Anyone fortunate enough to visit Sicily could not fail to notice the beguiling ceramic Moor heads, brimming with foliage, adorning gardens and balconies all over the island. If you watched the second season of The White Lotus, you might have noticed an unusual sculpture popping up in some of the show’s stunning scenes of Sicily. The testa di moro (“moor’s head”) is a traditional symbol of luck found across Sicily.
Sicily is famous for its ceramics, designed in the classic Maiolica glazed style with delicate baroque patterns. What may be lesser known is that it was the Arabs who introduced this craft to the island. Behind this duo is an intriguing mix of mythology and Sicilian history.
These hand-painted ceramic vases, depicting a head with Moorish features and decorated with a turban adorned with fruit and flowers, are usually displayed along with a woman’s head. But what is the story behind these iconic planters?
History Summarized: Sicily
Legends of Love, Jealousy, and Revenge
The origin of these decorations dates back to a legend from around 1100, when Sicily was under the rule of the Moors. The two faces represent a pair of doomed lovers-one from North Africa, one a native Sicilian, who fall in love on the island. Its origin is a folk tale from the time of the Arab occupation of Sicily more than a thousand years ago.
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As with many Italian folk tales, the story varies depending on where you are and who you ask, but in each one their different backgrounds are the cause of serious strife. The original folk tale behind the ceramic heads comes from Palermo and tells of a Saracen merchant who falls in love with a beautiful local girl.
According to a legend set during Muslim rule of Sicily, a foreign man visiting Palermo - called moro (“Moor”) in all versions of the tale - fell in love with a local girl who spent her days looking after her plants. The man was determined to win the girl over, so he declared his love for her. It was love at first sight, and he began courting her, visiting her home and swearing his devotion daily.
Anticipating fidelity and marriage, such was the bond of their love, the girl was devastated upon discovering that her lover had a wife and family waiting for him in Africa, to whom he intended to return. But their romance ended when she learned that he was soon to leave Sicily and return to his home, where he already had a wife and family. She was so struck by him that she returned his love, but her happiness vanished when she learned that the man would soon leave to return to his native land where he had a wife and two children who awaited him.
In a fit of jealously and rage, she murders him in his sleep, cutting off his head so that her lover would stay with her forever. Wanting revenge, the girl killed the Moor while he slept and cut off his head. In a jealous rage, she cut off his head that night while he slept, so that she could keep him with her forever.
The girl uses the head as a vase to grow a beautiful basil plant. She then used the Moor’s head to plant basil, which flourished. This time, she puts the head on her balcony to show off her victory, and the basil that grows in it makes her the envy of the neighborhood. Impressed with her thriving plant, the girl’s neighbors started producing vases in the shape of a testa di moro.
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Vowing that he would never leave her, she kept his head close, using it as a vessel in which to grow the most abundant basil plants.
Literary and Artistic Interpretations
If this story sounds familiar, it could be that you have heard one of the many versions that have appeared throughout history and across the globe. The version of the story that appears in Boccaccio’s Decameron takes place in Messina, a town on the northeast coast of the island.
History Summarized: Sicily
The most famous interpretation, however, was that of the Italian writer Boccaccio, during the Renaissance, in his short stories of The Decameron; again situated in Messina, the noble orphan Lisabetta (or Isabelle) is jealously guarded by her three brothers. Isabella falls honestly and spontaneously in love with Lorenzo, a local boy with modest means. Their love affair goes on in secret until the three brothers discover Lisabetta leaving to meet her lover and decide to put an end to the relationship to avoid tarnishing the good name of the family.
When her brothers find out about their love, they decide to kill Lorenzo and hide his body to avoid staining their noble family’s reputation. But when Lorenzo is absent for too long Lisabetta becomes desperate with worry. Their love affair goes on in secret until the three brothers discover Lisabetta leaving to meet her lover and decide to put an end to the relationship to avoid tarnishing the good name of the family.
Determined to find Lorenzo, she obtains permission from her brothers to go on a trip to the countryside with her female servant. She finds Lorenzo’s body and unable to give her lover the burial he deserves and insane with grief she cuts off Lorenzo’s head. Isabella is so heartbroken that she sneaks out one night, uncovers the body, and removes the head to keep a part of him with her forever.
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On learning of her love for Lorenzo, one of their employees, the brothers murder the boy and bury his body. His ghost informs Lisbetta of his fate, at which she, heartbroken, exhumes his body, burying his head inside a pot of basil which she lovingly tends and weeps upon, her tears watering the plant within.
