Sicilia austriaca 1720-1734

2021

From 1720 to 1734, the island of Sicily was under the control of the Austrian Habsburgs. The political and historical aspects of this brief period have been the subject of a number of studies, which have established the necessary foundation to pursue new prospects and directions for further scholarship. However, our understanding of the range of artistic and architectural interventions undertaken – or hypothetically undertaken – by the Austrian Habsburg government in Sicily is drastically more limited. If direct commissions, travels, architects' and aristocrats' mobility to the Viennese court and even documented contacts constitute a first degree of evidence, a further field is linked to th…