Mark Micallef, a former Maltese ambassador, died on Tuesday aged 70, after a short illness.
Micallef was Malta’s ambassador to the United States from 1996 to 1998, to Spain from 2013 to 2018, and to Portugal from 2018 to 2020.
A lawyer by profession, he was a council member of Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti for a number of years and was an authority on art and Maltese heritage.
In 2008, he wrote a book called 'The Politics of Art' in which Judge Giovanni Bonello wrote in the foreword: “Mark Micallef makes a very convincing historical case for art and power often being two sides of the same coin.”