The wheel has been around for at least 6000 years… from Mesopotamia in the Middle East all the way to central Europe. No one really knows when it was “invented”. Wheels move people, wood for making fires and the construction of useful items, animals, and products of the harvest. The first wheels were wooden disks… the first spoked wheels came from the Caucasus region down toward Greece and the Mediterranean cultures about 4000 years ago. Of course, the Romans developed their two wheeled chariots……perhaps a precursor of the painted Sicilian Carretto, one of the most beautiful of all folk crafted technologies in all of Italy.
Their bright primary colors (yellow, blue, red, green) celebrate the sun, the sea, lemons, the glowing lava from Mount Etna, the richness of green olive and grape leaves and the passions in the Sicilian soul. The carts contain remnants of Christianity, paganism, war, passion, nature, opera and mysticism… influences that illustrate the various cultures that have left their mark on Sicily: the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, The Turks, the Bourbons, Arabs, Normans and Spanish. The battles of Charlemagne and his Paladin Knights remain the most popular theme for decoration. It’s a colorful culture, indeed…
The French writer Jean Baptiste Gonzalve de Nervo (that’s a mouthful) visited Sicily in 1833 and is claimed to be the first to write about decorated Sicilian carts–but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there long before his arrival in some for or another. He described seeing carts decorated with scenes from many subjects: the story of the New Testament and Jesus, the Virgin Mary, many different saints, the Crusades and Napoleon’s conquests.
Some insist that after the decline of the Roman Empire the roads in Sicily were left to ruin and fell apart, not allowing small horse, mule or donkey carts to be used on roads between towns and villages–until the “early 1800s” when de Nervo wrote about them and drew attention to them. Just as Columbus “discovered” America–it was always there, with Native Americans before Europeans even knew about it. It’s the same with these carts… more than likely, they were in Sicily for many hundreds or even thousands of years. – See more at: http://grandvoyageitaly.weebly.com/the-piazza/carretti-siciliani-the-pai…
Donate 