Joseph F. Grima

The situation up till 1960

The main idea behind this series of three articles is to record and illustrate the changes and developments that have occurred in the Maltese and Gozitan Holy Week processional statues together with a few generic and pertinent concluding remarks. For about three centuries, development in the iconography of Holy Week statues was rather static but, from 1961 till the present day, changes and additions have been legion in the Passion statues though this does not hold true for the statues depicting The Risen Christ. Since so many changes have occurred from 1961 to date I am first describing the situation as it developed till 1960 and will then record the changes of the last half century or so. I shall first deal with the Passion statues and then round off this series with a description of the iconography of the statues carried in the Easter Sunday processions.

No less than 19 localities in Malta and Gozo organise Good Friday processions, together with another two in Gozo that own sets of statues but do not organise a formal procession. Very probably, a number of these processions, especially the older ones, started off with just one or two statues and then progressively increased their number as the years rolled on. This does not hold true for the more recent manifestations that saw their beginning in the 20th century.

The first statues

The Rabat (Malta) procession still includes what is considered to be the oldest processional statue still in use: it is a wooden sculpture depicting The Scourging at the Pillar and it was very probably imported from Sicily about four centuries ago. In the 17th century at least, together with this statue there were various other statues dressed in real clothes with the oldest existing exemplars being the oldest effigies of the Vittoriosa procession. Actually, Vittoriosa is perpetuating a very old Maltese tradition of having dressed-up statues, just like the still-existent statue of St Nicholas at Siġġiewi. Presently, dressed Good Friday statues in Malta are only found at Vittoriosa but this tradition found its way to Gozo where there are no less than three similar sets of statues: two at Victoria and one at Żebbuġ. The procession emanating from St George's Parish at Victoria dates back to the last decades of the 18th century but the other two are 20th century additions.

Therefore, the first local statues were either made of wood or else were dressed mannequins each of which consisted of a head, arms and hands, and feet normally carved in wood but that were progressively replaced by papier-mâché. It seems, however, that the art of papier-mâché manufacture had not yet been completely mastered in 17th century Malta because an appreciable number of replacements and repairs are frequently recorded. But this art-form then flourished and, nowadays, the vast majority of Holy Week statues are made of papier-mâché though effigies carved in wood are not a rarity. The popularisation of papier-mâché is attributed to Saverio Laferla (January 1761), a barber-surgeon who lived in the first half of the 18th century when the Confraternity of the Holy Crucifix of Valletta entrusted him with the task of making a set of Passion statues to replace the dressed mannequins that had existed till then.

Another type of material used was stucco. A beautiful still-existent exemplar is the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows at the Qormi Parish of St George whose bust, including the shoulders and upper chest and hands, are made of stucco but within a papier-mâché dress. This information resulted from extensive restoration work carried out by Alfred Camilleri Cauchi in 1982 and it is certain that the statue had previously been a mannequin dressed in real clothes before its changeover to papier-mâché sometime in the 18th century. Another stucco figure, an impressive full length one, is that of the sitting Ecce Homo (as The Crowning with Thorns or Il-Porpra, is popularly known in the Maltese islands) in the same parish which was still carried in procession up till 1961 but now preserved in a church niche.

The number of statues in the processions

Many locals have the false impression that a standard set of eight passion statues was the norm in the 17th and 18th centuries, but this is incorrect. One of the earliest processions, non-existent nowadays, was organised from the Valletta Church of the Augustinian friars with four statues depicting the Ecce Homo, Christ Falling under the Cross, The Crucifixion and Christ laid to Rest. In 1712, the number of statues at the still-existent Valletta procession from Ta' Ġieżu Church was the following six: The Agony in the Garden, Ecce Homo, Christ Falling under the Cross, Veronica, The Crucifixion and Christ Laid to Rest. The statue of Our Lady of Sorrows was a later addition, probably in 1740 when, between 1737 and 1742, Saverio Laferla fashioned a new set of statues. The existence of The Scourging at the Pillar (not the present statue) is only mentioned for the first time at this Valletta procession in 1773.

On the other side of the Grand Harbour, in The Three Cities, processions had been instituted at the beginning of the 18th century and full sets of eight statues - all those mentioned above at Valletta - were certainly present at Cospicua according to a mid-century inventory and also at Vittoriosa. But in 1735, the Senglea procession included just six statues: The Agony in the Garden, The Scourging at the Pillar, the still-existent Christ Falling under the Cross, The Crucifixion and Christ laid to Rest.

There is scant information about the village processions. Nothing is known about the Żejtun procession except that the parish priest bought the old Crucifixion group from Valletta in 1742 but it had to be returned by order of the Bishop's Curia because the agreed price of 30 scudi was not paid. It was then sold to the cleric Giuseppe Spiteri, the then beneficiary of the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows at Pietà. At Naxxar, the procession originates to c.1750 but, by 1753, it included seven statues, that is, the traditional set of eight with the exception of Veronica. In 1742, the two statues of Veronica and Our Lady of Sorrows were manufactured for Żebbuġ (Malta) and another Veronica was made for Luqa in 1775 through a private initiative and the set was continued from 1795 onwards. It is known that unspecified small and large statues existed at Qormi in 1764 though the 18^th century statues of Ecce Homo, Christ Falling under the Cross, Our Lady of Sorrows and three components of The Crucifixion group are still extant. At Għargħur, there certainly were the statues of Our Lady of Sorrows and Christ Laid to Rest which inaugurated the first procession in 1792

