Out of obscurity : long-lost Renaissance paintings from an Antonio de Saliba masterpiece

Abstract

In a recent paper titled 'Unrecognised paintings by Antonio de Saliba on Malta', published in a previous edition of Melita Historica,2 the present author analysed five undocumented paintings that are now attributed to Antonio de Saliba (c.1466/7- c.1535). One of these was a predella panel (measuring 20 x 69.5 cm) that is now associated with Antonio's Observant Franciscan altarpiece for the newly built church of Santa Maria di Gesu (Ta' Giezu) in Rabat, Malta, of which two paintings survive in the present church: the Madonna and Child with Angels and the Deposition. These last paintings were subjected to a rigorous conservation and restoration intervention between July 2013 and December 2014 which also included the diagnostic testing of the panels, including wood analysis, X-Radiography, InfraRed reflectography, investigation under Ultraviolet light, identification of ground layer with FTIR, and pigment and binder analysis from specific paint samples. The scientific analysis revealed that the two paintings were executed in a very sophisticated manufacturing technique, with the panels being made out of lime (linden or Tilia spp.) and with the pigments having both oil and tempera as a binder set in layers above a white gesso layer that primed the wood panels. An underdrawing was applied above the primed layer which is also visible even to the naked eye in some areas of the compositions.3 In both paintings, the red lake also had tiny specks of fine glass powder mixed into the pigment. The altarpiece was originally a polyptych and which consisted of three tiers made up of a number of paintings, probably seventeen in all. To the two paintings still in the church of Ta' Giezu in Rabat, and the recently published predella panel portraying the Resurrected Christ with St John the Evangelist and St Paul, five other paintings are here being identified as also having originally belonged to this Observant Franciscan altarpiece: another three paintings that belonged to the predella, and two individual paintings portraying male saints.