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Galatea's realm: coral, fish, and marine fossils in the art and culture of early modern Sicily, Naples, and the Maltese Islands
Date
2025
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Galatea’s Realm explores how southern Italian artists related to and understood aquatic nature over the seventeenth century through art made of coral or inspired by living and once-living sea creatures of the western Mediterranean. Not merely passive commodities, these media and models embodied period notions about the transformative power of nature and shaped southern Italian cultural expression. Each creature advanced theories in natural philosophy, strengthened civic identities, heightened the power of devotional objects, and reinforced connections between the marine and the marvelous. Drawing from ecomaterialism and the history of science, each chapter demonstrates how the sea and its creatures played an active role in shaping seventeenth-century religion, science, and geopolitics. ☐ This study focuses on southwestern Italy, Sicily, and Malta – an area with hotspots of precious coral, waters teeming with biodiversity, and hills curiously littered with lithified crabs, sea urchins, and shark teeth. Chapters outline how the sea was at the forefront of the early modern imagination; how coral sculptors in Trapani, a port city in western Sicily, responded to the material’s overharvest by the Spanish crown; how Neapolitan artists redefined the still life genre to showcase their originality and technical skill in replicating the complex opticality and anatomy of fish; and how Agostino Scilla, a painter, natural philosopher, and antiquarian from Messina, honed his artistic visuality to prove that fossils are organic, challenging theories of spontaneous generation. This focus on the sea decenters traditional histories of southern Italian art by opening non-canonical objects, unconventional media, and aquatic themes to new methodologies and interpretations. Studying interconnections between artmaking, materiality, and marine ecosystems, this dissertation uncovers how art inspired by or made from sea creatures bridged local and global histories, documented the imperial exploitation of the natural world, and enabled the expansion of knowledge about the sea.
Description
"At the request of the author or degree granting institution, this graduate work is not available to view or purchase until July 16 2027."--ProQuest abstract/details page.
Keywords
Coral sculptors, Fishing history, Marine life, Naples, Sicily