The Malta Independent on Sunday
Treasures: A real treasure
Ihad old and dear friends visiting so we spent time sightseeing, chatting and eating and drinking. I wanted to dedicate time to them as they have done for me over many years. I loved it and it made a change from too much socialising. So, under these circumstances I am going to take the opportunity to write about the Easter issue of Treasures of Malta.
Like many other issues before it this one too, comes with a print. The cover is Willie Apap’s Ecce Homo dated 1964.
I wish to take this opportunity to take my hat off to the donors, both personal and corporate, which keep Fondazioni going and to those who so generously share both their time and their knowledge with readers.
*** The Easter issue of Treasures has a wealth of interesting articles and runs into almost 100 pages – surely a bumper issue.
In We Shall Die Alone: the deathbed ritual in 17th and 18th century Maltese imagery Christian Attard highlights the portrayal of death in various local paintings. This is an extensive article running into some 15 pages and is well illustrated.
In Francesco Zahra’s painting Death of St Philip which is to be found in the parish church of Zebbug, among those by his dying bed are St Peter “heavenly keys tucked safely in his belt.” Of course, as we know, desirable as it may be, not everyone dies in his four poster bed, surrounded by kith and kin, a priest administering the Viaticum and guardian angels hovering in the background.
One moving story in this article, is of a woman who was murdered – for a piece of bread. In April 1771, Felicita, a 36-year-old woman from the “tomba del Manderaggio” in Valletta, was found robbed and brutally murdered. “Since no one had come forward to claim or identify her body not even her (possibly estranged) husband, she was hastily buried in the yard of the Valletta Dominicans without as much as a cross. But it turned out that prior to her death the woman had received the sacrament of confession and granted absolution. In view of this two days after its burial the body was exhumed and carried to the monastery of the Dominicans and was introduced inside the church and thus given a Christian burial.
The Church has always done its utmost to make us feel guilty... and encourage us to repent. One priest urged people to accept the sacrament of confession “an attitude that was perfectly attuned to the way people conceived of unexplained calamities, including bubonic plague.” In the words of one priest “sappiate anche che le malattie sono castighi di nostri peccati: se volete adunque, che Dio vi restituisca la salute corporale, dovete con la santa confessione togliere, e levar via le radici delle vostre infermita, che sono gli stessi peccati”.
I thoroughly enjoyed this article and shall understand those paintings where death is depicted in “operatic terms” armed with a little more knowledge.
*** In the series Melitensia Curios, Prof. William Zammit writes about two early unknown Maltese newspapers: one was never published although advertised. The other seems to have had no more than one issue.
*** In his editorial Dr Giovanni Bonello refers to the Picasso and Mirò exhibition which will remain open until 30 June. He writes: “....with Picasso and Mirò, we aspire to new summits. Malta had an absolutely stunning Baroque period. But it is a disheartening legacy that, after three centuries of the wane of Baroque, so many are still stuck in the same weary neo-Baroque pothole. May their exposure to the aesthetic seditions of Picasso and Mirò shake them out of their anachronistic torpor.”
If you haven’t been to the exhibition you must go but beforehand read Sarah Chircop and Giiulia Privitelli’s article on it entitled Somewhere between the Flesh and the Spirit in this issue of Treasures. It will help you to understand better. *** Another article is Christopher Grech’s A Governor’s Commission: The collaboration between Governor Le Marchant and artist Luigi Aspetti. In this nine-page well-illus- trated article the author has researched the collaboration between governor and artist.
Le Marchant had artistic abilities and a particular interest in miniatures. He commissioned the Sicilian artist (who claimed he came from Florence) to paint a series of miniature paintings of those hung in the Grand Master’s Palace in Valletta. At least one of these works finished up in the British Royal Collection and another two in the Museum of the Order of St John in London.
My Favourite Object is another series which enjoys a following in Treasures. In this issue Dr Gerald Montanaro Gauci writes about his interest in numismatics which started because he inherited “a vast collection of ancient coins from my father who acquired them largely in his student days, probably at little or no cost.”
He points out that there are two major collections open to public viewing, one at the Metropolitan Cathedral Museum, Mdina, and another within the National Collection at the Museum of Archaeology, Valletta.
*** George A. Said-Zammit in The Architectural Legacy of the Knights of St John, surveys the changes in domestic layout that were brought about as a consequence of the arrival of the Knights of St John on our island. From cave dwellings to the palazzi built over the centuries it seems that the central courtyard layout was the most common.
How did housing evolve from people living with their animals on one floor, to building houses with two floors, so that animals and people lived separately?
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this informative article but at the same time lamented the fact that we are slowly destroying what was once so beautiful and functional. Are future generations going to finish up living in pokey flats?
*** The organist and medical man, Dr Hugo Agius Muscat, discusses 18th Century Pipe Organs in Malta and Gozo.
The oldest pipe organ surviving in the Maltese Islands, he tells us, is presently found in the Oratory of St John’s CoCathedral and dates back to 1579. Thanks to the generosity of a variety of people and organisations some of these organs have been restored over the years.
*** Bruce Ware Allen authors New Light on the Death of Torgut Rais. Known also as The Drawn Sword of Islam (I love it, don’t you?) this formidable man led the Barbary corsairs who came alongside the Ottoman forces to destroy and conquer. The octogenarian is described by the author as being “arguably the single most effective and feared of his breed.” In Sicily he was known as lu malu cani, the Wicked Hound. The author, using several sources, tries to answer the question: who in fact killed Torgut Rais, for this Wicked Hound had the misfortune to die at a time when he was most needed.
Two of the countless spent cast iron cannonballs from the Great Siege, the author writes, can be found suspended from wrought iron chains at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Valverde in Sicily. They are there because two natives of Valverde were among the Sicilian volunteers who joined the Knights of St John and people of Malta in resisting the Ottoman forces. The people of Valverde have not forgotten their valiant soldiers and in 1984 commissioned several stained glass windows . “One of the windows shows Grand Master de Valette and the Madonna of Valverde against a background of the siege of Malta.”
Certainly a church to visit on our next trip to Sicily.
*** In the series Conservation and Restoration conservator-restorer Amy Sciberras gives us a detailed account of the restoration of The Titular Painting of Our Lady of Liesse which was brought to Malta by the French Knights.
There is also a book review by Dr Paul Xuereb and a Cultural Calendar by Cecilia Xuereb.
*** The layman has so much to learn from Treasures. Were this magazine a musical performance, it would be part of a set of variations, in random order, every one of them the interpretation of a virtuoso. Each article is a completely self-contained narrative.
One gets the impression that these writers, including the erudite editor, love their subject. Their enthusiasm is truly contagious. mbenoit@independent.com.mt