«Do you know the land where the cedars flourish? Shining among the brown leaves golden oranges in the blue sky a sweet zephyr blows humble myrtle sprouts, tall laurel…”. (J.W.Goethe, “Evocation”)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a great thinker who lived between the 18th and 19th centuries, thus introduces us to the luminous beauty of the Sicilian landscape that fascinated European travellers. A landscape described in images and texts in the large volumes dedicated to the Grand Tour and its stages, veritable travel guides.
The legacy of the Grand Tour, especially in the decades between the sixties and eighties of the nineteenth century, played a decisive role in the work of Sicilian artists who understand how to approach the representation of the island landscape also thanks to the mediation of Italian regional pictorial schools , in particular the Tuscan and Neapolitan ones.