Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, Malta’s premier publisher of leading cultural publications, has just added another significant tome to its publications.
The Late Medieval Art and Architecture of the Maltese Islands was launched in the Knights Room of Le Meridien Phoenicia last week in the presence of the Minister of Tourism and Culture, Dr Francis Zammit Dimech, Patrimonju’s chairman, Maurice de Giorgio, its general editor, Dr Paul Xuereb and Prof. Richard Reece, as well as the author himself, Prof. Mario Buhagiar.
Commenting on the importance of this study, Patrimonju’s general editor said: “Once again Patrimonju was very pleased to have been entrusted with this exceptional work, which is essentially the result of a whole academic career devoted to this area.”
This will be the standard reference book for the next 20 years or so, Dr Xuereb added.
With his 1987 book, The Iconography of the Maltese Islands, Prof. Buhagiar
had broken new ground. The new volume is more limited in scope and explains Maltese progress within the context of what was happening in southern Italy and Sicily.
It also includes references to objects that do no longer exist.
Dr Xuereb finally ann-ounced that Prof. Buhagiar is well on his way to a second volume, which will bring readers to the end of the 16th century.
Dr Francis Zammit Dimech welcomed this publication as “yet another important contribution to a proper appreciation of Malta’s vast cultural heritage, particularly late medieval Malta, which was clearly not, as this work shows, an artistic desert”.
Prof. Reece, who came over from the UK specifically for this book launch also commended the work, and its “importance in conceptualising Malta’s medieval artistic heritage, and putting it in its rightful Mediterranean context”.
Prof. Reece took a rather different viewpoint. “This is a very comprehensive study,” he said, “which includes virtually everything that can even remotely be connected to art and architecture, including caves and stones.”
It is a very honest book, which not everyone will appreciate, for it shows how Malta in late medieval times was far removed from the ongoing processes of European civilisation, being as it was the farthest bastion of Christianity in the Mediterranean.
Prof. Reece praised Prof. Buhagiar for being very honest with his readers: he distinguishes between facts and opinions and presents his opinions as tentative, acknowledging that some people may reason otherwise.
He is also very generous with his attributions in the footnotes and even acknowledges contributions from his own students.
Some may now say it is all here, he said it all, there is nothing left to say but others can look at the facts and interpret them in a different way.
Basically, the book looks at Malta in an era when it was still on the outside edge of Christendom, when ideas did start to filter south but in a glorious jumble, successive waves all lying side by side.
The author, Prof Mario Buhagiar, also commented on this study, his fourth book, in addition to numerous articles in journals abroad and locally which have all served to put Malta on the map in terms of its medieval artistic heritage.
The book retails at Lm19.50 (hard cover. ISBN 99932-10-35-8) and Lm17.50 (limp cover. ISBN 99932-10-36-6) and is available from leading booksellers.