A family that contributed to art and culture in Malta

Edited: William Zammit Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti Year: 2010

Pages: 208

This publication is the first to delve in depth into the artistic and cultural achievements of different members of the Bellanti family.

Michele Bellanti (1807-1883) was a major Maltese artist, active from the 1840s onwards, who has contributed significantly to the post-Baroque artistic scene. While his paintings, sketches and lithographs have always been appreciated and greatly sought after for their artistic merits, no detailed study on the artist or on the significance of his work had been as yet undertaken.

Michele’s elder brother, Giuseppe (1787-1861), was also a cultured individual who was a keen collector of artistic works and of books. A significant part of his collection is now to be found in Malta’s National Museum of Fine Arts. Between 1812 and 1838 he was the librarian of the Bibliotheca Pubblica. The National Library collection still comprises books previously owned by him, notably a number of incunabula. Giuseppe was moreover the author of a manuscript work on Maltese orthography, which as we shall see, is the subject of a study featured in this book.

Paul F. Bellanti (1852-1927) was a man of many talents. As an archaeologist, linguist and author, he gave a significant contribution in all these fields at a time when the assertion of the Maltese identity required individuals to do so.

The first part of the book is about Michele Bellanti and the Bellanti art collection. Albert Ganado provides detailed biographical information about Michele together with the most comprehensive listing of Michele’s lithographic output to date.

Antonio Espinosa Rodriguez writes about the acquisition of the Bellanti art collection by the State while Theresa Vella writes in detail about Michele Bellanti’s works in the collection, both those acquired from the family as well as others obtained through further purchases or bequests.

Through these three articles taken together one gets a more rounded information on Bellanti which is then supplemented by Mark Sagona’s article which is described some paragraphs down.

When Bellanti was born in 1807, Malta, which had recently emerged from the era of the Knights, was still dominated by the Baroque spirit. Rocco Buhagiar had just died and Michele Busuttil had just returned from Rome.

A number of artists went to Rome to study in the second decade of the century – Giuseppe

Hyzler who gravitated towards the Nazarene circle of German painters and Salvatore Busuttil and Pietro Paolo Caruana, who instead followed the lead of Tommaso Minardi, the champion of Purism in Rome.

Later on, in the last two decades of the century, the two Maltese giants Giuseppe Cali and Lazzaro Pisani drove away the stereotyped qualities harboured by Hyzler’s followers.

This is where Bellanti fits in. Although he has often included among the Nazarene artists, his Romanticism is not nostalgic like that of the Nazarenes and the Purists, it contains a marked human touch.

The artistic versatility of Michele Bellanti is aptly demonstrated by the variety of media which he utilised. Whether using watercolours, lithography, oils or pen, ink and pencil, Michele’s artistic merits emerge clearly.

The book includes the 1844 set of 30 hand-coloured lithographs made by Michele Bellanti from the Albert Ganado collection.

Michele’s major contribution to Maltese ecclesiastical art is then dealt with by Sagona who identifies a number of works which may be attributed to Bellanti together with a detailed study of the artist’s contribution to the development of Maltese ecclesiastical art.

Sagona managed to track down and study Bellanti’s St Margaret of Antioch in the rather obscure chapel at Ghajn Rihana.

Then came two commissions for full-scale altarpieces in the Carmelite church in Mdina, described as the climax of Maltese art in the mid-19th century.

The second part of the book is dedicated to the achievements of other members of the Bellanti family. Patricia Camilleri writes about the archaeological interests and contribution of Paolo Francesco Bellanti, Michele’s son. His publication of Malta Kadima in 1913, even if unprofessional by modern standards, is an early attempt to reach out to the masses. He focused mainly on rock-cut tombs he found around the Maltese countryside after he retired from work.

Finally, the late Joseph Felice Pace writes about National Library of Malta manuscript 446, which consists of a study on the feasibility of adopting an Arabic alphabet for Maltese, the work of Monsignor Giuseppe Bellanti, Michele’s elder brother.

We may not immediately notice it but Maltese is a spoken language rather than a written one. The 38-page manuscript argues that the Arabic alphabet is more suited to capture the Maltese language as it is spoken because Maltese is basically Arabic in nature despite the bad state of the Maltese language at the time with bad pronunciation as the main culprit. He argues for the adoption of the Arabic alphabet with the addition of two Persian letters to express sounds peculiar to Maltese.