The Gifts to Sicilian Sanctuaries from Spanish Viceroys and Local Nobility

Abstract

In seventeenth-century Sicily, worship, and the devotion that the noble and aristocratic classes in particular felt for the island’s main sanctuaries and the images that were venerated in them, stimulated the production of the decorative arts. Spanish viceroys and vicereines, and noblemen and women, commissioned many objects in order to offer them to the most important Sicilian sanctuaries as a sign of profound devotion and political power. The strong, intense presence of the Spanish nobility in Sicily explains the Spanish stylistic influences, which are manifested in the Sicilian production of decorative art objects, and especially in jewellery, an aspect that went hand in hand with fashions and customs and was closely linked to trade between Spain and Sicily.