Heritage Malta has transferred a painting depicting St John the Evangelist at Patmos from the national collection hanging at the Auberge d’Aragon to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta.

The canvas, attributed to the Sicilian painter Mario Minniti (1577 -1640), who is a follower of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, was exhibited for the first time with this new attribution in the Caravaggio and Paintings of Realism in Malta’ exhibition held at St John’s co-Cathedral in the last quarter of 2007 together with 11 other paintings loaned by Heritage Malta to the St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation.

The painting will shortly be on exhibit in the 17th Century Halls at the National Museum of Fine Arts. Necessary conservation and restoration works are planned in the foreseeable future.

Born in Syracuse in 1577, Minniti befriended Caravaggio in Rome where he also presumably served as a model to the master. He later returned to Sicily where he painted works for Syracuse and Catania. He also visited occasionally Palermo and Malta. Minniti is sometimes referred to as the “Sicilian Caravaggio”; technical aspects of his work certainly refer to Caravaggio’s style but he nonetheless absorbed other influences that helped shape his style.