3rd Year: MAZARA DEL SATIRO
It is the beginning of our third September in Sciacca. The noise and distractions of the summer people are gone and the skies are again showing some impossibly gorgeous sunsets. This is my favorite weather time, and I want to store it all up before the rain comes and the wind starts to blow. Today, the now-familiar planned electrical outages returned (from 9 till 3) so we took a trip to Mazara del Valle to purchase an outdoor porch ceiling light that we had seen a while back, and also for a sight that we have been waiting for ever since we heard about it.
Mazara has finished its new Museum of the Sicilian Channel and has installed the prize the town has waited over 5 years to have returned from the researchers and restorers in Rome. It is the famous Satiro Danzante, the Dancing Satyr, found in the nets of fishermen from Mazara in 1998. First they found the leg, and then they hoped to find the body in the same area, and then they did! Local lore has it that it has been found before tangled in nets, but fishermen just threw it back in and considered it as a nuisance. Anyway, it is a significant historical find, probably from the third century BC, and the fishermen of Mazara that ply the waters between here and Tunisia are convinced theres lots more down there than the bounty that has already been found. Hence this museum. It is in a restored church that has just opened after a major construction job that of course took several years longer than planned (and of course several hundreds of thousands of euros more). There are anchors, oil jars (amphore), some plates and clay water jugs, and even several elephant feet were there also. A well made movie with English subtitles re-enacting the discovery of the satyr and its restoration was also available for viewing.
Pictures of the bronze statue, which is just a bit larger-than-life, are forbidden. But I did manage to photograph the poster of the head and the ceiling of the building before I was stopped. The figure is mounted higher than eye level and you can walk around it so that you can see the way the body is turned and the feeling of motion is there, especially with the rippling hair. It only has one leg, and that is thrown back to balance as it whirls. There are many representations of figures like this on antique Greek clay jars and plates, and they always are portrayed showing in one hand a staff with a pine cone on top and in the other, a handled drinking jug festooned with flowers. Even incomplete, it is a figure in the midst of an ecstatic joy, related to wine drinking and the intensity of dance, like the whirling dervishes of Turkey. The eyes are original, of some hard white material, and the centuries of plant and animal life were painstakingly removed layer by layer by restorers in Rome. And although the body lacks the arms and a leg, the trunk and curving back really show motion and joy from so many centuries ago in the past. I bought a reproduction of it over a year ago and I show it to you here as a mere suggestion of its real form.
Interestingly, Mazara del Valle has begun to represent itself as Mazara del Satiro. They will really capitalize on the fame of this ancient object, and I wonder how many people have jobs because of this find?
Mazara has finished its new Museum of the Sicilian Channel and has installed the prize the town has waited over 5 years to have returned from the researchers and restorers in Rome. It is the famous Satiro Danzante, the Dancing Satyr, found in the nets of fishermen from Mazara in 1998. First they found the leg, and then they hoped to find the body in the same area, and then they did! Local lore has it that it has been found before tangled in nets, but fishermen just threw it back in and considered it as a nuisance. Anyway, it is a significant historical find, probably from the third century BC, and the fishermen of Mazara that ply the waters between here and Tunisia are convinced theres lots more down there than the bounty that has already been found. Hence this museum. It is in a restored church that has just opened after a major construction job that of course took several years longer than planned (and of course several hundreds of thousands of euros more). There are anchors, oil jars (amphore), some plates and clay water jugs, and even several elephant feet were there also. A well made movie with English subtitles re-enacting the discovery of the satyr and its restoration was also available for viewing.
Pictures of the bronze statue, which is just a bit larger-than-life, are forbidden. But I did manage to photograph the poster of the head and the ceiling of the building before I was stopped. The figure is mounted higher than eye level and you can walk around it so that you can see the way the body is turned and the feeling of motion is there, especially with the rippling hair. It only has one leg, and that is thrown back to balance as it whirls. There are many representations of figures like this on antique Greek clay jars and plates, and they always are portrayed showing in one hand a staff with a pine cone on top and in the other, a handled drinking jug festooned with flowers. Even incomplete, it is a figure in the midst of an ecstatic joy, related to wine drinking and the intensity of dance, like the whirling dervishes of Turkey. The eyes are original, of some hard white material, and the centuries of plant and animal life were painstakingly removed layer by layer by restorers in Rome. And although the body lacks the arms and a leg, the trunk and curving back really show motion and joy from so many centuries ago in the past. I bought a reproduction of it over a year ago and I show it to you here as a mere suggestion of its real form.
Interestingly, Mazara del Valle has begun to represent itself as Mazara del Satiro. They will really capitalize on the fame of this ancient object, and I wonder how many people have jobs because of this find?
posted by Sicilian Mama at 6:05 AM
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