Malta and the Renaissance Revival ecclesiastical decorative arts at the crossroads of Britain and Italy

Abstract

This article discusses Renaissance Revival attitudes in church design and decoration on the central Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo, at a time when a staunchly Roman Catholic population with a strong artistic and cultural bias towards neighbouring Italy was under British rule. The little-known but impressively rich field of the ecclesiastical decorative arts in Malta has been the subject of my recent study, and has clearly shown that the decorative arts were among the main pillars of artistic endeavour from the Late Middle Ages up to World War II, resulting especially from the long rule of the Order of the Knights of St John (1530-1798). In this period, Malta came to enjoy very important links with European centres, including Rome. The Knights' sophisticated taste would have a considerable impact on the island, and a great local tradition of carving and silver-making was thus established, so that by the eighteenth century Malta boasted an extraordinary corpus of objets d'art produced particularly for the numerous ecclesiastic and monastic establishments that dotted the Maltese Archipelago. [Excerpt]