(Bishop of Lipari from 1743 to 1753)
The painting depicts the bishop in the act of imparting a blessing. Of mediocre workmanship, it is probably the work of a local portrait painter, active around the middle of the 18th century.
Bishop De Miceli, a native of Mandanici, a small town on the Ionian coast in the province of Messina, is to be counted among the most eminent prelates of the Diocese of Lipari. According to the Liparese historian Giuseppe La Rosa, he was of humble origins; having escaped from the poverty of his father’s home, he came to Messina where, as a young man, he was taken in by the Abbess of the Monastery of the Nuns of Santa Chiara. Once he became a priest, due to his intellectual gifts and with the favour of Cardinal Valenti, he became parish priest of St. Leonard in the church of S. Maria dell’Itria, then Capitular Canon and finally Vicar General.
Universally loved and respected by all the nobility of Messina, he arrived at the government of Lipari, as the new bishop, in 1744.
Bound to tradition but also sensitive to the new pre-Enlightenment ferments, during his rule, he wanted to endow Lipari Cathedral with refined and valuable liturgical objects.
In his will, preserved in the Episcopal Archives of Lipari, he left his body available for anatomical studies, should it be necessary.
