As part of its exhibition on Francesco Noletti: The Grand Roman Baroque Carpet Still-Life, the Department of History of Art is organising a public lecture by Prof. Keith Sciberras, curator of the exhibition and head of department, entitled 'The Enigmatic Maltese, Francesco Noletti and a Conclusion for his Oeuvre'. The lecture will be held on Monday, 16 May 2016, at 17:00hrs at the University of Malta Valletta Campus.
The exhibition on Francesco Noletti was launched on 28 April and remains open till the 8th of June.
Francesco Noletti (c.1611–54), called il Maltese (and popularly known as Francesco Fieravino) is one of the most significant yet enigmatic artists in the study of still-life painting of the Roman seicento. His work encapsulates the spirit of the ‘baroque still-life’, primarily through a typology of ‘carpet paintings’ that he popularised in Rome during the 1640s and early 1650s. Francesco Noletti is credited to have significantly imprinted theatrically-placed heavy folded carpets as the primary focus of his impressive still-life compositions, with such folds animating and dominating the painting rather than being merely tactile covers of tables or ledges on which the objects were placed. The thick impasto and monumental folds of Noletti’s carpets imbued his works with a forceful movement, tactile richness and theatricality that responded perfectly to the baroque manner of the ‘main-stream’ artists.
Official Facebook event.