The launch of a book is always an important event. "Of the making of books, there is no end." If only the hours in a day had no end too.
The launch of Vincenzo Bonello: his Legacy in Heritage, edited by Dr Theresa Vella, art historian and museologist, took place in the Oratorio of St John's Cathedral. What better place to pay homage and commemorate a man who did so much for Malta in the cultural field, and with so little. The book is published by Kite thanks to the patronage of The Alfred Mizzi Foundation and is available at leading booksellers.
Julian Sammut, the Chairman of The Mizzi Foundation started his address with a rebuke. "I am sorry to say that we all deserve to be rebuked. Vincenzo Bonello passed away in 1969 and here we are 54 years late - this publication is well overdue. Then again it is never too late. I'm not sure how Vincenzo Bonello wou
ld have reacted, indeed may well be reacting on seeing such an august gathering here in the Oratory of St. John's; maybe his favourite room ever. When advised of the Oratory as the venue for this book launch, Vanni Bonello said "oh I'm sure my father will be hovering above us."
I never knew Vincenzo Bonello but from what I do know of him, he was a modest man, the low profile type; one who got on with it without much fuss, far too taken up with his passion to seek attention, let alone accolades for his achievements, other than for their own sake.
Not unlike his son I would say.
Today we are here to say prosit u grazzi Vincenzo Bonello, now, thanks to the writings collected in this book, you and your achievements will never be forgotten.
When one stops to think of what Vincenzo achieved during his lifetime, and this despite the six years unlawfully held as a prisoner of the British Crown in faraway Uganda, one wonders how on earth he managed it. He had an extraordinary capacity to think, to teach and to write, to research, uncover and discover, create and curate, to establish and to manage......quite remarkable wouldn't you say?
The Alfred Mizzi Foundation is both humbled and privileged to be supporting this publication, which has seen the light of day thanks to the doggedness and dedication of Theresa Vella and my colleague Albert Petrocochino."
I asked Vincenzo's son, Judge Giovanni Bonello, who inherited his father's gifts and more, for a comment about the book. Here it is: "I believe it was high time to commemorate Vincenzo Bonello's relentless determination to bring historical and artistic culture to the people. My father's adherence to what he considered to be ethical principles never wavered, whatever the price he was made to pay for remaining faithful to them: his job, his pension, his liberty, his family, his health, his future. He sacrificed all that, to remain true to himself."
The book's editor, Dr Theresa Vella, in her brief address thanked the authors. "Most of them are today 'walking in' Vincenzo Bonello's footsteps," she said, naming the contributors.
It is a pity that there is no space on my diary page to reproduce the complete addresses. Prof Mark Anthony Falzon's address was particularly interesting. Here are, alas, only excerpts of it which cannot possibly do his presentation justice.
"One of the last things Vincenzo Bonello ever wrote was a paper about the Congregazione degli Onorati. Published in the 1969 issue of Melita Historica, it was followed by an obituary by Bonaventure Fiorini. In April of that year, Bonello had died. Fiorini wrote of his many and varied contributions to the arts, as well as of his virtues as a good Christian. At one point he described him as a maestro di vita - a person who had mastered the art of living. In large measure, through art itself: Herbert Ganado, a fellow internee who in all spent five years with him in various prison camps in Malta and Africa, recounts how every day in the heat and stillness of the afternoon, Bonello would invite them to 'walk' with him in some or other place in Malta. They would stop to look at churches, houses, altars, paintings and so on, every single one of which he had much to say about. As his mind's eye settled on this or that façade or object, he would exclaim 'xi haga fantastika, xi haga meraviljuza'. Not bad for someone who had been ripped away from his family and country at almost fifty years of age and was living in exile, with no end in sight.
"This book is faithful to that spirit, to the belief in the transportive power of art. ... The choice of location today is both poignant and apt. On 1 December 1608, in this very spot, Caravaggio was defrocked tanquam membrum putridum et foetidum (as a rotten, stinking limb). No matter if you are arrested without charge, robbed of a career you worked so hard to build, and deported: art remains xi haga fantastika, xi haga meraviljuza.
