Filippo Paruta; Leonardo Agostini - La Sicilia - 1697

PHILIPPO PARUTA’S SICILY
Lyon, Marco Maier, 1697

Philippo Paruta’s Sicily described with medals, and reprinted with additions by Leonardo Agostini. Now arranged in better order by Marco Maier.
The memory of a kingdom through the testimonies of antiquity
Among the works that best attest to the deep link between antique erudition, historical research, and the numismatic collecting of early modern times, a place of particular note belongs to Philippo Paruta’s Sicily, a monumental testimony of that intellectual tradition which, between the late Renaissance and the seventeenth century, sought to reconstruct the greatness of vanished civilizations through the study of their material remains.

Published in the present Lyon edition of 1697, the work represents the result of a long process of elaboration, enlargement, and reorganization, which spanned almost a century of study and involved leading figures of Italian and European antiquarianism.

Its object is ancient Sicily, land of extraordinary historical and cultural wealth, crossroads of Greek, Phoenician, Carthaginian, and Roman civilizations, whose cities had known, many centuries earlier, a prosperity such as to rival the major centers of the Mediterranean.

Paruta chose to tell this history through a particularly fascinating testimony: ancient coins, considered not merely objects of value but authentic historical documents, capable of restoring the names, symbols, deities, institutions, and political aspirations of the cities that minted them.

From this arose a work in which image takes on equal importance with words, and in which every medal becomes a small window opened onto a vanished world.
Philippo Paruta and the birth of Sicilian antiquarianism
Philippo Paruta, a learned Palermo native who lived in the second half of the sixteenth century and the early years of the seventeenth, belonged to that generation of scholars who helped transform antiquarian research from a largely literary exercise into an inquiry based on direct observation of monuments, inscriptions, and material testimonies.

His activity unfolds within the cultural climate of Spanish Sicily, when the island, though politically part of the broad domains of the Iberian crown, retained a strong sense of its historical identity.

Palermo, Syracuse, Messina, Catania, Agrigento, and the other ancient Sicilian cities were not merely geographical places, but names loaded with illustrious memories handed down by Greek and Latin historians.

Paruta understood that those memories could find concrete confirmation in the ancient coins found on the territory, often bearing images of deities, mythological figures, symbolic animals, and Greek inscriptions.

The first edition of his work appeared in Palermo in 1612, after the author’s death, under the title Della Sicilia di Filippo Paruta descritta con medaglie.

The project represented one of the early great attempts to systematically gather the numismatic documentation of Sicilian cities, offering scholars a reference tool intended to preserve its importance for a long time.

The value of the work lay chiefly in its method: by comparing monetary testimonies with literary sources, Paruta sought to restore historical solidity to a past that until then had been known mainly through classical authors’ narratives.

It was a deeply humanistic enterprise, yet already animated by that documentary sensibility that would, in the following centuries, contribute to the formation of modern archaeology.
Leonardo Agostini and the rebirth of the work in the Seventeenth Century
Paruta’s Sicily did not end with the author’s death. On the contrary, it enjoyed a new and important chapter thanks to Leonardo Agostini, antiquarian and engraver of Sienese origin, a protagonist of the Roman cultural life in the seventeenth century.

Agostini operated in one of the most prestigious milieus of Baroque Europe: the Rome of the popes, of great cardinal families, and of ancient collections that were taking shape in the palaces of ecclesiastical aristocracy.

Connected to the court of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VIII, and later in the service of Alexander VII, Agostini had access to coin, gem, sculpture, and archaeological artifact collections of exceptional importance.

It was precisely this familiarity with the Roman antiquarian heritage that allowed him to recognize the value of Paruta’s enterprise and to undertake a new edition.

In 1649, in Rome, Agostini published an expanded version of the work, enriched by about four hundred additional monetary engravings.

His intervention went beyond a mere quantitative increase. Through the addition of new testimonies and comparison with already known material, he contributed to greatly widening the horizon of the research, placing the work within the great movement of Roman antiquarianism in the seventeenth century.

It was an environment in which collecting had not yet clearly separated from scientific research. Coins housed in private studies and in the cabinets of princes could become tools of historical knowledge, while illustrated publications allowed the diffusion across Europe of images of objects otherwise accessible to only a few privileged holders.

Paruta’s work, thanks to Agostini, thus passed from the realm of Sicilian erudition to that of international antiquarian culture.
Marco Maier and the prestigious Lyon edition of 1697
The present edition, published in Lyon in 1697 by Marco Maier, represents a fundamental milestone in the editorial history of the work.

Lyon had for centuries been one of Europe’s major centers of book production and commerce. Its geographic position, along important commercial routes between France, Italy, and Northern Europe, had favored its development as a meeting place for different intellectual traditions.

Here, at the end of the Seicento, the name of Philippo Paruta reappeared on a work intended for an audience of scholars, antiquarians, collectors, and lovers of ancient history.

