A press conference and a concelebrated Mass in the evening were the rather low-key celebrations that marked Valletta getting back a long-neglected jewel in its crown: the church of Santa Caterina d’Italia.

The church

First of all, the Santa Caterina celebrated in this church is St Catherine of Alexandria, not Santa Caterina da Siena. The church is called Santa Caterina d’Italia because when it was built, it was the church of the Italian langue, which had its auberge next door.

The original church was small: in fact today it forms the sanctuary of the church. When it was agreed to enlarge the church, it was decided to add an oval church to the existing chapel and to incorporate the chapel as the new church’s sanctuary.

Accordingly, services continued to be held in the small chapel while the new church was being built.

One of the main features of the newly-restored church is the round painting by Mattia Preti in the sanctuary’s shallow cupola.

Today, over the cupola, is a room – a real room – and it has columns that used to be in the original chapel below.

One other interesting feature is that, originally, the main entrance to the church was on Merchants Street and you can still see traces of the door on the façade.

Catastrophe and restoration

On Sunday, 3 January 1999, some pieces of stone of considerable size, along some plaster, fell from the lantern of the main dome during a Sunday Mass being held for the Italian community. Fearing the worst, the congregation immediately left the church and although, thankfully, no one was injured in what could have been a real tragedy, after some days the Italian community was told not to use the church and to find an alternative venue.

Since then, the community has been meeting for Sunday Mass in the nearby church of St James.

A huge search began to find funds for the restoration of the church. In those pre-EU days, Malta still enjoyed the Italian financial protocols and the restoration of the church was included in the fourth protocol.

Work on the exterior of the church began in the summer of 2000 and was completed within a year. After that, however, the money of the protocol seemed to have run out and no work was done on the interior of the church.

After suffering patiently (and being fobbed off by empty promises) the Italian community took the unprecedented step of holding public protests on a number of Sundays, supported by this newspaper.

After a long hiatus, in January 2008, and this time through funding from The National Student Travel Foundation, restoration work on the altarpiece by Mattia Preti began.

Then in March 2009 Bank of Valletta agreed to fully finance the considerable cost of restoration of the main cupola as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative. The decoration of the cupola, which is painted and not stuccoed - although it looks as if it is – had suffered powdering and an extensive loss of the pictorial layer. The church had endured centuries of exposure to the natural elements, including rainwater and seismic activity together with the collateral effects of World War II bombs that fell nearby.

The Rural Affairs and the Environment Ministry joined the restoration effort when, one day, Minister George Pullicino walked into the church and found parish priest Don Gino Gauci, who is also an expert on restoration and teaches History of Art at the university, lecturing some students on the current restoration of the Mattia Preti altarpiece, painted by the artist before he came to Malta as a sort of introduction.

Don Gino explained to the minister that scaffolding was needed and the minister promised his help. Later this help was extended to help by the Restoration Unit within the ministry.

Restoration work on the dome began by Italian company Giuseppe Mantella, Restauro Opere d’Arte in March 2009.

Italian Ambassador Efisio Luigi Marras then convinced the Italian maritime companies with a presence in Malta – Rimorchiatori Riuniti/Tug Malta, Costa Crociere, Grimaldi Lines and Palumbo Malta Shipyard – to help finance the restoration work. Other financial help later came from both Italian and Maltese individuals.

The restoration

Giuseppe Mantella himself told me that the restoration has revealed an extraordinary amount of information on the building of the church and on Mattia Preti’s involvement.

As will be recorded in detail in a book to be published on 24 February, (the artist’s birthday), this church is the place where Mattia Preti learned about painting in oil on walls, a skill he was later to use with splendid results on the huge vaulted ceiling of St John’s co-Cathedral.

When Preti came to Malta in 1659, he found there was another artist working on the church, Leonardo Romei and the Italian knights who commissioned him told him to work alongside this artist. Romei was painting in oil on the wall and Preti soon learned how much better this was and became proficient in the skill himself.

Then he went back to the church of San Andrea della Valle in Rome, where some frescoes he had done were not really popular with the people, and started using this technique in Rome.

Although the technique was known, it was disregarded by many artists but after seeing Preti’s new work, other painters began using it. Preti then came back to Malta and started work on the interior of St John’s.

When the restoration of the large cupola of St Catherine’s, with its monochrome decorations, began in 2009, the wall paintings in oil were found to be in a very bad state and had been defaced due to extensive over-painting of over 70 per cent of the surface. After tedious consolidation work and scientific examinations, the original hidden layers were brought back to light and are now once again visible in their entirety.

Similarly, Preti’s valuable Glory of God, his first work in Malta, which he began in the summer of 1659 and which is identical to the one at the centre of the barrel vault in St John’s, was found to be almost completely lost under layers of dirt and heavy repainting.

All the conservation stages were carried out in accordance with, and under the supervision of, the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage Anthony Pace and the scientific supervision of the Superintendent of Calabrian Heritage Fabio de Chirico. The work has been carried out by restorers Giuseppe Mantella, Daniela d’Angelo, Giuseppe Augulli, Silvia Orsi among others.

What is also impressive is the choice of the colour scheme for the walls of the church, which are now cream and gold and give the former grey interior a rare splendour.

Celebrations

The celebrations marking the completion of the restoration included a band march by a Żejtun band on Thursday and a concelebration led by a cardinal on Friday. The church now reverts to its pastoral use: there was a wedding last night and the Italian community return to celebrate Mass at Saint Catherine’s today at 11am.

But one other aspect that has come to the fore in the past will continue, the indefatigable Don Gino told a press conference on Friday. When the church could not be used for Mass, concerts were held there to raise funds. These will now continue, with both midday and evening concerts. In fact, there will be one such concert this evening. The concerts are usually sponsored by St James Cavalier.

The press conference was attended by Minister Pullicino, Italian Ambassador Luigi Marras, BOV’s Tonio Depasquale and Giuseppe Mantella and everyone praised the persistence and hard work on the part of Don Gino.

Mattia Preti statue

Minister Pullicino announced that a statue of Mattia Preti is to be erected on the Merchant Street corner of Victory Square in the near future.

It was, said Mr Mantella, only right that Malta should honour the Calabrian artist, because Caravaggio is not the only artist with whom Malta is linked. There are some 350 works of art by Preti in Malta, including the Sarria church in Floriana that he built.

Plans are afoot for a big exhibition of Preti’s work in 2013 to mark the fourth centenary of his birth which, it is hoped, will attract more Italian tourists to Malta.