Treasures of Malta  

Ed. Giovanni Bonello Vol. No. 81, Summer 2021

Published by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti

There was no escaping the torrid sun and its enervating heat last summer. Even the latest issue of Treasures of Malta presents on its cover with a splendid reproduction of Emvin Cremona’s beautiful Landscape with a dark golden sun dominating a typical bare local landscape on the cusp of abstraction. The articles inside are, fortunately, cool and welcoming.

This issue’s editorial laments our schizophrenic nature where excellent conservation and restoration processes go cheek by jowl with savage destruction and ridiculous tasteless architecture making proud and rich the Talibans at our gates.

The recent restoration of Antonello Gagini’s Madonna and Child (1504) reminded us that, even before the coming of the Order, the island was no artistic desert. The restored Madonna, which can be admired at Ta’ Ġieżu church in Rabat, has a lovely genteel smile worthy of a Raphael. Charlene Vella puts the statue in its art historical context. Its much-damaged base today lies at MUŻA – surely if returning it to its original location is out of the question, in these days of 3D printing making a copy is an easy task, thus restoring its integrity.

Joseph Agius, a sub-editor of the Features Department of the Times of Malta, reveals his favourite object. It is a cubist sculpture of a bass player by Francis Galea (1945-94), that most gentle artist from Rabat whom fate took away too soon and with whom I had the pleasure to work for a few years in my department at the Junior College.

In the first of two contributions, art researcher Nicholas DeGaetano comments about several works in collections abroad, hitherto unknown and unpublished, which he attributes to Mattia Preti. These include, rare for Preti, a portrait in Naples of a knight of Malta. Preti and his bottega in Malta were extremely productive, almost on an industrial scale.

The problem is that it is not unusual for his works to be attributed to other artists, and it demands a deep knowledge of Preti’s technical approach “to participate in the debate about the constituents and chronology of Preti’s oeuvre”, as DeGaetano points out. In this issue, DeGaetano also reviews Keith Sciberras’ magnificent Mattia Preti: Life and Works, concentrating on several entries in the catalogue raisonné, giving his own comments on 10 entries and raising some questions on certain attributions.

One of Preti’s students and bottega collaborators was the Carmelite tertiary Maria de Dominici (1645–1703), Malta’s first known female artist. A competent artist, she has in the past been extolled beyond her merits. Six of her paintings survive as well as the statue of the Immaculate Conception in Cospicua, which was, however, radically altered in 1905 by Abram Gatt so that only the original head and hands survive.

Nadette Xuereb explores her artistic legacy and expresses the hope that more details about the enigmatic de Dominici and her art will gradually come to light.

Giovanni Bonello and campanologist Kenneth Cauchi write about Malta bells in old postcards

Giovanni Bonello and expert campanologist Kenneth Cauchi write about Malta bells in old postcards. Following the death of the founder Giuliano Cauchi in 1904, all those who desired bells had to turn to foundries abroad. This brought about all-out efforts by foreign companies or their local agents to look out for custom, and this soon resulted in the use of postcards to publicise particular sets of bells being brought by the towns and villages.

The first postcard set issued marks the casting in 1925 of four bells by Paccard of Annecy for Balzan parish church. Italian companies or their local agents soon jumped on the bandwagon and started producing postcards of their productions, even though in one case the bell shown in one postcard is a ‘fake’.

Other postcards were issued to mark the lifting of the bells into the belfries, with at least one case of Photoshopping to show the concurrent lifting of the Luqa parish church bells. The eight-thousand-kilogram bell at Birkirkara, Malta’s largest, also merited a postcard. In all, nine such postcards are discussed.

The second part of Giulia Privitelli’s article on Verdala Palace focuses in the decorative programme of the relatively ignored entrance vestibule and main hall, and compares it with some late 16th-century printed work of the Order. These, as the author posits, were “the most effective tool and springboard for self-promotion”.

The tranquillity of mind which all visitors to the palace were urged to foster by the painted inscription in the first room – Cedant Curae Loco – is underlined by the decorative programme itself. This is often inspired by printed illustrations, and all is meant to bolster the grand master’s recent raising to the cardinalate. Verdalle, it was hoped, would bring a welcome period of peace and stability to the Order and Malta after the internecine travails of the Romegas affair.

Albert Ganado, one of our living treasures, writes about George Muir’s contribution to Maltese culture in the 19th century. Muir settled in Malta in 1841 where he opened his business, which consisted of a circulating library, selling books and stationery, and even Smith’s compound, which offered ‘a certain cure for any curable disease’.

He became a prolific publisher for, inter alia, almanacs and lithographs by the Brocktorffs and other artists. He might also have made some of his lithographs himself.

His shop in Strada Reale lay in a central position besides the post office. His last year was spent in Chiswick lunatic asylum where he died in 1866, aged 53.

Ranier Fsadni recalls the figure of another local treasure we have sadly lost forever: Fr Peter Serracino-Inglott, that unique jack of all trades, master of most. The contribution of this man to local culture, with his incredibly expansive mind, is truly phenomenal; his attachment to Malta made him refuse many offers of lucrative offers of academic posts abroad.

And yet, in this flurry of plaque-fixing and monument-erecting, we do not seem to have found a way to record our gratitude. Even a small dark alley named after him would suffice – and would no doubt tickle his impish sense of humour.