“TABI MUROLLI MUIDEM REP”. Pseudo-Kūfic, Retrograde Latin, and the Crusades Remembered on the Palazzo Chiaromonte-Steri Ceiling

Abstract

The article examines how expressions of piety and protection intertwine in the decorative programme of the Palazzo Chiaromonte-Steri in Palermo. Manfredi III Chiaromonte commissioned three Sicilian artists from 1377–1380 to paint the ceiling of the Sala Magna, one of the most celebrated artworks in Sicily. Frequently overlooked in scholarship, however, are the pseudoinscriptions, retrograde Latin, and enigmatic words and phrases painted on the ceiling. Rather than confirm a pleonastic reading of the textual additions, this study places them in conversation with a body of religious subjects painted in the palace, especially St. George and crusaders battling Muslim warriors. It argues that taken together these figural and textual interventions afford both a practical means to safeguard the Chiaromonte against misfortune and, more abstractly, to re-imagine the family’s history during this politically fraught moment in the Trecento.