The collaborators

Not all the names of the twelve craftsmen called on to work under Carnilivari are known. For some of them we have nothing more than the name, as in the case of the maestro fabricator Paolo Cannizzaro. We certainly know that during the absence of Carnilivari his partner Nicolò Grisafi was to be in charge of the work. Among the most senior collaborators Bernardo Vivilacqua is mentioned, a trusted master carver who would have worked beside Carnilivari in all Palermitan building yards documented (Palazzo Abatellis and Palazzo Ajutamicristo, the Vittorie church). The craftsmen Domenico Ramundi and Bernardo de Fossato, who beginning from December 1490 undertook to complete the building, were probably the same ones (Domenico Cannivali and Bernard de Fossato) that had undertaken the previous year, witness Matteo Carnilivari, to do a stable next to the building being put up. Among the collaborators of Matteo Carnilivari at the Palazzo Abatellis building yard a major role was played by the Majorca artist and carver Joan de Casada. The artist is known for having done the double mullioned windows at Palazzo Abatellis, very similar to the contemporaneous ones at the loggia in Valencia. Certainly Casada did the external staircase, since he signed as a witness the purchase of the single pre-carved steps, in February 1492. The first biographical notices relating to Casada see him active in 1455, alongside the young Pere Compte, in the building yard of the royal St. Dominique chapel in Valencia, a building yard directed by Francesc Baldomar. This experience can explain a lot of unusual solutions still to be seen at Palazzo Abatellis like the oblique portal in the great hall, entirely similar to what we find in Valencia, at the entrance to the staircase. Perhaps the oblique portal at Palazzo Abatellis also led to a staircase; judging from a testimony by Di Marzo (“a winding staircase of one hundred and eleven steps stupendously graven so as to seem suspended in the air”), it must have been a caracol de Mallorca, that is a winding staircase with a central open eye. Further signs of the presence of Casada can be seen in the corner brackets of the tower, which are carved following complex oblique geometry. Carnilivari probably used the Majorca artist for the execution of the most problematic details.