At home, she hides the head in a vase and plants some basil in it. Isabella’s behaviour alarms the neighbours and her brothers discover Lorenzo’s head. Eventually, the brothers discover why the girl is so attached to that plant and leave Sicily after hastily burying Lorenzo’s head. Lisabetta dies of grief, and not long passes before her story is made public and adapted into a well-known song.
Romantic poet John Keats used the story as the inspiration behind his poem Isabella, or the Pot of Basil. In 1849 the sad tale of Isabella of Messina was revived by the artist Everett Millais who created the first painting in the romantic Pre Raphalite style. Another imminent Pre Raphaelite artist Edward Coley Burne Jones painted his portrait of Isabelle and the pot of Basil in1867. The painting of Isabelle is an emotive work of art depicting the moment the girl weeps over her basil plant towards the end of the story.
This masterpiece draws on ancient mythology, recalling elements of classical folklore, for example, the ancient Greeks and Romans believed basil was associated with hatred and according to folk beliefs the plant had to be sown with swearing and ranting.
The Complex Cultural Significance
Sicilian identity is a special blend of cultures thanks to its unique place perched between Italy and North Africa in the Mediterranean. It has been home to a number of world cultures over the centuries-including Greek, Spanish, Arab, and more-and each has left their mark on the island in its architecture, art, and food.
Contemporary Sicilian culture eagerly participates in the promotion of the macabre tale behind teste di moro. The comment Ethan Spiller (Will Sharpe) makes to the resort’s concierge - “What is with these head things? We keep seeing them everywhere!” - is on point. Teste di moro are ubiquitous in Sicily: they appear on the streets of Taormina, on the window displays of haute couture designers, in the homes of wealthy Sicilians.
Typically paired with a female head, teste di moro often establish a stark racial difference between the two lovers. The Moor’s perceived Arabness or Africanness are renegotiated within each artifact - a renegotiation that often results in hyper-racialized traits which caricature the man’s identity. Brightly colored turbans and large pieces of jewelry situate the man as Muslim; his skin is often pitch-black, and his lips are often so exaggerated that they are the only visible trait of his face.
In contrast, the female head is often endowed with porcelain-white skin and elongated features; the racial boundaries of this iconography are permeable, however, and caricatural Black Africanness may also be featured on the female vase.
It has been likened to the Ancient Greek story of Persephone, a fair maiden, who was condemned to spend half of each year in the underworld. The Sicilian version is called Mata and Grifone, in which a pious daughter from Messina falls for the general of an invading army who converts to Catholicism in order to rule with his beloved.
Is then, the story of the Moor pots the fruit of a heady (excuse the pun) combination of legend and Sicilian history? If the Messinese story was indeed adapted from the Greek Persephone, this would make perfect sense, as the island was colonised by the Ancient Greeks in the eighth century BC. It was also, during the Golden Age of Islam (between the seventh and thirteenth centuries of the common era), that the works of the Greek philosophers were translated by Muslim Arabs who studied them, such was their familiarity with Greek texts and culture.
According to Wikipedia, the word Moor was first coined by Christian Europeans to describe the Muslim inhabitants of Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. This is supported by Alessandra Di Maio, a professor of English and African Studies at the University of Palermo, who has written about the Moor heads; “The term [Moor] did not imply a single culturally, ethnically or racially bounded identity. It referred to dark-skinned people as well as to white people. Although habitually used as a synonym for Muslim” (Those are the lasers that were their eyes, Alessadra Di Maio, 2019).
What cannot be avoided however, is that the term Moor has also been used throughout history as a derogatory expression among non-Muslim civilisations, and this begs the question of whether the term, or the pots themselves, are acceptable, during a time when statues of slave traders and artefacts, such as the Ecuadorian shrunken heads in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, are being removed from public display amid conversations regarding their appropriateness in a modern, and hopefully fairer, more enlightened, world.
Well, the Muslims brought irrigation and cultivation, algebra and culinary delights, sumptious architecture and ceramics to Sicily. At the time from whence the Moor heads story surfaced, the Moors were rulers, conquerors, and to quote Di Maio from the same essay again, they were “not the colonial subjects, but the colonizers.
In addition to this slightly gruesome story, the mark of the Arab presence in Sicily can be tasted in the island’s most prized crops: pistachios, almonds, and saffron. We were thrilled when we found another Sicilian staple, olive oil, packaged in bottles that artfully use the testa di moro motif.
Here's a summary of the key elements in the legends:
| Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Setting | Sicily under Muslim rule (around 1100 AD) |
| Characters |
|
| Plot |
|
| Themes | Love, betrayal, jealousy, revenge, cultural clash |
