The owner

Francesco Abatellis, great harbourmaster of the kingdom, was a major political personality. The tablets to the sides of the portal of his palazzo reveal a military life alongside Ferdinand the Catholic. Closely linked to the crown and in contact with the local aristocracy, Abatellis was evidently a cultured personality able to select a language and the architect that appeared able to enact a demanding and ambitious project. Different clauses, worked out in the contracts with the architect Matteo Carnilivari, probably indicate the degree of interference that the client could afford. First of all the new building was to have trappings comparable to that of Palazzo Bonet (and the merchant Gaspare Bonet signs as a witness); the portal was to be similar to the one already done by Carnilivari in Agrigento for the Baron of Muxaro, Gaspare de Marinis. These various elements and aspects had evidently been chosen by Abatellis, while it is very likely that this was the first non-religious building in Palermo in the 15th century that for the portico exploited pseudo-ancient supports, columns in marble directly commissioned from the workshop of Giuliano Mancino and Gabriele De Battista and capitals with coats of arms. In the role of the client we cannot underestimate the weight of his consort Eleonora Soler. For one thing it seems likely, regarding the financial aspect, that her dowry was invested in the construction. The coats of arms that obsessively recur inside the building, in the portals and in the capitals, present the heraldic emblems of the two families juxtaposed. It would further be naïve not to envision a direct female interest in the distributive organization and in various aspects of the construction. Imagining, as often happens, a monolithic and deaf commission by the pater familias, looking only in his biographical history for masculine signs and models, appears (even for the sociology of the 15th century) a radical simplification.