Both Heritage Malta and lecturer and expert Keith Sciberras stood by their stories yesterday as legal papers started flying around on the issue whether the Caravaggio exhibition mounted by Heritage Malta at the National Museum of Archaeology is a fake or not.

The issue of the conflicting claims regarding the exhibition was first broken by this newspaper on 14 October.

Dr Keith Sciberras sent the following letter yesterday to this paper to counter a report carried by The Malta Independent daily on Saturday:

“Dr Mario Tabone and Mr Maurizio Marini can rest assured that my comments on the exhibition “Caravaggio L’immagine del Divino” were simply in response to a series of questions made to me, and to others, by the journalist and were not the contorted result of envy, resentment, or despair.

“Heritage Malta and Romartificio know very well what my views on the pictures in the Caravaggio show are. I have always made it clear to anyone who asked for my frank opinion. I stand by my opinion on the pictures.

“I find it strange that the very same people who ‘started studying Caravaggio before I was born’ asked me to sit on the scientific committee for the said exhibition, albeit very late in the day. My reply to that invitation was in the negative, not because of envy, but because I did not want be participate in an exhibition which presented attributions which I did not believe.

“A number of top international scholars did the same. Readers can also rest assured that the organisers of the exhibition asked for more than nine pictures, contrary to the impression given by Dr Tabone. It seems that Heritage Malta’s response to criticism is attack, not debate.

“Scholarship demands credibility.”