Charles V - Quattro Canti - Palermo

Piazza Villena in Palermo, also called I Quattro Canti , has four facades (three palaces and a church) beautifully decorated according to a design by Mariano Smiriglio with allegories divided into three orders of ascension , represented by the four seasons (power of nature) , four princes (temporal power), four patron saints (divine power).

In the second order, in the center of the niches are the statues of the four Spanish kings Charles V, Philip II, Philip III and Philip IV.

They were originally designed to be made in bronze , by Scipione Li Volsi, the only ones made were those of Charles V of Habsburg, then placed in Piazza dei Bologna and those of Philip IV, once placed on top of a marble machine on the floor of the Palace of the Normans and then destroyed. The current marble statues present in the Quattro Canti were sculpted by Carlo D'Aprile.

In the corner of the facade of the church of San Giuseppe dei Teatini we find Charles V of Habsburg.

Charles V of Habsburg was born in Ghent, Flanders, on February 24, 1500, and died in San Jerónimo de Yuste on September 21, 1558. Charles was descended from some of the most illustrious houses of European nobility: in fact, he was the son of Philip of Habsburg, nicknamed the Fair.

After the death of his grandfather Ferdinand of Aragon, Charles was appointed king of Spain in 1516 and became the head of a vast domain that included: The Netherlands Castile, a region in central Spain Aragon, the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula Southern Italy, the lands discovered in America by Christopher Columbus in 1492. In 1556 he abdicated in favor of his son Philip II.

Willem Vandenameele