Francesco Zahra at Casa Manresa

Abstract

We live in a world flooded by images, images which, are, however, inherently empty. Man has found himself unable to transcend the sensible world. 'In this situation, the art of the icon, sacred art, depending as it does on a wider kind of seeing, becomes impossible.' An art limited to sensible reality, is inherently hollow, for man is not the Creator. If art is limited to a 'self-created world ... it manages to produce only what is arbitrary and vacuous, ' for there can be no sacred art, if man is not open to the grace of faith, to the 'Creator Spiritus'. Allowing these words from Joseph Ratzinger's monumental work The Spirit of the Liturgy to illuminate our short journey through the art of one of Malta's foremost baroque painters, Francesco Zahra, let us remember that it is often salutary to go back to one's roots. It is with this mind that the reader is invited to take this short journey, aided by sacred imagery and texts in a language from a time which may seem too distant to contemporary sensibilities; yet they speak of a Church that during a period of reform was seeking to respond to the challenges presented by a world in transformation. And what better place to undertake such a reflection, than in a house that was built specifically with such a purpose in mind. Casa Manresa., where the Archbishop's Curia is now located, was built in Floriana as a retreat house where people were invited to leave the hustle and bustle of the nearby city, to take a break, we would say, and reflect on the meaning of life in the light of what they believed, as men of faith, was their eternal destiny.