Seekers in Sicily: Being a Quest for Persephone by Jane and PeripateticaBisland, Elizabeth
General
Seekers in Sicily: Being a Quest for Persephone by Jane and Peripatetica
Bisland, Elizabeth
Sicily (Italy) -- Description and travel
So they abandon Jonah and take on the pulpit instead,
the most famous of all the mosaic pulpits in a
region celebrated for mosaic pulpits. It is done after
the same pattern as that of St. John of the Bull, but
the pattern raised to the nth power. More and bigger
lions; more and taller columns; richer scrolls of mosaics;
the bits of stone more deeply coloured; the
marble warmed by time to a sweeter and creamier
blond. The whole being crowned, moreover, by an
adorable bust of Sigelgaita Rufolo, wife of the founder
of the Cathedral and giver of the pulpit. A pompous
Latin inscription under the bust records the virtues of
this magnificent patron of religion. The inscription
including the names of all the long string of stalwart
sons Sigelgaita brought forth, and it calls in dignified
Latinity the attention of the heavenly powers to the
eminent deserts of this generous Rufolo, this mediæval
Carnegie.
Sigelgaita’s bust is an almost unique example of the
marble portraiture of the Thirteenth Century—if indeed
it truly be a work of that time, for so noble, so
lifelike is this head with its rolled hair, its princely
coronet and long earrings, so like is it to the head of
the Capuan Juno, that one half suspects it of being
from a Roman hand—those masters of marmoral records
of character—and that it was seized upon by
Sigelgaita to serve as a memorial of herself.
Bernardo Battinelli, a notary of Ravello, writing in
1540 relates an anecdote which shows what esteem was
36inspired by this marble portrait long after its original
was dust:
“I remember in the aforesaid month and year, the
Spanish Viceroy Don Pietro di Toledo sent for the
marble bust, which is placed in the Cathedral and
much honest resistance was made, so that the first
time he that came returned empty-handed, but shortly
after he came back, and it was necessary to send it to
Naples in his keeping, and having sent the magnifico
Giovanni Frezza, who was in Naples, and Ambrose
Flomano from this place to his Excellency, after much
ado, by the favour of the glorious Virgin Mary, and by
virtue of these messengers from thence after a few days
the head was returned.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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