Ryant

This feast for the eyes features coloured glass and gems, amber and wax floral and foliage reliefs, engraved mother-of-pearl, silver filigree borders, embossed silver and copper sheets, gilt bronze elements, engraved figures and flowers in ivory, small salmon-coloured coral, agate, porphyry and lapis lazuli stones, and tortoiseshell frames. The artwork served as a devotional item in a private home. It is of Sicilian make, possibly from Messina.
The central scene depicts the vision of St Anthony of Padua within a lavish architectural setting. On heavenly clouds, the Christ Child, in the Virgin Mary’s lap, reaches down to the kneeling St Anthony. God appears above the saint holding a globe, while the Holy Spirit completes the Trinity. A cherub approaches St Anthony with a lily stalk as a symbol of purity, while another carries a book as a symbol of wisdom. The beautiful workmanship and dazzling materials evoke the beauty of heaven which St Anthony inhabits in this vision.

Antoine Camilleri created an unnatural elongated skinny figure that portrays Christ on the Cross. This type of physiognomy used for a male figure was used by the artist in different works as his self-portrait. This body, the Body of Christ, is placed on a television aerial instead of a traditional cross.
This work conveys different interpretations. Certainly, the artist was presenting personal spiritual engagements, by using a popular subject such as the symbol of the cross. The most common interpretation of this piece is that Camilleri empowers television to communicate to a very large audience the word of God.
Stylistically the artist combined various experimental conceptual ideas which were already visible in his earliest works created in the mid-40s. This included the reusing of objects in works of art and the deformation of the human body.

MUŻA has a large collection of Maiolica vases of Sicilian, South Italian and Venetian production. This albarello or pot à canon, a cylindrical jar with straight sides and a wide mouth, was once used as a container for mustard seeds or mustard paste, as its inscription (Mostarda) testifies. Its cobalt blue background is embellished by a light blue, green, yellow and white array of floral, foliage and fruit elements mingled with monochromatic stylised human and animal figures. The front is dominated by a proud horse with a raised leg while the back has an imaginary scene, or ‘istoriato’, consisting of a peasant or shepherd before a hilly landscape, all framed by leaves, flowers and seeds. This elaborate decoration links this vase to the workshop of Mastro Domenego de’ Betti, who was active in Venice in the 16th century. Documentary evidence shows that this particular albarello was used in the ‘spezieria’, or pharmacy, of the Sacra Infermeria, the Hospital of the Order of St John.