The glory of Baroque Painting in Malta – evident above all in its sacred manifestation – is largely influenced by Italian Art. It is the result of the Knights’ serious artistic commitment to adorn the buildings in the city of Valletta with the best painters’ works.

The Order of Saint John was a Catholic institution with a very strong political disposition. The members belonged to the noblest, wealthiest families of Europe. The title of “knight” was a mark of nobility which, when conferred, brought to the individual many legal privileges, as well as eventual financial benefits and significantly attractive pensions. These advantages, coupled with refined taste, prosperous economic foundation and strong ties with the Papal authorities, led to a very vigorous relationship between the Order and the most notable artistic expression of the times.

The accession of Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt in 1601 heralded a period of creative opulence for the island, which found its culmination with the arrival of Caravaggio and Mattia Preti.

In July 1608, Caravaggio was invested with the habit of Magistral Obedience by Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta. In honouring Caravaggio, the Grand Master thought that he would thus keep the artist firmly attached to the Order of St John, hoping that the Order would find glory through his art: 'we wish to gratify the desire of this excellent painter, so that our Island Malta, and our Order may at last glory in this adopted disciple and citizen' (extract from the document of Caravaggio's investiture).

The two Italian artists were both given the Knighthood of the Magisterial Obedience. However Caravaggio, soon fell out of grace and was deprived of his knighthood in the very same year, being found guilty of homicide, was later expelled from the Order.

One of Caravaggio’s most impressive works can be found at St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. This sacred work depicts the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, the patron saint of the Order. It is probable that Caravaggio executed this painting in payment for the ‘passagio’, the one-year obligatory noviciate a person had to spend prior to his attainment of knighthood.
 
The semi-circular composition - in a sweep of motion yet simultaneously frozen in time – converges on the executioner who is in the act of severing the Baptist’s head. He is assisted by the jailer and a young girl holding a plate in readiness. A very dramatic atmosphere is evoked, highlighted by the poignant presence of an old woman standing in the middle of the group of onlookers, who lifts her hands to her face as she witnesses the brutal scene in terror. The chiaroscuro, i.e. the play of light and dark which Caravaggio was so famous for, sends ripples of silent tension through the large canvas, which finds eloquent _expression in the red drape wrapped around Saint John’s waist, as well as in the thin gush of blood spurting from the wound in the Baptist’s neck.

Intriguingly, Caravaggio uses this same blood to sign his name and date the completion of the painting to the 14 July 1607. It is the only signed painting by the great master.

David M. Stone, associate professor of art history, shared his expertise on Caravaggio by lecturing at a symposium held for scholars of the Italian Baroque painter.  He commented that "It's unlike any signature in the history of art. It's witty in that it seems to take the pool of blood beneath John's severed neck and draw it out, either with a brush or a stick or a thumb, into Caravaggio's signature so that it looks like an act of graffiti, and it was a very daring act on many different levels.

Caravaggio’s Maltese oeuvre is restricted to two masterpieces at St. John’s Co-Cathedral , the paintings ‘The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist’ and ‘Saint Jerome’.

The coat of arms in the bottom right corner of the painting of 'Saint Jerome' is that of Ippolito Malaspina, Prior of the Order of the Knights.

Malaspina was a relative by marriage of Caravaggio's patron Ottavio Costa, a friend of his other patrons the Giustiniani brothers, and a cousin of Giovanni Andrea Doria, Prince of Genoa, who two years before had sheltered the artist after an earlier flight from Rome.

It's possible that he may have had himself represented as the saint. Malaspina was not only a famous warrior, he was also a commissioner for the poor, orphans and widows. 

The aspects of the painting of Merisi da Caravaggio in 1607 or 1608 depicts Saint Jerome who was venerated as the translator of the Bible as well as it emphasise the skills of Ippolito Malaspina.

This painting was stolen in 1984. The thieves threatened to tear it up if they did not get Lm5,000 ransom.  Fr Zerafa was the main protagonist in the recovery  of Caravaggio's St Jerome.   At the time, Fr Zerafa was Director of Museums following a decade as curator of fine arts, during which period he was responsible for the setting up of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta.

In his breathtaking account of the painting's return to St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Fr Zerafa the author of Caravaggio Diaries explains in great detail the saga when he himself was going to be kidnapped.  After the painting was recovered it was sent to Rome to be restored and now hangs where it was before.

In contrast with Caravaggio, who spent only fifteen months in Malta and died at the young age of 37, Mattia Preti’s sojourn on the island lasted about forty years.  The work by Mattia Preti and his workshop, the so-called ‘bottega’, is copiously scattered around Malta and Gozo.  Mattia Preti was first knighted as a Knight of Obedience by Pope Urban VIII in 1642, and was later elevated by the Order to a Knight of Grace.     However, this progression was not achieved without hurdles. It was only after he offered to paint the entire ceiling of the St. John’s Co-Cathedral that the Order finally accepted his request. Consequently the eighteen narrative scenes, painted in oils directly to the ceiling of the cathedral, were considered as payment for his ‘passagio’ within the hierarchy of the Order.

Mattia Preti’s painting of the life of Saint John the Baptist is an opus that took five years in the making. In his depiction, Preti was fully aware of his obligation to bring out the two-role significance in the personality of the Baptist, namely, the holiness as a great saint of Christianity and the heroic prestige that was worthy of the patron of the Order. His remarkable compositional skills, influenced by Venetian craftsmanship, were applied with great success in his transformation of the Co-Cathedral’s nave into a breathtaking Baroque spectacle that compliments the sculpture and architecture of the Church.

The ceiling seems to open up and reveal the heavens in dazzling chromatic splendour where angels and other beatific spirits hold the Order’s symbols in a gloriously triumphant display.

The impetus of Caravaggio and Mattia Preti was profound and ushered a magnificent period in the history of Maltese art, a period during which Malta formed part of the international artistic and cultural avant-garde.

Thanks to the Order’s political influence, strong credibility and elegant tastes, works of art of the highest order were executed by two of the greatest Italian painters of the time, Caravaggio and Mattia Preti.