Occasionally, a craving for meaningful art interacts with the strictures of the law, giving rise to quite bizarre situations. I will try to illustrate this by narrating a forgotten episode which had all the makings of high drama, legal chicanery, some suspense, and an unpredictable ending.

Up to 1910, the cultural heritage of Malta enjoyed almost zilch protection at law.

The owner of any historical, archaeological or artistic object had all the absolute rights inherent in private property – jus utendi et abutendi in lawyers’ jargon. He could flaunt it, he could hide it, destroy it, export it, deface it at leisure. If you owned it, end of story. Private property simply had no social dimension and it sounded dangerously pre-Bolshevik to even suggest it should.

Several spine-chilling examples of this unrelenting capitalist perversion dot earlier centuries. A couple will suffice. When, in 1613, a full-size Roman marble temple came to light in Mtarfa, the precious building blocks immediately became an opportunity for recycling. One and all helped themselves to that marble bonanza. Not a trace of that temple survives today.

And when amateur British archaeologists came to know of the unique overground megalithic Brockdorff Circle in Xagħra, Gozo, they somehow intuited the incomparable cultural significance of the site and persuaded the governor to purchase the fields for the State, to enable proper excavations and investigations to be carried out.

The farmer-owner wanted more. This was refused, and, in 1835, to spite the authorities, the farmer armed himself with a huge sledgehammer and with vindictive gusto, systematically destroyed the majestic monoliths, one by one, watched by horrified spectators, only allowed by law to grin and bear it.

The 1910 Antiquities Ordinance changed all that.

For the first time in history, a law officially recognised the social dimension of cultural heritage in private ownership. The artistic or historical object still belonged to the owner, but the State took upon itself the role of guardian in the wider interest of the community.

The ordinance introduced a duty to care for heritage items, a prohibition to export them, destroy them or damage them and, in case of sale, gave the government the right to acquire the objects on the same conditions they were sold, within three months of coming to know of the sale. Bully for the colonial authorities – one giant step forward.

The second post-World War I self-government further enhanced this protection. It commissioned my father Vincenzo to redraft and update the ordinance. His work laid the basis of the Antiquities Act of 1925, only superseded in 2002.

Father introduced an entirely new concept in Article 5.3: an exporter from Malta could pay export tax by transferring to the state a work of art of equivalent value, instead of paying cash. This ensured the acquisition of several outstanding masterpieces for the national collections. The 1925 Act ended playing a major role in the Palombi-Borg Olivier saga.

The Borg Olivier dynasty, established in 1705 through the marriage of Carlo Borg to Angelica Olivier, consistently cultivated intimate and inextricable ties with the ancient church of St Paul’s Shipwreck in Valletta. Two of the family became canons of the collegiate: Dr Francesco and Gio Carlo. To them can be attributed the major impetus to decorate and enlarge the edifice, prized to this day. Family lore preserves several stories woven round this relationship.

Angelica Olivier’s lavish white flower-embroidered silk wedding dress was turned by a descendant into a chasuble for celebrating mass and donated to that church. It can be admired to this day in the annexed domus.

In 1762, Grand Master Pinto stood as godfather to Emmanuele Borg Olivier, baptized in St Paul’s Shipwreck church. Emmanuele was the brother of Sir Giuseppe Borg Olivier, the first Maltese chief justice of the British period.

Oliviero Borg Olivier, an architect, designed the elaborate wooden band stand (planċier) assembled yearly on the corner of St Lucia with St Paul’s Street. The first time the band used it, some supporting planks gave way.

No one was seriously hurt, but the great drum, the katuba, bounced unstoppable all the way down that street of steps. Oliviero spent his spare time at home building, perfecting and decorating a large-scale wooden model of his beloved church of St Paul’s Shipwreck.

And Dr Paolo Borg Olivier Sr, minister from 1962 to 1971, just after the end of World War I, contracted the lethal Spanish flu which claimed more casualties than the war itself. Something seemingly unprecedented happened. Through the initiative of the Borg Olivier Canons, a mini-procession escorted a miraculous relic, a carpal bone from St Paul’s wrist, from the church to his bedside, where it remained up to his complete recovery.

The Borg Olivier canons persuaded the administrators of St Paul’s parish church to embark on a grand scheme – the painting of the vault. They asked around for the names of suitable artists and their choice fell on Attilio Palombi, a Roman painter fashionable in ecclesiastical art circles.

