UMILE OF PETRALIA. - Sicilian sculptor, in the world Giovanni Francesco Pintormo, b. at Petralia Soprana in 1580, d. at Palermo on 9 February 1639.
Received as a lay brother in the Palermo convent of S. Maria di Gesù of the Reformed Friars Minor, he began there a life of fervor, to which the numerous wooden Crucifixes (33, according to tradition) scattered through the churches and convents of Sicily (Petralia, Mussomeli, Chiaramonte, Randazzo, Nicosia, etc.) bear witness. The friar did not set his hand to his works without an inner spiritual preparation: whence that aura of mystical piety that circulates in them.
Other works: the Ecce Homo of Calvaruso, the St. Francis of Enna, the pulpit of St. Nicholas in Trapani. His style is outside the caprice of the seventeenth century and a certain eloquence of the sixteenth: his anatomy is precise, without the exaggeration of the true. The work of fra U. reveals a plastic sense that is born of inner clarity and that, while conforming to reality, restates it in a religious vision of high interest for the history of piety.
It is difficult to define precisely U.'s artistic relations with the Ferraro da Giuliana and the Li Volsi da Nicosia; also because an exhaustive monograph on this prestigious wood carver is lacking.
Bibliography7 worksD. Di Marzo, I Gagini e la scultura in Sic. nei sec. XV e XVI, Palermo 1883, passim; F. De Roberto, Catania, Bergamo 1906, p. 131; E. Maucer
BIBL.: D. Di Marzo, I Gagini e la scultura in Sic. nei sec. XV e XVI, Palermo 1883, passim; F. De Roberto, Catania, Bergamo 1906, p. 131; E. Mauceri, Il Cicerone per la Sic., Palermo 1907, pp. 133, 146, 173, 178, 185; A. Da Ciminna, Frate U. da P., ivi 1913; D. Neri, Frate U. da P., in Illustr. Vatic., ag. 1933; anon., Pintormo G. F., in Thieme-Becker, XXVII, p. 67; Diz. dei siciliani illustri, Palermo 1939, pp. 456-57.
Navarra, Enzo. “Umile da Petralia.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. XII, coll. 753–754. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1954. https://azioneromana.com/article/umile-da-petralia.
MLA
Navarra, Enzo. “Umile da Petralia.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. XII, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1954, coll. 753–754. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/umile-da-petralia.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec12_umile_da_petralia,
author = {Navarra, Enzo},
title = {Umile da Petralia},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {XII},
pages = {753--754},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1954},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/umile-da-petralia}
}
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