Ornamental and decorative drawings for Malta 1600-1900 : problems, reflections and insights

Abstract

The aim of this contribution is to provide a general outline of the nature of drawings and designs for decorative and ornamental schemes in the central Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo over a span of three hundred years, from the Baroque to the late nineteenth century. The size of the islands belies their significant contribution to the arts, and the decorative ones are no exception. This subject is particularly difficult to entail, and the fact that it has never been treated holistically reflects the problems that plague it. The major setback in this analysis is the extensive and conspicuous absence of such drawings. This essay will discuss the circumstances which caused this situation and will consider the nature of the specimens that have survived to this day. In the production of the decorative arts, perhaps more than in the visual arts, drawings play a fundamental role. First ideas for ornamental and decorative works eventually rendered in wood, silver, embroidery, stones, marble, bronze and other media, are born as sketches on paper. They are subsequently developed as more coherent projects in greater detail on larger folios, refined as fully fledged scaled-down drawings for discussion with patrons and clients, and enlarged as actual-scale drawings or cartoons from which models and final works can ultimately take shape. Drawings on paper are therefore of vital importance in any analysis of the decorative arts since they not only constitute the artist’s purest, original invention but also provide essential comparative material between the design and the finished work. This becomes especially important when the mise-en-oeuvre is not secured to the designer himself, and rather, carried through by masters and craftsmen who not always fully understand the desires of the inventor. In the absence of such drawings a full analysis of a decorative work is often virtually impossible and an important link in the process of artistic production is irrevocably lost.