Willem Schellinks, Flemish painter and draftsman (Amsterdam, 1623-1678), whose formative years we know little about, is noted for his travels through Europe in 1646 and from 1661 to 1665. Jacques Thierry, a wealthy ship owner, promoted the second trip, which was aimed at educating his thirteen-year-old son, Jacobus. Probably also sponsored in part by the wealthy lawyer Laurens van der Hem, the trip brought Schellinks across Europe to Italy. After passing through several cities, he arrived in Naples, and finally reached Sicily, where he resided from August to December 1664.

Memories of Schellinks' travels are recorded in numerous drawings, some of which converged in the Atlas van der Hem, others went into public or private collections, but most are contained in Schellinks' Dagh-register, or Diary, preserved in two manuscript copies that are for the most part comparable (one at Copenhagen in the Kongelige Bibliotek; the other at Oxford in the Bodleian Library).

This essay underscores the importance of the traveler's contribution for reconstructing the socio-cultural and urban setting of Messina in the second half of the Seicento. The city scenes in the Atlas are presented as historical-artistic documents valuable for evoking Messina's period of splendor ten years prior to the anti-Spanish revolt and subsequent natural and war-related catastrophes. In this regard, a practically unpublished drawing in the Metropolitan Museum at New York is quite interesting. It is like a true period photo, proof of the historical realities of the contemporary Sicilian city, like relevant pages of the Diary, translated here for the first time into Italian. Without neglecting traditions, customs, and commercial activities of Messina, Willem focused his attention on the socio-cultural aspects of city life and on the well-rooted and welcoming colony of his Flemish compatriots. His notes cover a range of events from the welcome of the vice-consul to Assumption celebrations, from concerts in the presence of viceroy to a visit of the Ruffo gallery, and to mentions of the city's monumental and pictorial patrimony. All this is intertwined with records of a vast array of Flemish characters attesting to commercial and artistic ties between Messina and Northern Europe.