| Vol. I. | MARCH, 1895. | No. 3. |
The island of Sicily, being in formnearly an equilateral triangle, withone side facing towards Italy,another towards Greece, and thethird, towards Africa, was a tempting fieldfor conquest to the various nations surroundingit. It was successively overrunby the Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans,and later, after the Christian era,again successively by the Byzantines, theMoors, and the Normans. Almost all ofthe architectural remains of the olderperiods belong to the time of the Greeks,as neither the Carthaginians nor Romansleft much to show for their occupationof the island. With the exception ofoccasional ruined examples survivingfrom the time of the Dorian Greeks whocolonized Sicily, most of the monumentsnow existing belong to the Byzantine,Saracenic, and Romanesque periods.As would be natural to expect, the latterinfluences are not clearly separableone from another either in time or inlocality. They overlap in all directions;but in general the Byzantine, which wasthe earliest and most powerful element,is found more strongly marked, and morefrequently on the east coast. It howeverforms the groundwork and is the mainingredient of all that follows. The Saracenicwork, which succeeds the Byzantinein date, found a stronger foothold inthe South, on the coast nearest Africa;and the influence of the Normans appearsin the North.
Every new race of masters in this frequentrecurrence of conquest found theisland already occupied by a very numerouspopulation of extremely variousorigin. The newcomers could do nomore than add their own forms to thosepreviously in use; the consequence beingin every case a mixed style, containingelements derived from every portion ofthe inhabitants.
Palermo, being on the northern coast,has felt the Norman influence strongly.Its architecture is principally Romanesquein form, with a generous admixtureof Byzantine and Saracenic motives indetail and decoration. Exuberance ofdetail and wealth of color are the rule.
Under the Norman conquerors the Siciliansbuilt as they were directed. Theirarts and their civilization were superiorto those of their masters, and the Normanswere apparently willing to make use ofthis superiority, and merely adapted theforms of decoration and methods ofconstruction which they found here in useto their own needs and purposes. Thepolychromatic decoration of the buildingsof this neighborhood, such as the interiorsof the Capella Palatina and the cathedralat Monreale, ranks among the most successful,if it be not the most successful,work of its class now in existence. It isthoroughly Oriental in character, althoughapplied to buildings intended for Romanritual. On account of the great superiorityof the Moors in art and civilization, not[37]only to the Normans but to all the otherinhabitants at the time of the Normanconquest, in the eleventh century, manyof the buildings of this period show verylittle Norman influence. In fact the Orientalcharacter is so extreme in someinstances, such as the church of San Giovannidegli Eremiti, that there is verylittle to suggest that it was Norman andintended for Norman uses.
The village of Monreale is situated onthe steep mountain-side about five milesto the west of and overlooking the cityof Palermo. The cathedral