“Grotesque” was the damning adjective used by Italian art expert Vittorio Sgarbi to describe the article “The great Caravaggio swindle” carried on the front page of last Sunday’s issue of the newspaper Malta Today.

At a press conference held yesterday afternoon, a vexed Heritage Malta chairman Mario Tabone told the media that the headline was false, “not only false but knowingly false” and accused the newspaper of aiming to discredit Heritage Malta.

Dr Tabone said he warned the Malta Today journalist against lifting information from an unauthorised website which the agency had asked to be closed down. “It seems that he did not take my piece of advice,” said Dr Tabone.

The article suggested that of a total of 17 paintings promised by the agency, “only eight were exhibited and only three are authentic Caravaggio masterpieces”.

However, Dr Tabone maintained that at a press conference held in September, a total of nine paintings were promised from abroad. “One of these dropped out as our couriers were informed that there were conservation problems with the frame,” said Dr Tabone. Dr Tabone presented the media a transcript of a telephone conversation with the former Italian culture junior minister, in which Dott. Sgarbi said that when asked about the exhibition, he replied that “all pictures are of the highest quality and that four of them are without any doubt the works of Caravaggio.”

Dott. Sgarbi maintained that there “is no swindle, but a rich exhibition that evokes discussion in the presence of as many masterpieces of Caravaggio that it was possible to bring together in spite of the enormous difficulties that nowadays one has to overcome to secure such important loans.” He also described the situation as “a storm in a teacup, provoked by persons who do not know what they are saying”.

As regards the authenticity of the Caravaggios, Dr Tabone said the only definite Caravaggio works are Malta’s own Beheading of St John, which is the only work that bears the artist’s signature, and those which can be tracked down to their commission.

He quoted one of the exhibition’s curators, Maurizio Marini, who maintained that three out of the eight exhibits are definitely Caravaggios while scholars debate about the authenticity of the rest. According to Prof. Marini, only a few paintings have been authenticated as works of the Italian master who was at the forefront of the Chiaroscuro movement.

However, Malta Today quoted Maltese history of art lecturer Keith Sciberras saying that “the corpus of undisputed Caravaggio pictures is large and only a handful of his paintings are genuinely disputed”. Dr Sciberras told the newspaper that the not-so-sure Caravaggios are in fact “highly disputed, even discarded, by the absolute majority of international scholars”.

The newspaper also quotes Prof. David Stone of the University of Delaware’s Department of Arts History who maintained that the exhibition is not a Caravaggio exhibition, commenting, “it would be fairer to talk about Caravaggio and his followers for the simple fact that many of the paintings are copies that are disputed and attributed to other artists.”

The two scholars are also involved in the parallel Caravaggio exhibition hosted at St John’s Co-Cathedral. Both are being held to mark the 400th anniversary of Michelangelo Merisi’s arrival in Malta. Caravaggio was his birthplace’s name.

Prof. Marini said the exhibition’s detractors were not even born when he started studying the controversial painter. He said that no one has delved deep into the master’s oeuvres and documents related to him, except for Sir Denis Mahon, the exhibition’s other curator. “Sir Denis is widely considered as the greatest art historian of the 20th century,” said Dr Tabone.

Prof Marini went as far as describing the two scholars (Dr Sciberras and Prof. Stone) as “short of experience without critical sense and without connoisseurship”.

“I am sorry that somebody is trying to promote another exhibition on Caravaggio currently in Malta by criticising this exhibition. The two are complementary; one justifies the other. Envy is harmful to both,” said Prof. Marini.

Dr Tabone said Heritage Malta helped the Co-Cathedral exhibition by lending 42 per cent of the Caravaggisti paintings featured in their exhibition. He said the two exhibitions complemented each other and he wished the other exhibition the best of luck.

Furthermore, the chairman had advised the Malta Today journalist that he was lifting information from an unauthorised website which the agency had asked to be put down.

Heritage Malta also filed a judicial protest yesterday in the First Hall of Civil Court against the editor of the Malta Today, asking him to immediately publish Heritage Malta’s reply to the story with the same prominence, and held him responsible for any damage suffered.