High on the hill above the Franciscan church is the early nuns' church of La Sigurata, hidden away in a court. Like several others of the early churches it shows no sign of its great antiquity.
The Rector's Palace was commenced in 1388 and completed in 1424, at a cost of 40,000 zecchins. In 1435 it was partially burnt, and was restored under "Onofrio Giordani de la Cava," who had been five years in the city.
CAPITAL FROM THIS LOGGIA, RECTOR'S PALACE, RAGUSA
ÆSCULAPIUS CAPITAL, RECTOR'S PALACE, RAGUSA
The second story, which existed as a kind of tower above each end of the façade, was thrown down by the great earthquake, and never rebuilt. The loggia has stone benches against the walls, one to the left, and two, one above the other, to the right, which were the seats for senators on great fête days. In 1462 there was another fire, so that only fragments of Onofrio's work remain—the hall on the ground floor with the seventeenth-century wooden ceiling, several of the caps of the loggia, and the courtyard within, the great door and the windows of the first floor. This is all that appears to have been preserved. The great council then called in Michelozzo the Florentine and George of Sebenico. The former was at Ragusa in 1463, looking after the building of the walls of the city; and on February 11, 1464, it was ordered "that the palace be rebuilt" after his designs; but, in the following June, George of Sebenico was appointed, working, no doubt, on the general lines laid down by Michelozzo. The great hall was burnt during the French siege, and very little remains inside worthy of note. There are two tolerable pictures, one an early copy of the Paris Bordone in the National Gallery, the Venus and Adonis, and the other, a Baptism of Christ, in the manner of Paduan work of the fifteenth century. Both have been restored. The courtyard has an arcade of round arches, resting on cylindrical columns with Renaissance caps, and an upper arcade resting on twin columns and piers, two arches to each bay, both stories being vaulted with sustaining arches, but without ribs. The loggia in front has ribs and bosses at the intersections. A small staircase to the right contains other remains of Onofrio's building—a bracket, on which is carved a figure of Justice holding a label, and with a mutilated lion on each side of her; opposite to it is a capital, on which is carved the Rector administering justice; neither of them in their original place. The main doorway is pointed with a richly carved moulding and caps, which belong to Onofrio's work; above it is S. Biagio in a Renaissance niche, and between the caps and the arch a shallow frieze is interposed, on which are carved little figures engaged in combats, a love scene, and Cupids with an organ and trumpets. The corbels from which the vaults spring are carved, the subjects being two groups of boys playing, a man fighting a dragon or basilisk with club and little target, a struggle between a girl and a bear, &c. The doors at the end, the Porta della Carità, where distribution of corn used to be made to the poor at a low price, and that opening on a stair to the hall of the Lesser Council appear to belong to the earlier building. The ring with the lion's head on the door is a fine piece of fourteenth-century bronze-work. The knocker is not so good. A knight with raised arm stands on a lion's head against a post covered with scales; above and below foliage spreads out. The caps of the loggia are very fine, though not of equal value. The three central ones are Renaissance work, and marry admirably with their heavy, ornamented abaci, which in the others appear over-heavy, and plainly an addition. In the earlier work the technique of the carving is better, and the foliage has more spring. The most interesting one is the Æsculapius subject, which De Diversis saw in the carver's hands in 1435, planned, as he says, by Nicolò de Lazina, a Cremonese noble, who was chancellor at the time. It is interesting both from the point of view of the carving and costume, and as showing the apparatus of an alchemist's laboratory. Close by it on the wall is the "metrical epitaph," which De Diversis says the chancellor composed. The columns, which are of Curzola marble, belong to the earlier building, though the entasis shows that classical feeling was beginning to affect even architects who worked in Gothic. Mr. T.G. Jackson's explanation of the addition of the heavy abaci seems quite reasonable—viz. that the earlier arcade was pointed, and that, since a good deal of the building survived the fire, it was necessary to raise the springing of the arches, when they were made round to match the levels of the ends which were not destroyed. The carved string-course above and the Gothic windows of the piano nobile are also remains of the earlier building. There was a castle on the site of the palace from the days of the establishment of the Slav colony on Monte Sergio, which, together with the marshy inlet which then occupied the site of the Stradone, afforded sufficient protection to make sudden attack on the part of the Slavs inadvisable; when the two settlements were joined together by a common line of defences it became the seat of government.
FOUNTAIN OF ONOFRIO DE LA CAVA, RAGUSA