When Michelangelo da Merisi, known as Il Caravaggio, found shelter in Malta from the Pope’s police after murdering a man in a brawl in Rome 400 years ago this year, little did he imagine that, a fugitive once again, he would be spirited out of Malta within a few months.
Nor could he imagine that, 400 years later, the commemoration of his arrival in Malta would unleash such a great battle between two different sets of exhibition organisers and all they stand for.
In one corner stands Heritage Malta, the organiser of the Caravaggio exhibition at the National Museum of Archaeology and the corresponding one of Caravaggisti (artists inspired by Caravaggio) at the National Museum of Fine Arts.
In the other corner there is the St John Co-Cathedral Foundation, the organiser of a second Caravaggio exhibition in St John’s Museum.
It is rather difficult to say who came up with the idea of a Caravaggio exhibition first, but it seems that Heritage Malta came up with the idea originally. St John’s, home to Caravaggio’s biggest and only signed painting, as well as the St Jerome, got the idea later.
Since the respective high-profile inaugurations, the two sides have been busy not just watching people flow in, but also throwing underhand brickbats at each other.
The Heritage Malta exhibition came in for the first spate of almost gleeful negative publicity.
In the list of paintings being brought over to Malta, which this paper published on 5 August on information given by Heritage Malta, the last three paintings, all of worldwide fame – the Supper in Emmaus from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, the Resurrection of Lazarus and the Adoration of the Shepherds, both from Messina’s Museo Regionale, never made it here.
What did come, add those critical of Heritage Malta, are paintings many of which – such as Sacrifice of Isaac, St Francis in Ecstasy, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, Decapitation of San Gennaro and Ecstasy of St Francis – are only “attributed” to Caravaggio, according to Heritage Malta’s own brochure, while only St John the Baptist and two St Francis are recognised as autographed works by the master.
The exhibition at St John’s has three fully authenticated paintings by Caravaggio: the Beheading, the St Jerome and the Portrait of a Knight, which was brought over from Italy.
But, say scornful Heritage Malta sources, it is clear the exhibition is the work of academics: there are next to no captions, no explanations and only two information panels, whereas at Heritage Malta’s exhibition just round the corner, the whole approach is to teach and inform with special children classes starting this weekend.
The St John’s crowd comes back: such exhibitions are usually done on a museum to museum basis, whereas the Heritage Malta one has the involvement (somewhat unclear) of Renaissance, more known as concert organisers.
If any conclusive proof is needed, suffice the fact that despite efforts in this direction, it has so far not been possible for the two exhibitions to share tickets or sell each other’s tickets.