The architect

By the time the architect Matteo Carnilivari from Noto (? -1506) was contacted for the construction of Palazzo Abatellis, he already enjoyed widespread trust. Personalities like Gaspare de Marinis, Guglielmo Ajutamicristo and even the viceroy Fernando de Acuña had entrusted him with projects and surveys. Although we have little information on the years preceding his arrival in western Sicily (in 1487) it is evident that Carnilivari possessed a wholly respectable curriculum. The town of Noto, situated between the rich County of Modica and the towns of the Queen’s Chamber, coming under Syracuse, during the fifteenth century was a cultured place, with an illuminated aristocracy and big pretensions regarding representation. It was in this fertile sphere that Carnilivari surely had his first training, though journeys to and participation in distant building projects cannot be ruled out. It certainly appears that in the early 1590s Matteo Carnilivari was the personality of most unchallenged prestige for architecture and building. Perhaps his most recognized quality was knowing how to blend quality and construction speed, and indeed the quickness with which the buildings in Palermo were put up appears amazing for the parameters of the time. Thanks to well-tested entrepreneurial organization he was able simultaneously to run several projects and to handle the execution of various buildings, succeeding in any case in giving a unitary tone to these constructions. This tone is the fruit of coordination and the direction of good collaborators. In this connection, as happened in many other cases in the building world in the 15th and 16th centuries, the buildings do not tell us only of Carnilivari, but of a very complex world, in whose hierarchical organization the architect took on a role of absolutely incontestable stage management.