View of Messina Harbor 1783 Louis François Cassas French This majestic view of the port of Messina only came to light in 2013. Executed on an uncommonly large single sheet of paper, the scene depicts the bustling activity of the harbor, with its dense array of ornate ships at dock, tended to by sailors, while the quay hums with commerce as goods are loaded and unloaded, bought and sold. An ambitious work, no doubt intended for a wealthy patron, the composition is framed at right by a lush stand of trees and at left by the sweeping curve of the weathered but still imposing façade of the Palazza
View of Messina Harbor 1783 Louis François Cassas French This majestic view of the port of Messina only came to light in 2013. Executed on an uncommonly large single sheet of paper, the scene depicts the bustling activity of the harbor, with its dense array of ornate ships at dock, tended to by sailors, while the quay hums with commerce as goods are loaded and unloaded, bought and sold. An ambitious work, no doubt intended for a wealthy patron, the composition is framed at right by a lush stand of trees and at left by the sweeping curve of the weathered but still imposing façade of the Palazzata, designed by Simone Gullì in 1622. Baron Vivant Denon described arriving at the port in 1788, feeling that he had discovered "le plus magnifique Port que la nature ait jamais formé, entouré du plus beau Quai qui existe dans aucune Ville de l’Europe, décoré d’une façade presqu’uniforme dans toute sa longeur, & interrompu par nombre d’Arcs servants d’entrées à autant de rues qui y aboutissent." (Jean Claude Richard, abbé de Saint-Non, Voyage pittoresque, ou description des royaumes de Naples et de Sicile (Paris, 1781–6), , The text was provided by Vivant Denon and edited by Saint-Non). Detailed and pulsing with life, Cassas’s view of the Palazzata may also have been its final artistic record, for the Metropolitan’s drawing, bearing the date 1783, must have been made just days or weeks before the Calabrian earthquakes of February 5-7, 1783 devastated the city and killed at least 12,000. All of Europe heard the news and shuddered at the horror of the destruction (for a comprehensive study of the disaster, public reaction to it, and the surviving images, see Madeleine Pinault-Sørensen, "Images du désastre de Messine, 1783," in L’Invention de la catastrophe au XVIIIe siècle, du châtiment divin au désastre naturel, Etudes publiées sous la direction de Anne-Marie Faivre-Mercier et Chantal Thomas, postface de Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Genève,
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Photo credit: © MET/BOT / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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