The Ducato School of Bagheria, among the most famous in Sicily, was started in 1895 by Michele Ducato and the continuators of his work were his own sons Onofrio, Ernesto, Giovanni, Domenico and Giuseppe, considered masters of unparalleled skill by many admirers, among them, Renato Guttuso who expressed all his admiration for their art also through a famous painting “The Cart Painter” of 1966, belonging to the autobiographical cycle.
When Guttuso was a young man, sicilian roads were still traversed by numerous carts, a means of transportation between the countryside and the city, characterized by very rich decorations, figurations and pictorial stories in the sides, carvings and small sculptures along the edges of the wooden structure, wonders of mastery in the wrought irons that held the wooden parts together.
Guttuso said: “As a child I was enchanted for hours in front of the cart painter Emilio Murdolo whose workshop opened onto the street almost opposite the house where I lived. Then I met Michele Ducato who was a true master of this art.”
The historic headquarters of the store, opened in 1895, was located on the main axis connecting Bagheria and Palermo, once Consolare Street and Rammacca Street today, in front of the Villa Cattolica.
Next to the workshop, on the front of which the Ducato Bro’s Picture’s sign stood out, were those of a cart-maker, a farrier and a smelter, thus a production area exclusively aimed at the complete making of the cart.
Even the choice of the location highlights an ante-litteram marketing operation, since that road axis represented the main connection for transportation, as well as an obligatory passage for foreign travelers, for what were the Anglo-American military forces and for all the personalities who left evidence of their presence in the workshop with autographs and attestations including: Palmiro Togliatti, Alcide De Gasperi, Cesare Zavattini, Elio Vittorini, Fosco Maraini, Ignazio Buttitta, Carlo Levi.
In 1966, the Museum had the opportunity to purchase Domenico Ducato’s workshop, with the aim of not only preserving and handing down that heritage of technical and manual knowledge with which popular culture was told, but to proceed in tune with the museum itinerary to reconstruct a documented relationship of art and friendship with Renato Guttuso.
The collection includes a work cart built in the 1950s and painted in 1985 by Domenico Ducato, a considerable number of veils and drawings executed by the various members of the family, selected so as to represent as many as 24 cycles or repertoires of wagon painting, ex-votos, and banks. Also of important documentary value are texts relating to the main literary sources, consisting of the works published in handouts by the publisher Nerbini, with illustrations drawn mostly by Tancredi Scarpelli and Fabio Fabbi at the end of the 19th century.
Given on loan by Salvatore Accomando, son of one of the most famous wagon makers in western Sicily: Giovanni Accomando, who had a workshop in Bagheria, from 1944 to 2011, working until he was ninety-two years old.
Salvatore became a collector as a boy, and his collection offers a cross-section of painting workshops that bring together the Ducato family (both the sons of the progenitor Michele and those of his brother Domenico), Emilio Murdolo, Mariano Picciurro, Paolo Cardinale, Giulio Canadese, and Tommaso Scirè, starting in 1930 and continuing to the present day with Michele Ducato, son of Giuseppe, who testifies to the episodes of the pictorial tradition.
