Roman Baroque Sculpture for the Knights of Malta

Roman Baroque Sculpture for the Knights of Malta Keith Sciberras Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, Valletta, 33.38 [euro] ISBN 99932 10 29 3 (cloth) ISBN 99932 10 30 7 (paper)

Keith Sciberras has produced an informative, richly documented account of the Roman baroque sculpture commissioned for La Valletta by the Knights of Malta.

The Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti continues to mine the cultural past of the three little islands in the Mediterranean, much nearer Tunis than Rome, that constitute Malta. The foundation's latest production is this study of the baroque sculptures sent from Rome to adorn the conventual church of the Sovereign Military Order of St John in La Valletta, a shrine zealously devoted to the Order's patron saint, John the Baptist.

The knights dominated all artistic activity on Malta until early modern times. The reader would be wise to bone up on them and their Grand Masters, however briefly, before plunging into this admirably detailed survey.

Rome, with her succession of late baroque sculptors and their indispensable support groups of stonefitters and metalworkers, supplied most of the vivid ensembles that still dazzle today's visitors to La Valletta. The art of Bernini reached Malta only indirectly, and Algardi is represented there only marginally. Melchiorre Cafa, a Maltese of promise bordering on genius, died young in Rome, where he had been too busy to do much for his homeland. That left members of subsequent generations, notably Domenico Guidi, Ciro Ferri and Giuseppe Mazzuoli, in addition to their teams of able assistants, a void which those truly workaholic types were eager to fill.

If there is a mail-order, derivative aspect to some of the works, it is only natural in view of the many months they took to travel from Rome to Malta, where their originators could give no finishing touches and where the locals installed them. It is in fact from the Order's shipping records that Keith Sciberras makes documentary hay.

The outstanding landmarks in La Valletta are Guidi's multimedia monument to Grand Master Nicolas Cotoner (1686); Ferri's resplendent silver and gilt reliquary that holds the Baptist's right hand (1689); and Mazzuoli's marble group The Baptism of Christ (1699-1701), a project initially intended for Cafa.

It is a sign of the dominion of liturgy over art that Ferri's reliquary, and eventually a small army of silver statuettes by Antonio Arrighi (1740-43; mostly unspirited quotations of the heroic marbles in the nave of the Lateran, and subsequently deposited in the cathedral of Mdina) stood on the altar directly in front of Caravaggio's Beheading or the Baptist, thus blocking the canvas from view and surely helping to hold back Caravaggio's reputation well into the last century.

The altar in question, on which the reliquary was adored, is in the oratory of San Giovanni Decollato, adjacent to the conventual church, and in it is inserted a sublime gilt-bronze roundel of the same subject as Caravaggio's scene but made without any reference to it. Sciberras arrived at most of his numerous discoveries through the patient consultation of documents. In this instance, he proves on factual grounds that the rondo (in which the swaying young woman is surely meant for Salome, not a mere 'female maiden' as styled) was finished by 1689 and on visual evidence that Ferri is the author of the undulous, scintillating design.

Rome's supremacy in metalwork had already been affirmed when the conventual church's lavish new high altar was installed in 1686. I do not class it as a monument of sculpture in the same sense as the foregoing ones because, architecturally complex, its beauty lies not in overall form but in the details of the gilt-bronze trimmings that shimmer against the many hues of the marbles employed. The papal founder Girolamo Lucenti cast the ornaments, Giovanni Battista Giorgini supplied the models for the frontal's frieze of acanthus, which, in cornucopia fashion, spills forth wheat sheaves and grapevines that curl around the symbols of the four evangelists. The frieze manages to he at once opulently baroque yet chastely controlled in organisation and execution.

The strong grip of Roman masters on sculpture for Malta was relaxed only when the two bronze tombs of Grand Masters Marcantonio Zondanari and Manuel De Vilhena were assigned to the Florentine Massimiliano Soldani (installed in 1726 and 1729-30). They are more spectacularly rich in detail and more iconographically engrossing than any of the Roman work, but Sciberras, while acknowledging this, sensibly limits his discussion because Soldani's tombs have been exhaustively treated elsewhere.

The book is attractively produced. Sciberras excels in his evaluation of evidence and in technical matters such as the precise identification of all the various marbles. As to the writing: like many dialects, Maltese English no doubt has its own proud traditions and defenders, but it may upon occasion strike a wider English readership as antiquated and/or pixilated. The reading can be lively, to be sure, but it can also slow one down.

The Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti owes author as well as reader firmer editorial control. Better copy editing would have cured many a lapse in the body of the text, but at the same time it cannot be emphasised too strongly that Sciberras's appended transcriptions of the Italian documents--the fundamental motivation, I imagine, behind this eminently worthwhile undertaking--appear to be not only very careful but quite possibly without a single flaw.

James David Draper is Henry R. Kravis Curator in the department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His current exhibition there is 'Cameo Appearances' (until 29 January 2006).

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