city of Palermo decided to consolidate its various hospitals under one roof. At the time Sicily was ruled by Alfonso V of Aragon, a kingdom in Spain. Like other Sicilian rulers before him, such as the Norman king Roger II, Alfonso was a patron of the arts and a figure who supported the cross-cultural atmosphere of Sicily, an island that had been populated and influenced by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, and many others.
The Sclafani palace became the headquarters for the Ospedale Grande e Nuovo, a public hospital for the poor. This grand new space needed art befitting of it. Scholars believe that the Trionfo della Morte was just one work in a cycle representing the four stages of the end of life in Christianity: Death, Judgement, Hell and Paradise. The fresco remained at the palace for the next 500 years.
Operation Husky (the Allied invasion of Sicily) and other military operations brought both the liberation of Italy from the Axis forces and the destruction of large swathes of Italy. During the bombing of Palermo in 1943, the vaulting over the fresco collapsed. The fresco could not remain exposed to the elements as the plaster was starting to fall off. It was cut into four pieces and moved to the Palazzo Pretorio, which is today Palermo’s city hall. In the 1950s the fresco was sent to Rome for restoration, and during this time authorities in Palermo began to reorganize artworks of the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia at the Palazzo Abatellis, a 15th-century Gothic-Catalan palace. (Francesco Abatellis was the Kingdom of Sicily’s port master.)
And here the fresco remains today. The palazzo is in the Kalsa district, a historic neighborhood whose name (al-Khāliṣa, or ‘the chosen one’ in Arabic) reflects Palermo’s status as a major Arab city in the 9th century. Kalsa was heavily bombed during Operation Husky, and parts of it remained ruined and semi-abandoned for many years.
The effects of many years of neglect not entirely gone. But this quiet residential neighborhood is still home to many medieval, renaissance and baroque gems—along with some terrific restaurants, cafés, and of the course the Palazzo Abatellis.
The long shadow of the Black Death
The Black Death still looms large in our collective imagination, especially since our own recent pandemic. Its mortality rate (I’ve seen figures of 72% to 100% cited in a few scientific studies) is still shocking. From here it’s easy to see the plague as a force that ravaged all of Europe, cutting down everything in its path and fundamentally reshaping economic systems, the social order, religious practices, art and culture, and the Earth itself.
The plague’s impact was of course profound. But the nature of that impact varied greatly among different regions and countries. The ways in which it affected the artistic styles and trends can be hard to pin down. Starting in the mid 12th century, Italian painters like Cimabue began to move away from the very linear, stylized representations characteristic of Byzantine art. Figures became more naturalistic, descriptive and emotionally expressive as “artists began to connect the inward Christian experience to realistic life in a tangible world” (Museum & Gallery). For art historian Millard Meiss, one consequence of the Black Death was a ‘regression’ toward more conservative iconography, but this interpretation is definitely not universally accepted (Steinhoff-Morrison).
As art historian Helga Marsala notes, the theme of the Triumph of Death was well established before the Black Death itself. But this plague, in her view, brought “new vigor” to the genre. For Marsala, the unknown painter embodied this vigor to reach “the highest peaks of visionary drama, building around the representation of death a circular and dynamic movement.”
Picasso, Guttoso, and Guernica
This movement centers on the skeletal yet energetic horse that dominates the painting. His haunches launch forward as his arrow-shooting rider, Death, strikes down more and more people. This powerful horse has a surprisingly lush mane and, to me a least, a neutral expression (despite the bared teeth) that contrasts with the almost gleeful expression of Death.
The fresco, and the horse in particular, were a lifelong obsession of the Sicilian painter and later senator Renato Guttuso. Guttuso believed that the Trionfo horse inspired the horse in Picasso’s Guernica, painted in Paris in 1937. Picasso himself never commented on this, and never visited Palermo. He had seen Brueghel the Elder’s Triumph of Death at the Prado in Madrid, a painting which art historians see as connected to the Trionfo in Sicily. And it seems that Picasso told Guttuso that he had seen photographs or illustrations of the Trionfo.
Marsala sees many compositional similarities between the Trionfo and Guernica, between the horses in particular but also in the way that the viewer of each work is left “with the cruelty of a painting that empties the forms, crushes them, disarticulates them, petrifies them, transforming the subject into an inert and symbolic object” (translation via Google Translate).
Guttuso himself did a sketch evoking the unknown Catalan (?) artist’s Triumph of Death, and a 1943 oil painting of the same name. I can’t post that image, as it’s owned by Bridgeman, but I encourage you to look at all three paintings—the 15th-century fresco, Picasso’s, and Guttuso’s—together.
What do you think of them? What do they say about the nature of death? About its total predictability and its complete power to surprise? As Los Angeles burns and war continues in Ukraine, in Gaza, and in so many other places, about our role as frequent spectators to death?
Classical Pursuits plans to host an informal online discussion about the Trionfo della Morte, so look for more details about that soon. And join me and a group of like-minded travellers for a tour of sunny Sicily’s literary and cultural highlights. We’ll see spectacular art and architecture while enjoying leisurely meals, unique gelato flavors, and perhaps even enjoy some late-season swimming at our lovely resort at Mandranova. See you in Sicily!
Sources:
Berniscone, Luisa. “Il trionfo della morte di Palermo .” Una goccia di colore. https://www.unagocciadicolore.com/2023/04/il-trionfo-della-morte-di-palermo.html
“Italian Gothic.” Museum & Gallery. https://museumandgallery.org/italian-gothic/
Marsala, Helga. “Picasso, Guttuso e il Trionfo della Morte. A Palermo la storia di un dialogo ideale.” Artribune.
https://www.artribune.com/arti-visive/2024/12/palermo-picasso-guttuso-trionfo-morte/
Pedicone, Sebastiano Giovanni. “Il Trionfo della Morte di Palermo: un memento mori dai mille colori.” https://giovannipediconeart.altervista.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Il-Trionfo-della-Morte-di-Palermo.pdf
Raieli, Salvatore. “Trifono della Morte.” Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/trionfo-della-morte-palermo
Steinhoff-Morrison, J. “Black Death and medieval art.” Grove Art Online. https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/display/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7002273208