Marco Maier, whose name appears explicitly on the title page, did not merely reproduce his predecessors’ work. The new edition was reorganized and supplemented with explanations, historical notes, and chronological materials, so as to make the vast numismatic documentation easier to consult.

Particularly meaningful is the formula chosen for the title page: Hora in miglior ordine disposta da Marco Maier.

These words reveal a precise editorial ambition. It was not simply a matter of reproducing a book already known, but of giving it a more orderly structure, in which the iconographic heritage could be accompanied by a coherent historical narrative.

The edition includes descriptions of Sicilian cities, explanations of the medals, chronological plates, and a synthesis of the island’s history, extended to the modern era.
Thus the Sicily of the Greeks and Romans is set in relation to that of medieval and modern rulers, giving life to a narrative of extraordinary temporal breadth.
The work thus becomes, not only a repertoire of ancient coins, but a true illustrated history of Sicily through its numismatic monuments.
The content: the cities, the rulers, and the civilizations of ancient Sicily
The heart of the work is the richly abundant sequence of monetary testimonies of the ancient Sicilian cities.

Palermo, Messina, Catania, Syracuse, Agrigento, Trapani, Cefalù and many other centers are presented through the coins that document their political, religious, and economic life.

Each city appears almost as a small sovereign entity, endowed with its own figurative identity.

Particularly evocative is the section devoted to Syracuse, one of the most powerful and celebrated cities of the western Greek world.

Founded by Chian colonists in the 8th century BCE, Syracuse experienced a period of exceptional splendor under the great tyrants of its history, from Gelon to Dionysius the Elder.

Its military power, wealth, and the magnificence of its monuments made it a leading protagonist of Mediterranean affairs.

In 415 BCE, during the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians undertook against Syracuse one of the most ambitious military campaigns in ancient times. The venture ended in a catastrophic defeat, as recounted by Thucydides, and deeply affected the fate of Athenian power.

The Syracusan coins, famed for the refinement of their engravings, constitute tangible testimony to this greatness.
They feature female heads, divine figures, quadrigae, and symbols recalling the city’s prestige. Some of the most famous ancient coin engravers, including Cimone and Euainetos, raised Syracusan production to extraordinary artistic heights.

Another section of great interest concerns Agrigento, ancient Akragas, celebrated for the magnificence of its temples and the wealth of its territory.

Its coins frequently bear the eagle and the crab, symbols that still today allow immediate recognition of many Agrigentine issues.

No less fascinating are the testimonies from Messina, where the hare, the chariot, and female figures linked to civic tradition recur, or those from Catania, in which deities, heroes, and symbols of Greek culture intertwine.

Through these images, the reader is led on a journey through centuries of history, from the earliest Greek colonizations to the rise of Roman dominion.
The iconographic apparatus: a museum of antiquity printed on paper
The most spectacular feature of the work is undoubtedly its vast iconographic apparatus.

The Lyonese edition of 1697 is bibliographically documented with 153 engraved plates, in which numerous ancient coins are reproduced, generally presented through the right and reverse images.

The arrangement of the depictions follows a principle of order and comparison. The coins are gathered in numbered sequences, so that the reader can observe differences between emissions belonging to the same city, compare inscriptions, and recognize the evolution of figurative types.

The overall effect is that of an immense numismatic cabinet transferred to paper.

The engravings, produced by intaglio technique, allow the reproduction of intricate details of the effigies, hairstyles, animals, divine attributes, and inscriptions.

As for the artists responsible for the figurative apparatus, it is necessary to distinguish between the work of gathering and selecting the testimonies, attributable to Paruta and later to Agostini, and the actual execution of the engravings.

Among the names documented in relation to the edition are Giovanni Angelo Canini and Sebastiano Fulcaro, to whom engravings of the work are ascribed. On the frontispiece of the copy presented here, corresponding to the central large illustration, one recognizes also the artistic responsibility marks placed to the sides of the image: one for the drawing and the other for the engraving.

Canini, a painter and designer of the Seventeenth Century, was tied to Roman figurative culture and to the study of ancient images. His interest in the representation of historical figures and ancient effigies fits perfectly within the intellectual horizon of the publication.

However, it is advisable not to attribute indiscriminately all the plates to a single artist: the work’s apparatus derives from a complex editorial history, developed through successive campaigns of integration and reuse of the matrices.

A particular mention is due to the large engraving that dominates the center of the frontispiece.
It represents the Trinacria, an ancient Sicily emblem, formed by three legs arranged radially around a female head, surrounded by wheat ears.

The image encapsulates an entire universe of meanings.

The three legs traditionally recall the island’s triangular shape and its three main promontories: Peloro, Pachino, and Lilybaeum.
The central head evokes the figure of the Gorgon, while the ears symbolize the fertility of the Sicilian land, celebrated since antiquity for its abundant grain production.
In classical culture, Sicily was indeed closely associated with the cult of Demeter, goddess of harvests, and with the myth of her daughter Persephone.
The frontispiece, therefore, does not present a mere decorative ornament, but a true symbolic synthesis of the island’s historical and geographical identity.
Cultural meaning and influence on European erudition
To fully understand the importance of Paruta’s Sicily, one must consider the role that numismatics assumed in European culture between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Scholars of the time were deeply aware of the value of the material testimonies of antiquity. However, in the absence of archaeological and philological tools developed in later centuries, coins represented one of the most immediate and reliable sources for knowing past rulers, cities, and institutions.

