The European influence on art in Malta

Although European Malta is only becoming a member of the European Union on Saturday, most of its artistic patrimony has been steadily nourished by political contacts with the European mainland.

This can be seen from the article European Art in Malta Throughout the Ages, by Emmanuel Fiorentino, appearing in the latest edition of Treasures of Malta, published by the Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti.

Mr Fiorentino shows how the late Middle Ages started a resurgence in the Europeanised quality of art in Malta.

"Much of what defined it was based on the Christian character of the islanders.

"The mother of local churches, the cathedral in Mdina, was in the first centuries of the second millennium built on lines derived from the Romanesque architectural qualities, though on decidedly more modest scales, which defined ecclesiastical structures in nearby Sicily."

Artistic links at the time, he points out, were mostly limited to nearby Sicily. The real breakthrough in the implanting of a European artistic mentality became more feasibly real with the advent of the Order of St John in 1530.

Architecture started to follow certain tenets derived from Italy and mannerist principles were introduced in the architecture of Girolamo Cassar who was entrusted with the building of the most important edifices in Valletta. Painting and sculpture followed suit.

Caravaggio's 15-month stay in Malta, he says, must have created a turbulent reaction to realism in painting, as notably illustrated by Giulio Cassarino, one of his closest local followers.

The following two centuries witnessed further inroads of a European artistic idiom into the Maltese scene. The baroque idiom was introduced through Italian Francesco Buonamici, the order's resident military engineer between 1635 and 1659.

The later years of the 17th century saw the arrival of Mattia Preti who stayed in Malta right up to his death in 1699. Frenchman Antoine Favray arrived in Malta in 1744.

Whereas Preti's work was almost exclusively sacred in subject, in the course of his long sojourn in Malta, Favray left a rich legacy of religious works, a good number of portraits as well as some landscapes.

Following the arrival of the British, a neoclassical approach to artistic concerns became evident, facilitated through the contacts cultivated through the training received by several Maltese artists in Rome.

The importation of Italian talent in the decoration of Maltese churches continued till the first half of the 20th century.

Since then several Maltese artists introduced new idioms through their studies abroad, Mr Fiorentino writes.

Other articles in Treasures of Malta include The Lost Chapel of Bones by Giovanni Bonello, The Forgotten Queen Adelaide of England by Greta Begley and Naval Mess Plates and Bowls by Bill O'Brien.