The Apes of God and the World of the Commedia

When Sacheverell Sitwell’s Southern Baroque Art was published in 1924 the term ‘baroque’ was still considered a pejorative in Britain, Italy and much of southern Europe, denoting vulgar extravagance and a lack of formal restraint. Sacheverell’s original account of a largely forgotten incarnation of the Italian and Spanish baroque changed this perception of the period dramatically for the well-read British public. His text was at once a critically-acclaimed source for the art-historian and a lyrical, imaginative recreation of the artistic and architectural splendours of Lecce, Noto and Naples and other destinations that Sacheverell and his brother visited in Italy and Spain. I explore the literary techniques and historical sources that led to the book’s particular success, and compare this account of the baroque with the very different approach taken in his later, more factual German Baroque Art. This chapter summarises the ways in which Sacheverell Sitwell’s recreation of the baroque period through the arts, and in particular the Commedia dell’Arte, helped to shape the playful and exclusive Sitwell aesthetic during the 1920s.