Palazzi Interiors
With but a few notable exceptions, the interiors of the palazzi were from the start less elaborate than those of Sicily's Baroque churches. Many were finished without ornate interior decoration, simply because they took so long to build and by the time they were completed Baroque had passed from fashion; the principal rooms were therefore decorated in the new neoclassical style known as "Pompeian". Often one can find a fusion of the two styles, as in the ballroom wing of the Palazzo Aiutamicristo in Palermo, built by Andrea Giganti in 1763, where the ballroom ceiling was frescoed by Giuseppe Cristadoro with allegorical scenes framed by Baroque gilded motifs in plaster. This ceiling was already old-fashioned when it was finished, and the rest of the room was decorated in a far simpler mode. Changing use over the past 250 years has simplified palazzo decor further, as the ground floors are now usually shops, banks, or restaurants, and the upper floors divided into apartments, their interiors lost.
A further reason for the absence of Baroque decoration, and the most common, is that most rooms were never intended for such decoration. Many of the palazzi were vast, meant for huge numbers of people. The household of the Sicilian aristocrat, beginning with himself, his wife and many children, would typically also contain a collection of poorer relatives and other extended family members, all of whom had minor apartments in the house. Moreover there were paid employees, often including a private chaplain or confessor, a major domo, governesses, secretary, archivist, accountant, librarian, and innumerable lower servants, such as a porter to ring a bell a prescribed number of times according to the rank of an approaching guest. Often the servants' extended families, especially if elderly, also lived in the palazzo. Thus many rooms were needed to house the household. These everyday living quarters, even for the "Maestro and Maestra di Casa", were often simply decorated and furnished. Further rooms were required by the Sicilian tradition that it was a sign of poor breeding to permit even mere acquaintances to stay in local inns. Any visiting foreigner, especially an Englishman, was regarded as a special trophy and added social prestige. Hence the Sicilian aristocrat's home was seldom empty or quiet.
As in the rest of Italy, the finest and most decorated rooms were those on the piano nobile, reserved for guests and entertaining. Entered formally from the external Baroque double staircase, these rooms consisted of a suite of large and small salons, with one very large salon being the principal room of the house, often used as a ballroom. Sometimes the guest bedrooms were sited here too, but by the end of the 18th century they were more often on a secondary floor above. If decorated during the Baroque era, the rooms would be profusely ornamented. Walls were frequently mirrored, the mirrors inset into gilded frames in the walls, often alternating with paintings similarly framed, while moulded nymphs and shepherdesses decorated the spaces between. Ceilings were high and frescoed, and from the ceiling hung huge coloured chandeliers of Murano glass, while further light came from gilded sconces flanking the mirrors adorning the walls. One of the most notable rooms in this style is the Gallery of Mirrors in Palermo's Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi (Illustration 17). This room with its frescoed ceiling by Gaspare Fumagalli is, however, one of the few Baroque rooms in this Baroque palazzo, which was (from 1750) extended and transformed by its owner Marianna Valguarnera, mostly in the later neoclassical style.
Furniture during the Baroque era was in keeping with the style: ornate, gilded and frequently with marble used for tabletops. The furniture was transient within the house, frequently moved between rooms as required, while leaving other rooms unfurnished. Sometimes furniture was specifically commissioned for a certain room, for example to match a silk wall panel within a gilt frame. As in the rest of Europe, the furniture would always be left arranged against a wall, to be moved forward by servants if required, never in the later conversational style in the centre of a room, which in the Baroque era was always left empty so as better to display the marble, or more often ceramic, patterned floor tiles.
The common element to both church and palazzi interior design was the stucco work. Stucco is an important component of the Baroque design and philosophy, as it seamlessly combines architecture, sculpture, and painting in three-dimensional form. Its combination with trompe l'oeil ceilings and walls in Baroque illusionistic painting confuses reality and art. While in churches the stucco could represent angels and putti linked by swags of flowers, in a private house it might represent the owner's favourite foods or musical instruments.
Read more about this topic: Sicilian Baroque