Among the triumphal display of Baroque stucco-work in the Oratorio del Santissimo Rosario di Santa Cita, Palermo, executed by Giacomo Serpotta in the 1680s, two magnificent marble figure groups of putti struggling with an eagle and a lion still stand out today, below the grand canvas by Carlo Maratta. Although they now play a subservient role as corbels on the side walls of the sanctuary, a reconstruction of the various transformations of the altar between the late seventeenth and nineteenth centuries suggests that these works may have formed part of the now lost structure of the original altar. Downgraded for decades as variations of Serpotta's cherubs by his brother-in-law Gioacchino Vitagliano, the sculptures stand apart from the master's language and are probably by the talented Genoese sculptor Bernardo Schiaffino; this prompts important questions regarding relations between Palermo and Genoa at the end of the seventeenth century.
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