SS. Rosario in S. Domenico's Oratory

The History

The company of SS. Rosario in San Domenico was founded in 1568, and the oratory was built in the rooms adjacent to the apse of the Church of S. Domenico around 1574. An austere, late-eighteenth-century classical façade leads to the anteroom, a large passage vestibule that enters into the rectangular oratory hall with a square domed presbytery and a checkered majolica floor. In this oratory, painting and sculpture merge in a harmonious balance, creating a perfect integration of figurative languages in their iconographic and aesthetic function.

Giacomo Serpotta and Pietro Novelli

The 17th-century paintings were integrated with a decorative stucco scheme executed by GIACOMO SERPOTTA between 1710 and 1717. This sculptural work was intended to enhance and highlight the Dominican theological message, which used Mysteries and Allegories of Virtues for contemplation and the atonement of sins.
The iconographic cycle unfolds both vertically and horizontally through an interplay of allusions between the canvases, statues, ovals, and groups of three putti. Between the canvas depicting the mystery and the oval with the apocalypse scene, the artist placed three angel-putti to connect the two scenes and lighten their interpretation. Meanwhile, graceful allegorical statues depicting the Virtues are inserted between the canvases, reflecting the perfect ideal of feminine beauty characteristic of the Rococo spirit.
The fresco on the vault depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, created by PIETRO NOVELLI around the 1720s, completes the oratory's pictorial cycle.

The paintings

Along the walls are wooden choir stalls where the confraternity members sat, supported by shelves carved with zoomorphic subjects in the last quarter of the 17th century. Through the triumphal arch, you enter the presbytery and the spectacular decoration of the apse and dome, from which groups of ladies and knights lean on a balustrade. The enormous painting by VAN DYCK depicting the Madonna of the Rosary with the Dominican Saints (Domenico, Vincenzo Ferrei, Caterina da Siena) and the Patron Saints of Palermo (Rosalia, Agata, Oliva, Cristina, Ninfa) stands imposingly on the altar wall, facing the fascinating invention that Serpotta masterfully and skillfully created. Among the Mysteries of the Rosary, the canvases by Novelli (Jesus among the Doctors, The Pentecost), The Flagellation by MATTHIAS STOMER, and The Visitation by GUGLIELMO BORREMANS are of particular interest.