PROSERPINA

The Eleusinian Mysteries were among the most evocative and representative ceremonies of ancient Greece; they depicted the most significant myth of Proserpina.

Proserpina, the beautiful daughter of Demeter, was so entranced by the sight of Narcissus on the slopes of Mount Etna—with the volcano erupting lava in a terrifying yet majestic display—that she failed to notice the arrival of Hades. He approached in a golden chariot drawn by white mares; captivated by her beauty, he abducted her and took her with him to the underworld.

He made her his own, welcoming her with the food of the underworld: the pomegranate. But on the surface, her mother Ceres searches for her and weeps so desperately that she manages to convince Jupiter to bring her back. But Proserpina had already eaten the pomegranate and could no longer dwell among the living; Jupiter then decided that for four months of the year she would be Hades’ wife, and for the remaining time she would return to the surface to Demeter, Mother Earth.

The art room thus represents the rebirth of spring, the eternal awakening of the earth and its bursting forth of life.
Right from the entrance, you are greeted by a full moon, a globe of light, symbol of the spring equinox.

On the bathroom wall, a ceramic installation by the master Iudici, featuring fractal geometry, reminds us of spring’s ever-repeating yet ever-changing cycle. And above wooden doorjambs, a riot of spring colors in a fresco that recalls how Sicily was the granary of the Mediterranean. Where the light always comes from globes of light surrounded by golden reflections that remind us how the moon is propitiatory to the golden harvests of spring wheat.

And here the bedroom opens with the symbolic installation of a granary, its sheaves represented in wooden works, again beneath wooden doorposts in the spring colors of three hundred years ago, and the Art Nouveau-style fresco on the ceiling depicting the myth of Proserpina, who gazes ecstatically from above at a small mirrored table that reminds her of Narcissus (but that is another story), sustained by the motion of the planets and the changing of the seasons.

But it is from the terrace of the art room, amidst terracotta works by Sicilian artisans and plants characteristic of the Mediterranean scrub, that one fully enjoys the rebirth of spring beneath the volcano.