Schools of painting in medieval Malta

Abstract

This is a brief and tentative effort to assess the evidence for the existence and character both of mural and panel paintings in Malta before the coming of the Knights of St. John. I have worked at the wall paintings in the disused chapel of the Annunciation at Hal Millieri and in the church of Santa Marija ta' Bir Miftuh, and in the crypt of the Abbatija Tad Dejr and in the cave church of St. Agatha at Rabat. But it is likely that further fragments survive hidden beneath the whitewash or the yellow plaster of some of the older chapels. While although I have examined nearly three hundred panels only seventeen of them can be proved to have been in Malta by 1530.