Palombi (1860-1913) had already worked for Malta in 1887, with a St Paul altarpiece for the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition in Casal Paola, but to carry out the Borg Olivier commission, he returned in 1901 and remained several years on the island. Just before leaving Rome, the painter wrote to the pope to bless him and all those who were contributing to the embellishment of St Paul’s church.

Palombi’s stay was anything but free from animosity and court litigation

Over time, Palombi’s stay turned out to be anything but free from animosity, controversy and court litigation. The painter Giuseppe Calì had already started some work in the church, when the lucrative commission was snatched away from him and given to Palombi, who erased Calì’s existing output to fit in his own. This started a no-hold-barred war between Calì and Palombi. Calì felt doubly outraged as he was related by marriage to the Borg Oliviers, through Rosa Amato, Oliviero’s wife.

Calì enjoyed his comeuppance on Palombi when the Franciscan friars undertook the decoration of their church in what is now Republic Street, Valletta. They, too, commissioned Palombi for the job, but Calì went behind his back and offered to do the work at a discounted price. The friars accepted, reneged on their agreement with Palombi and hired Calì instead, in a bout of karma. Palombi sued the friars for breach of contract, but the court ruled he was only entitled to be paid for the bozzetti.

A further legal twist in this convoluted story now comes to the fore. In 1957, a sale by auction of the estate of Enrico Borg Olivier included two lots, Nos 129 and 130 – Palombi’s splendid bozzetti for the four pendentives of the dome of the church of St Paul’s Shipwreck, representing the evangelists. The lawyer, Dr Giuseppe Borg Olivier de Puget, not unreasonably, wanted Palombi’s beautiful artwork to remain in the family. He bid for them and secured the two lots for £32.00.

Giuseppe Borg Olivier de Puget counted as nothing but a highly colourful personality. An elder brother to Ġorġ Borg Olivier, the Independence prime minister, he made it a point to appear contrary by nature.

Alone among the Borg Oliviers, he distanced himself from his Nationalist roots, to align himself with Mabel Strickland’s Progressive Constitutional Party, contesting the 1951 elections on the pro-imperialist ticket in the Gozo electoral district.  In Victoria, Gozo, he saw clients in a legal office on the stepped street, It-Telgħa tal-Belt, leading up to the Citadel. To promote his campaign, he distributed leaflets with the catchy “Jekk trid issib l-faraġ/ivvota għall-avukat tat-taraġ” (if you are after happiness, vote for the lawyer from steps street).

Giuseppe Borg Olivier de Puget Ciantar Paleologo Chappelle Wizzini (1899-1974, graduated 1923) convinced himself – possibly with good reason – of his direct descent straight from the emperors of Byzantium, and that, as such, he was entitled to be addressed as Prince of Selimbria.

He formally registered this claim in the records of notary Vincenzo Maria Pellegrini on May 4, 1953, and had that declaration witnessed by four more or less eminent Maltese historians whom he created commendatori on the spot.

His mischievous friend, lawyer Godfrey Randon (graduated 1938), a kindly but trenchant satirist, remained underwhelmed by the exuberance of so much illustrious DNA. He discretely took the mickey out of His Most Serene Highness by circulating a tongue-in-cheek poem in Maltese about the royal pretender, parts of which Tonio Borg reproduced in his 2018 Ġustizzja bi Tbissima (p. 72-75).

What Borg Olivier de Puget did not factor in when he acquired the bozzetti at auction was that someone else coveted them – no less than the National Museum of Fine Arts.

The minister responsible for museums, Agatha Barbara, later president of Malta, availed herself of the powers conferred on government by Section 4 of the Antiquities Act, 1925, to ‘redeem’ the bozzetti from the buyer, by just reimbursing him what he had spent to acquire those works of art.  On June 28, she gave notice to the buyer that the museum was exercising its right to take the paintings for the national collections and deposited the purchase price in court.

It may not often pay to be a lawyer, but this happened to be one occasion when it did. The law entitled the government to pre-empt works of art only when they were “sold”.

So, Borg Olivier de Puget immediately donated (not sold) the bozzetti to a relative.

The museum could no longer claim them from him, because now they belonged to someone else; nor could it retrieve them from his relative, because they had not become his through a sale, but through a donation. The museum found itself well and truly conned.

The buyer showed minister Barbara the middle finger by means of an official letter filed in court on July 5, 1957.

To solemnise his cunning, Borg Olivier de Puget formally donated the four bozzetti to his relative in the records of a notary. Some 120 years after Palombi painted them, they still radiate joy to the Borg Olivier descendants.

Acknowledgements: My thanks to Christian Attard, Joseph Borg, Leonard Callus and Gordon Pisani.