Vincenzo Ragusa and the Technique of Bronze Casting in Japan at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

chapter 6 From the Island of the Sun to the Empire of the Rising Sun: Vincenzo Ragusa and the Technique of Bronze Casting in Japan at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century Massimiliano Marafon Pecoraro On January 25, 1922 Antonio Ugo (1870–1950),1 a well-known sculptor from Palermo, reported on: [the] installation in the School of Art Applied to Industry of a section for lost-wax casting, so that we can have in Palermo a group of skilled founders of sculpture and the foundry does not need any special machinery but for only four burners and a few crucibles … It is painful that, to cast their works, the artists of the whole of Sicily must resort to the foundries of the continent.2 In Sicily, as in the rest of Europe, the process of lost-wax casting had come back into vogue during the nineteenth century after having been a widespread practice in the Renaissance. Ugo’s words could deceive us into thinking that Sicily was not particularly advanced in the field of iron work, of which bronze casting was a subset, but in order to better understand the situation we must step back even further than the 1800s, and appreciate the quality of the iron works, including bronze works, that enriched Sicilian Baroque architecture between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With the birth of the Bourbon kingdom in 1734, the aristocracy moved from the countryside to the cities of the island. This urbanization brought about a period of great building activity, particularly in Palermo, where, until the end of the eighteenth century, numerous residential buildings enriched by shelves, 1 For a biography of Antonio Ugo, see Maria Antonietta Spadaro, “Antonio Ugo,” in Dizionario degli Artisti Siciliani, Luigi Sarullo, ed. Benedetto Patera (Palermo: Novecento Edizioni, 1994), 333–35. 2 Melchiorre Di Carlo and Maria Antonietta Spadaro, Commemorare a Palermo, le medaglie di Antonio Ugo (Palermo: Kalos, 2014), 21. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439931_008 132 Marafon Pecoraro grates and glowing railings appeared.3 In Giovanni Biagio Amico’s important architectural treatise, published between 1726 and 1750,4 he dedicates a chapter to the materials used entitled Dè metalli appartenenti alle fabbriche (Of the Metals Belonging to the Factories), which speaks of both wrought iron and the casting of alloys.5 This book attests to the presence of numerous artisans skilled in metalworking. These proto-industrial foundries are the link between modern-age craftsmanship and the contemporary industrial era. However, no documents have yet been found concerning the practice of casting in metal during the pre-industrial era in Sicily. According to some testimonies, it seems that the French founders were the first to modernize the activity of the Palermo artisans in the aftermath of the revolution, when, having become free citizens, they obtained permission to move from France.6 This is the thesis formulated by Gateano Basile, a journalist from Palermo and at the same time heir to an ancient foundry, who recalls visiting the foundry with his grandfather as a child in the early twentieth century and hearing the workers calling all the utensils by their French names, frequently distorted by a naturalized Sicilian pronun- ciation. However, arriving in Sicily from the south of France was no great thing compared to the crossing of the Atlantic. In the eighteenth century the French crown had established on the banks of the Saint Maurice river in Canada one of the most important foundries of the New World.7 Among the foundries active in Palermo during the nineteenth century, which will be discussed below, Basile seems to be the oldest. The presence of a certain Gioacchino Basile, blacksmith, head of the congregation of the church of Santa Maria della Grotta in the Palermo district of Gaudagna, and present in some inscriptions on funerary marble inside the church, testifies to its activity since the late eighteenth century on the banks of the Oreto river. It was still in full swing around the 1840s, along with the foundries of Carraffa, Di Maggio, Gallo, Panzera, Porcari, Segreto, and the Oretea.8 The latter was com- missioned by the Florio family to support the numerous commercial activities 3 Massimiliano Marafon Pecoraro, “La decorazione degli spazi interni dei palazzi palermitani del XVIII secolo,” in Atlante tematico del Barocco in Italia: Residenze nobiliari/Italia meridi- onale, ed. Marcello Fagiolo (Rome: De Luca Editore, 2009), 317–42. 4 Giovanni Biagio Amico, L’Architetto Prattico, 2 vols. (Palermo: Stamperia G. B. Aiccardo, 1726–50). 5 Amico, L’Architetto Prattico, 1:56–57. 6 I thank Gaetano Basile, an affectionate friend, for granting me a long and detailed interview about the history of his family’s foundry, which ceased operations in the 1970s. The interview took place on July 21, 2019. 7 Luca Codognola and Luigi Bruti Liberati, Storia del Canada (Milan: Giunti, 2018), 221. 8 Giovanni Fatta and Maria Clara Ruggeri Tricoli, Palermo nell’“età del ferro”: Architettura, tec- nica, rinnovamento (Palermo: Giada, 1983), 39. .

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