Event: Artistic networking and collaboration in Rome: an extraordinary commission for Malta in the mid-nineteenth century
Date: Thursday 9 May 2024
Time: 18:30
Venue: Oratory of the Onorati, Jesuit Church, Valletta
Dr Mark Sagona, Head of the Department of Art and Art History in the Faculty of Arts, will be delivering a public lecture which is being organised by the Jesuits’ Church Foundation in collaboration with the Department. The lecture, entitled ‘Artistic networking and collaboration in Rome: an extraordinary commission for Malta in the mid-nineteenth century’ will take place at the Oratory of the Onorati at the Jesuit Church in Valletta on Thursday 9 May 2024 at 18:30.
This lecture focuses on what is arguably Malta's most artistically significant nineteenth-century commission: the magnificent silver altar statues representing the four Evangelists belonging to the Parish Church of St. Philip of Agira in Żebbuġ. Their story is extraordinary for the collaboration between a painter, a sculptor and a silversmith in the production of four works which reflect the very best which could be acquired in the Eternal City. Commissioned from the Roman silversmith Vincenzo Belli the Younger, the figures closely follow cartoons by the German painter Friedrich Overbeck for a series of frescoes in the chapel of Villa Torlonia in Castel Gandolfo executed by Alexander-Maximilian Seitz. Overbeck’s cartoons, Seitz’s frescoes, or prints reproducing them by Joseph Von Keller and his brother Franz, were translated into three-dimensional modelli by Pietro Galli, a student of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen for Belli’s use. Based on recent research, the lecture discusses the remarkable history and international context of the commission and analyses how a small-town Maltese church could tap into the same network of artists in Rome that was patronised by such well-known families as the Torlonia and even the Pope himself to create works which synthesised the fields of drawing, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts.
The general public is cordially invited to attend. Entrance is free, and the lecture will be delivered in English. Access is from Archbishop’s Street.