Description of the statues

From this information about statues up till the end of the 18th century, one may conclude that a complete set of statues developed into the traditional eight components or episodes of the Passion which have remained an integral part of all processions, notwithstanding future additions and accretions, till the present day. Described briefly, they are the following:

1. The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane: Christ with one angel bearing in his hands the symbolic chalice and small cross
2. The Scourging at the Pillar: the lone figure of Christ tied to a small column, in front of Him or behind Him, after He had been scourged by the Roman soldiery
3. Ecce Homo or The Crowing with Thorns: a lone figure of Christ, standing or seated on a low pillar, with a crown of thorns on His head, a silver or golden reed in his hands and draped in a red cloak normally made of fine cloth or velvet with a gold border and, sometimes, with a Passion symbol woven in gold. Because of this cloak, this statue is also known as Tal-Porpra.
4. Christ Falling under the Cross: the lone figure of Jesus is shown carrying the cross but falling under its burden while he tries to steady Himself with one hand on a rock. This statue is also known locally as Ir-Redentur or The Redeemer
5. Veronica: a holy woman, not mentioned in the gospels, reputed to have wiped the face of Jesus on the way to Calvary. Tradition holds that the image of His face remained on her veil and she is depicted thus in Passion statues
6. The Crucifixion: a group of four statues showing Christ nailed to the cross, either dead or in his last moments, Mary Magdalen with her arms round the base of the cross and Our Lady and St John the Evangelist looking on. Since it was the largest statuary group, it was referred to as Il-Vara l-Kbira (literally The Large Statue) and, although more numerous statuary groups have emerged in subsequent years, this name has stuck
7. Christ laid to Rest: the figure of the Dead Christ in a richly decorated urn and canopy normally shown with angels at the four corners. It is locally known as Il-Monument, literally The Monument.
8. Our Lady of Sorrows: the sorrowing Mother is shown under a cross comforted by a small angel or St John the Evangelist, holding passion symbols. More often than not, Gozitan statues show a standing Madonna without a cross.

 Therefore, the set had actually developed into the depiction of the five sorrowful mysteries of the Holy Rosary to which were added Veronica, the Monument and Our Lady of Sorrows.

With reference to the Valletta statues, perhaps it is pertinent to note that traveller Johan Meerman's very brief description of the above eight statues in 1792 are akin to what we see nowadays while, in 1838, George Percy Badger described the Monument as "a splendid canopy, with rich curtains tasselled with gold, having a figure as large as life stretched beneath them." In 1878, Girolamo Gianni depicted the statue of The Agony in the Garden in two very similar paintings. Nowadays, we are used to seeing this statuary group, and similar ones in other localities, under an olive tree but Gianni's two paintings omit the tree altogether. This indicates that trees, or parts thereof, were not used on statues at least up till 1878 and their later inclusion may thus be said to have been a minor development pertaining to the end of the 19th, or the beginning of the 20th century.

Three developments

There were, however, three developments, or innovations, in the three decades spanning 1878 and 1908, all through the hand of the statuary Carlo Darmanin (1825-1909). In 1878, he produced the present papier-mâché statuary group of The Agony in the Garden for Cospicua in which there are two angels comforting Christ instead of the customary single angel. Later on, probably around 1890, he produced another similar statuary group for Qormi. Actually, all the other existent Agony groups have one angel except the statue of the Cathedral of Victoria, Gozo that added a second angel in 1969. Then, in 1895, Darmanin manufactured a Veronica for Mosta that also included a small girl with the main figure, an idea said to be based on the revelations of a mystic, the German nun Catherine Emmerich. All previous statues of Veronica had shown her on her own.

     But a certainly more important innovation occurred in 1908 at Qormi for whose procession Darmanin produced a completely new Passion episode that had never been part of local processions before: The Betrayal by Judas in which the deceitful apostle, hiding his bag of silver coins behind his back, is shown kissing his rabbi as a signal to the Jewish high priest's servants who had come with him to arrest Jesus. This Betrayal statue remained the only one of its kind till 1961. Actually, even though the number of processions increased substantially in Gozo during the first decades of the 20th century, no more innovations were forthcoming because the new manifestations simply conformed to the traditional norm.

(to be continued)

Photo Captions

Pix 1: Rabat's four-centuries old wooden Scourging at the Pillar is the oldest statue still carried in procession. Its sculptor is unknown. (Photo: J. F. Grima)

Pix 2: Close-up of Saverio Laferla's 1751 representation of Jesus Carrying His Cross at Naxxar. It was replaced in 1981. (Photo: J. Frendo)

Pix 3: Qormi's mid-18^th century stucco representation of The Crowning with Thorns, by an unknown artist, being carried in procession in 1959. It was replaced in 1962. (Photo: A. Falzon)

Pix 4: Gerolamo Gianni's 1878 painting of the Valletta Good Friday procession showing the statue of The Agony in the Garden without an olive tree. (Photo: Daniel Cilia)

Dr Joseph F. Grima is a historian whose books include 'Il-Vari tal-Ġimgħa Mqaddsa fil-Gżejjer Maltin', published in 2012)