We the Italians October 19, 2015 - 70 | Page 18

th # 70 • OCTOBER 19 , 2015 read more about #Italian Art ITALIAN ART: GIACOMO SERPOTTA By Enrico De Iulis Speaking of Italian Baroque is always very generalizing and sometimes an understatement. There are examples of Baroque in every region of Italy and usually they have different properties with very connotative details and a final yield always recognizable as belonging to that place. Rome, Lecce, Naples and Venice are the most famous bits of an architectural style always assimilated with Italy. But it maybe is in Sicily that the baroque flourishes in a truly entrenched way, creating generations of style and variety of outcomes in buildings and churches, also because of the wide diversity of materials that the island has always been able to offer. We will argue in the next few months about the Val di Noto, while today we want to tell about the more purely decorative aspect with the greatest plasterer in the history of Italian art: Giacomo Serpotta. The "Stucco" is an artistic technique based on the speed of drying of a layer of lime and plaster that agglo18 | WE THE ITALIANS www.wetheitalians.com