Marble artifacts at the Senglea basilica

Abstract

Throughout history, marble has been the stone of choice to decorate impressive edifices such as churches. Churches in the Maltese islands lacked marble decoration prior to the 17th century,when the new architectural idiom of the Baroque took hold of Malta. With the building of new churches or enlargement of older ones, procurators or benefactors opted to furnish their new church's holy water fonts, baptismal fonts and altars with poly-chromed marble rather than using local limestone for the same purpose, as had been done previously. Such was the case with Senglea's parish church. At the time, a particular family had come to Malta specifically to work marble. This was the Durante family. Thus, Senglea parish church's consecration crosses were made by Gregorio Durante possibly in 1743 when the church was consecrated.