Highlights of the month

Well-known mostly for his genre work and portraits of the elite and the eminent, the French artist, Antoine Favray resided permanently in Malta, save for a 9-year stay in Constantinople, after his studies in Rome. His paintings are considered to be important sources of information on what life was like for the upper social classes in 18th-century Malta.
Favray portrays the longest serving Portuguese Grand Master Emmanuel Pinto de Fonseca with all the pomp and circumstance fitting for a king. His ceremonial robe adorned by heavily-flowing ermine fur, his fashionable wig and his conceited stance, together with the sumptuous furnishings amidst which he poses, reveal his aspiration for aristocracy as his gesture, indicating the closed monarchical crown, testifies. This is a typical 18th-century portrait executed in the style of the ‘grande manière’ or grand manner.

This still life shows an arrangement of roses, peonies, tulips and other flowers in and around a wicker basket set on the ground. It belongs to a popular genre of 18th century Venetian painting, that of floral still lifes.
This work probably comes from the workshop of the obscure painter Francesco Duramano. Little is known about him except that he was trained by his mother but quickly surpassed her in skill. He was an extremely prolific and popular artist in Venice, and he painted exclusively still lifes with floral arrangements. His works were spread across Europe, probably bought by travellers who passed through Venice. This still life brings to the fore the focus on colour and varied brushwork of the Venetian school. In history, and in painting, different flowers have always had symbolic meanings. Peonies stand for bashfulness, white roses for purity and virtue, pink roses for grace, red roses for true love, while the yellow tulip symbolises happiness and love.

This lithograph view of St John’s Co-Cathedral, with a beautifully intricate border printed in two colours, is the cover of a 19th-century booklet with interior views of St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta by Brocktorff & Sons. In the foreground, an elegantly dressed man raises his top hat to salute two women with parasols, in this very busy square where people met to chat, as they still do today. Charles Frederick de Brocktorff (c. 1775/1785 – 1850) was a German-Danish artist who settled in Malta where he painted numerous scenes of the island. He also set up a successful lithography studio which he and his sons would operate throughout the 19th century.

On display in the Europe galleries one can find these beautiful Sicilian maiolica tiles. These tiles date back to the 1700’s and are by an unknown craftsman. Maiolica tiles are tin-glazed, usually painted in bright colours and patterns on a white background. They were useful in kitchens as countertops or back splashes and also for the outdoors as colourful additions to create unique atmospheres.

On 7th January 1866 at 5 p.m., Edward Lear was walking in the countryside on the outskirts of Ħ’Attard and captured the beauty of San Anton Gardens in this quickly rendered watercolour. We know these details because he recorded them on the drawing. The warm colours and waning light of the setting sun on this winter evening are captured marvelously. You can almost hear and feel the breeze blowing through the high trees of the garden. Nowadays, San Anton Gardens are surrounded by residential buildings, which makes us appreciate this beautiful unobstructed countryside view even more.

This painting shows the annual procession commemorating the Victory of the Great Siege of 1565 and the Nativity of Our Lady, with whose intercession the Great Siege was lifted on her feast day on 8 September. At the back of the procession is Grand Master Lascaris-Castellar (1636-1657). To his left is the page holding the sword and poignard of Grand Master de Valette which were seen in public only during these ceremonies.
Through this painting, we also get to admire the façade of St John’s Co-Cathedral in its entirety and appreciate the large scale of this building. We can appreciate the austere Mannerist design of this structure, the work of the Maltese architect and military engineer Girolamo Cassar (c. 1520 – c. 1593). The sombre look of the façade reflects both Cassar’s training as a military engineer and the solemn mood of the Order in the years following the Great Siege.

During the 1960’s, Camilleri composed movement and dynamism in his work. With the use of wild horses, bulls and dancers, Camilleri was able to include very fast paced visual imagery. These representations are depicted in one of Camilleri’s paintings titled “The Cyclone” which is an oil-on-canvas painting that is stuck to panel in an unconventional method. Instead of stretching the canvas around the panel, the canvas is stuck to the panel leaving an underlying wooden frame evident whilst also letting the unevenness and tatty canvas edges visible.
Movement is represented through the use of empty spaces, quick line drawings, chunky washes and splashes of paint. Camilleri’s quick hand movements leave little details hidden for the viewer to find, creating a play on the eyes and contemplation for the mind.
The metaphorical ‘cyclone’ in the painting emphasises action and mobility in a team of horses, whilst the use of gentle blue and grey, create an interesting contrast on the harsh brown canvas. It is almost as if you can hear the horses’ hooves land on a dusty ground and a distant rumble of chaos whilst the moon creates a distant warm light. A painting which you can hear and not just see.

The Maltese sculptor Vincent Apap was a very well-known artist by the time he made this portrait, having received commissions for church sculpture, portraits and monuments. This is a portrait of Vincenzo Bonello (1891-1969), Founder and First Curator of the Fine Arts Section, established at the Valletta Museum in 1922. This sculpture was donated to the museum by the artist. A bronze version of the portrait was made in 1935 and is now displayed at MUŻA, to which it was loaned by the successors of Vincenzo Bonello.

This small painting shows the Virgin Mary in an iconography known as the ‘Veronica de la Virgen’. It is a very faithful copy after a renowned painting by the Valencian Renaissance painter Juan de Juanes which he had originally made as part of a double-sided reliquary, showing the Virgin on one side and Christ on the other. Both panels of the Virgin and Christ are in the Church of San Nicolás in Valencia on either side of the main altar. The painting is a Renaissance depiction of the popular Spanish 15th-century International Gothic image of the true effigy of the Virgin, which is usually accompanied by an image of the true effigy of Christ, both known as Veronicas. The Veronica of the Virgin Mary is an image considered to be a derivation of Saint Luke’s portrait of the Virgin and associated with the image of Christ’s face on Veronica’s veil.