File:Mediaeval Sicily, aspects of life and art in the middle ages (1910) (14755882486).jpg

Identifier: cu31924081258430 (find matches)
Title: Mediaeval Sicily, aspects of life and art in the middle ages
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Waern, Cecilia, 1853-
Subjects: Art Art, Medieval
Publisher: London, Duckworth & co
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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of capes andbays, with a few prominent buildings that looklike towers, played round by light and shadow.One proves to be a xenia—as they still call the tallwide towers, with a wheel hung with bucketsinside, for emptying water from the wells into theirrigation tanks—another a mill. White villagesgleam on the tops of the little cone-shaped hillsnestling in the embrace of the mountain valleys.There is a lot of traffic up and down stream, awoman walking rapidly with a large jar filled withsomething poised on her head, her hands busyknitting; women on muleback, peasants astrideover huge piles of sacks on mules, jogging alongpatiently. By no means a desolate scene ; yet witha certain desolate grandeur about it nevertheless,as the little figures come nearer, surrounded bylight and air, against the grey of the shingle andthe broad flat spaces. The church lies astride on a spur of land at abend of the river, just where the valley narrowsand the character of the landscape changes: a190 XXIX
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THE ABBEY CHURCH OF SS. PIETRO E PAOLO, FORZA DAGRO A 190 THE ABBEY CHURCH AT FORZA DAGRO strange, tall, dark building, rising up high from alittle group of sordid peasants houses, surroundedby olive orchards and lemon groves, so tall andnarrow as to suggest a transept left standing, ratherthan a complete church : looking stranger still asyou come nearer and notice the two wavy domesof unequal height, so different from those inPalermo, the weird outlandish decoration ofthe pilaster strips and intersecting arches in white,black, and red, with a chequer pattern in red andblack and a herring-bone in brick on the friezeand battlement. In 1906, when first seen by me,it was still picturesquely part and parcel of thepoultry yard. It is now protected by a low wall,unnecessarily ugly, but useful. It is built of large, dark bricks alternating inplaces so as to form a pattern in mosaic, withwhitish stone and with dark lava. There is notrace of the elaborate Palermitan inlays. It was a Basilian,

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