"... the first of Bonello's faculties was scholarship: he researched and wrote hundreds of articles, letters to the editor and brief commentaries on the cultivation of the arts in Malta. His work was founded on the conviction that, especially since the coming of the British, art had fallen into a state of disrepair. It was his task, through his unimpeachable knowledge and rigour, to reawaken, like Hans Sachs, the nation's artistic spirit. If Sachs believed that 'holy German art' was fundamentally the preserve of the masters and their guilds, Bonello found his comfort in the deep-rooted cultural links with Italy.
"It would be wrong to assess this through the perspective of a 21st century nation-state, and to put it down to servility. ...Bonello was too knowledgeable and sophisticated to maroon himself on a sea of nostalgia. The tribuna he designed for the Diocesan Eucharistic Congress of 1938 was art deco. And he had no difficulties whatsoever to embrace contemporary artists like Sciortino, Briffa and Vincent Apap as the antidote to what he called the 'trite mixture of Baroque and neo-Classicism' that had plagued the 19th century...
"It was a worldview for which he paid dearly. In 1937, Bonello was summarily dismissed as Curator of Fine Arts and his pension forfeit. He was later (equally summarily) arrested, imprisoned, interned and finally deported.. When he was arrested, the Colonial Office combed his home and rifled through and confiscated his papers. Many of us here who remember a pre-paperless age will understand how intrusive and disruptive this would have been... Beyond disruptive were the penury experienced by his family and the diseases he contracted in Africa. A very costly italianita, then... This book will serve to right many wrongs, at least as far as memory and legacy are concerned.
"If the first strand was that of scholarship, the second and third involved the teaching of art and its conservation. Vincenzo Bonello, as much educator as scholar, was one of the founding fathers of the School of Art in 1926...At various points in his life he would work with conservation experts (Italian, mostly) to establish a productive culture of collaboration and knowledge-sharing. He also carried out his own conservation work, most famously in this very church.
"The fourth and certainly one of the most enduring legacies of Vincenzo Bonello is his work as a keeper and maker of artistic patrimony. Appointed Inspector of Works of Art in 1920, he attended and took an active role in the meetings of the Antiquities Committee.. Giovanni Bonello's chapter locates his father's struggle - successful, this time - to save the Banca Giuratale in Gozo within a context of competing interests, political personalities and pure circumstance.
"... Bonello was appointed Curator of Fine Arts at the National Museum in 1922 and set about building, I'm tempted to say from scratch, the national art collection. He used the respect he commanded to attract bequests by private collectors, and he also pioneered the practice of pre-emption to acquire important works at auction. His son has elsewhere written about another, more audacious, fundraising strategy used by his father to strengthen the collection: when public money could not be found, he quietly dipped into his own meagre life savings.
"Bonello also worked - largely in the post-War years and particularly for churches in Gozo. It would appear that his main preoccupation was harmony and continuity.
"... there is a short chapter in the book which reminds us that, traditionalist though he may have been, Bonello was no hidebound conservative. Richard England tells the story of how his plans for a new church made their way uphill - in more ways than one - at Manikata. Having been gifted the commission by his father, the 24-year-old England set about creating the plans for what many consider his masterwork. That was the least difficult part of the job, because he then had to convince the villagers that what they really wanted - that is, a dome big enough to put the fear of god in their Mgarr neighbours - was perhaps not the sanest option. The really difficult bit, however, was convincing the 80-year-old Michael Gonzi...Things came to a head at a committee meeting at the Curia, when a presentation by England only served to sharpen Gonzi's suspicion of churches that looked like things. It was at that point that Vincenzo Bonello, a close friend of Gonzi's and a member of the committee, stood up and argued for the project... Bonello's eloquence and erudition won the day. I find this a key moment in this book, because it shows that Bonello, even as he designed stoups straight out of the eighteenth century, never once let his love of tradition blind him to the merits of the contemporary. Submarine or not, Bonello knew a good work of architecture when he saw one.
It was this sensibility that killed him - literally, I mean. It is said that when Vincenzo Bonello saw the new baldachin at Ta' Pinu, his design for which had been altered by a builder keen to include more marble and thus to charge more, he had a heart attack. All he had ever wanted was to leave behind xi haga meraviljuza. Except I wouldn't use the singular."
After dipping into these essays, I felt at once moved by what Vincenzo Bonello had to endure but I am also full of admiration for this resilient and gifted man who did so much for culture in Malta.
Errata corrige: In the edition of Sunday January 21, the Arts Council Malta logo, in support of the local art scene, should have appeared in the Culture Pages (page 29). The error is regretted.
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