The trompe l’œil dome of the Gozo Cathedral
by Joseph Bezzina, Malta, 2020. ISBN 978-99909-57-38-9
It is nothing short of amazing that up to a year ago we knew virtually nothing about one of Gozo’s most iconic showpieces, and now there is a bonanza that fills a whole book dedicated almost exclusively to it. The editor and principal author, Mgr Joseph Bezzina, roped in Giuseppe Ingaglio and Pierre Bugeja to document various aspects of a unique artefact, together with Daniel Cilia and JJP Zammit (Joseph) for the lavish images that breathe life into the text.
The ambitious new Gozo Cathedral, built between 1697 and 1711 to the designs of Lorenzo Cafà, had everything in place, except for a dome. One had been planned but was never built. Although historians have suggested a number of reasons for this default, among others the overrun of costs and military considerations, personally I find none of these explanations wholly convincing. The fact remains that for years, the edifice remained an architectural jewel and an important cult venue, beheaded of what would have been its summation.
A fallback to a real masonry dome started being mooted. Trompe l’œil (deception of the eye), two-dimensional realistic treacheries to replace real three-dimensional domes, had become fashionable in Europe, promoted by the outstanding genius of the Jesuit painter and architect Andrea Pozzo. He worked out the complex geometrical rules to achieve the perfect trickery, and popularised his cunning formulas in books and in magnificent real-life exemplars, like the false dome of the church of St Ignatius in Rome started in 1685, which became instantly famous. The genre took the name of quadratura.
Before the Gozo exploit, Malta had already experienced the art of a renowned quadraturista, Nicolò Nasoni, who had worked successfully on major projects in the Palace, and in the Order’s Chancellery. The Gozo Cathedral Chapter took the hint. In 1738, they engaged Antonino Emanuele called Pipi from Catania to fill in the gaping void of the missing dome. The result is the breathtaking achievement everyone admires today.
The painter from Catania left the Maltese islands not only his most notable work, but unquestionable evidence of genuinely artistic bravura
Joseph Bezzina can rightly claim the credit to have fleshed out, in not insignificant detail, the first biographical profile of this artist who created his most notable work for Gozo. Though sometimes hinted at in footnotes, we knew almost nothing of his life and his work before Mgr Bezzina undertook a thorough trawl through the sources. One of the curious coincidences that emerged is that Emanuele shared the same DNA as Grand Master Antonio Manuel de Vilhena, deceased just before Pipi painted his Gozo masterpiece.
During his stay in the Maltese islands, various commissions kept Emanuele busy. He came to Malta to decorate the brand new Manoel Theatre. Sadly, with the early British renovations, all Emanuele’s embellishments seem to have been destroyed. He also painted the first scenery for the new theatre productions. Theatre-scene painting is a subject in which scholars have only now started showing an interest, and Emanuele must count as the absolute pioneer.
The authors give the clearest accounts of the older and more recent vicissitudes of Gozo’s memorable tour de force. The various mishaps that befell it through the ages, from its being smothered in corrosive lime as a useless treatment - a consequence of the lethal 1814 plague - to the catastrophic felling of a campanile by lightning, to the first attempts at its restoration and to the recent bold scientific conservation treatments, documented by Pierre Bugeja.
Professor Ingaglio has a fascinating chapter in Italian on the false cupola and how it fits in the scene of Malta’s forays into quadratura.
Although Emanuele virtually copied his concept from Pozzo’s perfect prototype engravings, he did insert scraps of his own craft – not always with the happiest of results. His vanishing points, the soul of di sotto in su geometrical painting, are uncertain when not outright wrong. Antonino covered up his failings with drapery at the top end of the roundel and with vases of decorative flowers. He also painted a gecko on a glass pane, a symbol of rebirth. These peccadillos notwithstanding, overall the painter from Catania left the Maltese islands not only his most notable work, but unquestionable evidence of genuinely artistic bravura.
The author has a chapter in which he illustrates briefly eight other trompe l’œil cupolas in Europe, mostly Italian, but also German and Austrian. I must say that apart from the Pozzo original prototype, Gozo stands the comparison quite comfortably on a par with the best.
Among the plusses of this book, I single out the input of the two Gozo photographers – Daniel Cilia, the more creative one, and Joseph Zammit, the one who documented events connected with the false dome. Only one minus: the lack of an index. The first thing I look for. A didactic chronicle without one loses brownie points.
This work witnesses a strange paradox. Gozo boasts of an abundance of real cupolas, most ranging from the beautiful to the very stunning. And yet it is not the many genuine ones that hit the popular imagination but the only false one. Do we draw any ethical conclusion from this?