ABSTRACT
In today's Palermo, visitors to the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, a splendid art museum located inside the medieval Palazzo Abatellis, will find themselves in front of a mural painting representing an elegant man with blond hair, wearing a white cloak, and besides him a coat of arms with a black cross on a white ground (Fig. 0.1). It is the portrait of Heinrich Hoemeister, the commander of the Teutonic Order in Sicily, painted around 1490 by one of the best known Sicilian painters of the time, Tommaso de Vigilia. Hoemeister was not an example to follow for his contemporaries; he had concubines, children, male lovers and caused a great damage to his order, but he had a taste for art. He was at the end of a long series of Teutonic brethren present on the island since the beginning of the thirteenth century. It might also be a surprise for the visitor to know that the street where the museum is located, in the old city of Palermo, was once created by the Teutonic Order and belonged to it.
