Abstract: The disconcerting facade sculpture of the Palazzo Beneventano in Scicli challenges expectations that decoration should beautify. Canonical classical decoration transforms into imagery of violence and fear. Monstrous faces snarl from below the balconies, and lower down there are heads of ‘Turks’ or ‘Moors’ which seem imprisoned within the building. The chapter does not promote a single reading for the decoration but relates it to the violent history of rival confraternities and aristocratic factions within Scicli, and fear of the Other. Scicli is one of Europe's most southerly towns, and even into the nineteenth century there was fear of raids by North African pirates and slavers. The facade can be read in terms of this confluence of local rivalry and broader fear.

Keywords: Mediterranean slavery, Mediterranean piracy, Italy and the Muslim world, architecture and ornament, representations of Muslims in early Modern Europe, architecture and rivalry.

Violent Decoration

In their entry for the 1754 Encyclopédie, Diderot and D’Alembert give two important principles that decoration must follow: ‘Of these four types [the decoration for facades, apartments, gardens, and theatres], that of facades is without exception the one that most taxes art's precepts. Architecture and sculpture compete equally for the [facades’] embellishment, but the latter must be absolutely subordinated to the former.’ Diderot and D’Alembert argue firstly that decoration should embellish. In their definition, facade decoration makes a palace noble, beautiful, and redolent of luxury. Secondly, decoration arises from the cooperation of sculpture and architecture. They see sculpture and architecture as distinct, but sculpture must remain subservient to architecture.

The Palazzo Beneventano in Scicli, believed to date from the 1760s, confounds these assumptions. On the palace's east facade there is sculpture of unsettling, hybrid forms. The decoration emanates an insistent sense of trauma and sadism. Monstrous fanged faces snap and snarl at the viewer from the mensole of the upper windows (Fig. 5.1). Above the lower portals of the same facade, there are grimacing heads of ‘Turks’ or ‘Moors’ (Fig. 5.2) They are not as overtly threatening as the mensole carvings of the balcony, but there is disquiet and aggression in their caricature-like quality. They appear unaware of the viewer. Imprisoned in the lower part of the building, they look up towards the owner's rooms in anticipation, captivity, or fear.