La spedizione Saint-non in Sicilia orientale: da Messina a Catania tra paesaggio e antichità

The Saint-Non Expedition in Eastern Sicily:from Messina to Catania between Landscape and AntiquityIn the second half of the 18th century, renowned archaeological sitesand exuberant nature attracted travellers from many parts of Europe toSicily. They wanted to end their Grand Tour on the Island in search of thepicturesque and sublime cities, ruins and landscapes of a mythical, wild,Mediterranean territory.The fourth volume of the Voyage pittoresque ou description des royaumesde Naples et de Sicile by Jean-Claude Richard Abbé de Saint-Non,published in two parts in 1785 and 1786, marked the arrival point of theartistic, archaeological and naturalistic interests of many travellers whoarrived on the Island in those years. These were symbolically representedby Dominique Vivant Denon, appointed by Saint-Non to describe theplaces and monuments in writing, which had also been described throughthe images of the artists who had accompanied him during the trip.The abbot, dismantled and reassembled the texts of the diary of Denon,also in the fourth volume, as he had done in the previous three volumes,published in original form only at a later time, and only in the case ofSicily (Voyage in Sicile, 1788). Denon’s diary, published ten years after itsoriginal editorship and without the full-bodied historical insights lateradded by Saint-Non, kept the freshness of the author’s travel impressionsintact. This diary will be the main reference of this paper that intends toretrace the journey from Messina to Catania, along the traces of the roadsof eastern Sicily, also through the images handed down by the artists whoaccompanied him: the landscape painter Claude-Louis Châtelet and thearchitects Louis-Jean Desprez and Jean-Augustin Renard.