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Stucco, a medium particularly favoured by Italian artists, lent itself to startling tautological effects producing a sort of optical vertiginousness that seemed to permeate space. With the great Sicilian sculptor Giacomo Serpotta this incantatory practice of charging every surface with excrescences virtually became a system. Under his hands the writhing, sinuous forms of the Rococo repertoire express the ancient phobia of empty surfaces that characterizes the overly ornate gilt altarpieces of the Iberian peninsula and Latin America. Serpotta, for his part, preferred to give his stucco work the false pallor of imitation marble. The numerous oratories he decorated at Palermo and Messina are testimony to a talent that was able to invent endless variations. The Oratory of San Lorenzo at Palermo combines an indefatigable imagination with a gift for modelling and a keen sense of elegance that transforms female saints into great ladies of Palermo society.
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