The Berninesque impact on regional late baroque sculpture in Malta : the stone-carving tradition

Abstract

This research analyses the Berninesque impact on the regional visual culture of the eighteenth century in Malta, as manifested in the production of sculpture in the vernacular stone tradition. It explores the channels through which High art was translated to the grassroots level and the result of the popular reaction to the reception of this influence from Rome. In its examination of regional characteristics and stylistic parallelisms with the Eternal City, it analyses the response of the local scalpellini families active in Late Baroque Malta to the typologies of Papal Rome. The dynamics of the production of sculpture and the scalpellino’s workshop are also examined within the context of the international spread of the Berninesque tradition. Sculpture produced in Rome during the seventeenth century constituted the primary source for sculptors and scalpellini working in the eighteenth century in Malta. The Order of St John, being a most forceful link with Rome for Malta, commissioned sculptural works from Rome in fulfilling its desire to emulate the Eternal City. The artistic environment which the Order of St John created also enabled the presence of foreign artists and architects in Malta, the travel of local artists to Rome, and the availability of printed sources for consultation by local artists. The culmination of these contextual factors swiftly resulted in the dissemination of the Roman Baroque style and the Berninesque tradition highly impacted the local visual culture from the late years of the seventeenth century. This spread of the Berninesque tradition in Malta belongs to the wider international context of the dissemination of the Roman Baroque style. This research distinguishes and analyses stylistic regional differences and parallelisms between the dynamic production of regional late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sculpture in Malta and the south of Italy, particularly Naples, Lecce, Palermo and the Val di Noto towns. It determines the degree of Berninesque imprint and its interaction with regional characteristics of sculpture which add indigenous traits to the style. Late Baroque sculpture in Malta was dominated by scalpellini families, the protagonists of this research. The flourishing of these tightly-knit and personallyaffiliated artistic families was the direct result to the surplus of demand in commissions for newly-built or enlarged churches in eighteenth-century Malta. The Berninesque influence reached them at the right time in the right place for a sudden and impactful infiltration of the local stone tradition. Through extensive archival research and widespread comparative analyses, this research analyses the sculptural works of Pietro Paolo Troisi, Pietro Paolo Zahra, and the Fabri family of scalpellini as anchored within this internationally-relevant milieu of the dissemination of the Berninesque tradition.