A coin could preserve the name of a forgotten sovereign, the portrait of a deity, the symbol of a vanished city, or the memory of a political event.

Paruta helped to valorize this documentary function, entering a tradition of studies that included figures such as Guillaume du Choul, Hubert Goltzius, and later the great antiquarians of Baroque Rome.

The work’s success is shown by its long editorial fortune.
After the Palermo edition of 1612, the Roman edition of 1649, and the present Lyonese reprint of 1697, Paruta and Agostini’s work was resumed in the eighteenth century within the vast Thesaurus antiquitatum et historiarum Siciliae, published in Leiden as part of the great scholarly collections associated with Johann Georg Graevius and Pieter Burmann.

This further diffusion shows how the work was now regarded as an important reference for the knowledge of Sicilian antiquities.
Its value, of course, does not coincide with that of a modern scientific catalog. The attributions and interpretations formulated by seventeenth-century antiquarians must be considered in light of the knowledge of their time.
But precisely in this lies a core part of its charm: Sicily allows us to observe not only ancient coins, but also how Baroque-era scholars sought to understand them.
Curiosities, myths, and narratives that traverse the work
One of the most interesting aspects concerns the fact that Paruta’s work, born as a Sicilian antiquarian enterprise, continued to acquire additions long after its first publication.

Its trajectory crossed three profoundly different cities: Palermo, Rome, and Lyon.

Palermo represented the author’s homeland and the testimonies studied; Rome was the great center of papal antiquarian collecting; Lyon was one of the ports through which Italian culture reached the European book market.

The book’s history thus reflects the same international circulation of ideas and ancient objects that characterized modern Europe.

Another evocative curiosity concerns the symbol of the Trinacria.
According to mythological tradition, Sicily was the theater of Persephone’s abduction by Hades. Demeter’s sorrow, endlessly seeking her daughter, would have caused the earth’s infertility, until Zeus intervened and Persephone’s periodic return to the world of the living.
This myth, closely tied to the alternation of seasons, found one of its most celebrated settings in Sicily, especially in traditions connected with Enna and Lake Pergusa.
The ears depicted around the Trinacria thus acquire a meaning that goes beyond mere agriculture, recalling the ancient relationship between Sicilian land, fertility, and the world of the gods.
Equally evocative is the tradition relating to the god Adrano, venerated in the inland of Catania.
Ancient sources remember a sanctuary in which numerous sacred dogs were kept, believed to be able to discern honest men from ill-intentioned ones.
According to the story handed down by tradition, these animals would kindly welcome visitors who respected the sanctuary, while they would pounce on thieves and sacrilegious people.
The tale, also reported in the antiquarian tradition relating to Adrano, testifies to how rich Sicily’s ancient religious world was in local cults, beliefs, and extraordinary tales.
There is finally a bibliographic curiosity of a more strictly bibliographic character.
The first edition of 1612 bore an indication of a first part, hinting at a broader project that was not completed in the originally planned form.
It was left to later generations of scholars and editors to gather that legacy, progressively transforming the initial work into a broader and more articulated project.
In this sense, Sicily can be regarded as a collective intellectual enterprise, where late Renaissance erudition, Baroque collecting, and the systematic ambition of European culture on the eve of the Enlightenment meet.
Conclusion
Philippo Paruta’s Sicily, in the prestigious Lyon edition of 1697, constitutes a remarkable testimony in the history of numismatics, antiquarianism, and European illustrated publishing.

The work embodies the result of nearly a century of research, expansions, and editorial interventions, bringing together in one volume Paruta’s historical passion, Agostini’s antiquarian expertise, and Maier’s editorial initiative.

Its extraordinary engraving apparatus returns an image of ancient Sicily through the symbols of its cities, the effigies of its rulers, the depictions of its deities, and the testimonies of its prosperity.

But the volume’s meaning goes beyond simple numismatic documentation. It belongs to that era of European culture in which the study of antiquities became a tool to interrogate history, recover the memory of peoples, and recognize, in objects that survived the passage of centuries, traces of the greatness of vanished civilizations.
Each coin portrayed is a testimony that crosses time; each engraving preserves the echo of a city, a cult, a sovereign, or a historical event.
In these pages Sicily appears not only as a geographic territory, but as one of the great protagonists of Mediterranean civilization, a meeting place between East and West, between myth and history, between political power and artistic creation.
A work in which the memory of antiquity becomes image, and in which the book itself becomes custodian of a historically and culturally exceptional heritage.
Collation and condition: Excellent preservation, fresh and margin-rich pages, clear and perfectly preserved plates, a museum piece. In-folio (2nd), [16], 100 pp., 153 off-text engraved plates.
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