After two speeches and two presentations, the climax of an event on Friday evening at St John’s Co-Cathedral was reached when unseen hands removed the white sheet that had been covering it and Mattia Preti’s last work in the cathedral, the Allegory of the Order on the ‘contro-facciata’ that is on the main door, was revealed in all its original glory.
The restoration, explained St John’s Foundation president Mgr Carmelo Zammit, was a fitting way to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the artist’s birth – which is actually today, Sunday.
The huge 140 square metre painting took Preti just five months to complete, from August to December 1666. By then, the artist had adapted very well to his technique of painting on Maltese stone with just linseed oil as a preparation.
As curator Cynthia de Giorgio explained, the main figure is allegorical, dressed in armour and brandishing a sword with one hand and the Order’s flag with the other, and represents victory by trampling over Moorish figures with bastions and fighting going on behind her.
In the foreground, on either side of the balcony doorway, Preti depicts the two Cotoner brother grand masters: Nicolas tends to the sick while Raphael points to the galleys of the Order. The two brothers were grand masters while the vault was being painted by Preti (Raphael died in 1663 and was succeeded by his brother).
Both Ms de Giorgio and head restorer Giuseppe Mantella referred to the unhappy history of restoration of Preti’s paintings in St John’s. The first sin was leaving the roof of the church uncovered for many centuries, with the result that rain infiltrated the stone and ruined the paintings.
In 1859, Archbishop Gaetano Pace Forno wrote to the Academia di San Luca in Rome asking for help, and the Maltese Carlo Ignazio Cortis was chosen to restore the Preti paintings. Instead of restoring them, he painted all over the precious paintings, causing much scandal among the populace. In 1930, Vincenzo Bonello (father of Judge Giovanni Bonello) cleaned up most of this so-called “restoration” and later Cesare Brandi and the Istituto per il Restauro in the 1960s restored the Preti paintings carried out a genuine restoration.
Giuseppe Mantella explained the difficulties faced by his team in working on such a huge painting on a narrow balcony and scaffolding.
Since Preti painted so rapidly, the tool marks used in cutting the stone at the quarry can still be seen. So too an incised date, 1577, from the construction of the church. Many times, Preti left the stone untouched to represent clouds, despite using 600kg of linseed oil in its preparation.
Conservator Francesca Muscat wrote in the booklet published for the occasion that although the stone support and the paint layer were found to be in a good state of conservation, when work began in August 2011 the wall painting was found to have suffered mainly from the accumulation of dust deposits on the stone courses, some loose mortar joints, general aging, oxidised varnish and the discoloured reconstruction of the painting that had been applied during previous interventions. She then went on to describe the painstaking procedures used during the restoration.