Malta 2: Who on earth is …?

… Mattia Preti?

If you don’t know him, relax, there is at least one more person in this world who didn’t either but if you want to broaden your cultural horizon beyond Caravaggio, go to Malta and visit St Paul’s Cathedral in Mdina and St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. And you’ll see. Here there are a few examples of Preti’s around 400 paintings, frescos, votive paintings in Malta alone.

Caption to the pictures below: The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine in the Chapel of the Langue of Italy, The Allegory of the Triumph of the Order of St John, the ceiling in the Co-Cathedral in Saint John, underneath The Conversion of Saint Paul (one in the Co-Cathedral, one in St Paul’s in Mdina; dramatic, remember from Saul, through blindness, to Paul, you better believe it)

Malta, unfalteringly Christian since the Apostle Paul’s shipwreck, has 365 churches, and in this 4th densely populated nation that makes it 1165 inhabitants per church. (901 inhabitants per church in Italy, Malta can’t beat that). They look self-assertive, awe-inspiring  and quakeproof, elegant baroque outside, overwhelming baroque inside.

St Paul’s Cathedral, Mdina; St Paul’s church, Rabat with the marble sphere in front; underneath Church of St Paul’s Shipwreck in Valletta; bottom left: some church in Paola; middle: Cathedral of the Assumption in the Citadel of Victoria (Gozo island); and the rather new not baroque Basilica of Ta’Pinu which I’ll tell you about next time (on Gozo Island).

Overwhelming inside is St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta

My poor pictures – chosen with a great deal of ignorance and taken with superficial camera settings because the heat was wearing me down – my pictures can’t express the impact that the interior of the cathedral has on your eyes, on your senses.

Look at the floor, into the Chapels of the different “langues” of the Knights, look at the ceilings and look at the walls, and learn …

… and learn, for example, how salvation was brought to the poor souls of the slaves all over the world.

And if you have managed to steer clear of getting struck by the Stendhal syndrome, walk into the Oratory and get carried away by the highlight of the tour: the two Caravaggios. almost hidden in the oratory.

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My roommate from Poland was awestruck by the red colour in the pictures and we wondered how it was produced in Caravaggio’s time. Flowers maybe, insects, who knows. In any case, they must have needed loads of them.

The end: Why hundreds of pictures by Mattia Preti and only two by Caravaggio? Clearly, the hotheaded genius didn’t last long in Malta, he got into a brawl with a knight of a superior rang and had to flee to Sicily.

Now if I got you interested in all that, look it up on the internet, the fotos are much much better. See you next time, I’ve got something mystical to tell you

Gerburg