The northern wind : Flemish and Dutch paintings in Maltese collections

Abstract

It is hard to find any travel book which does not mention the richness of the Maltese island in artistic sense. The churches are ’living’ museums, full of decoration from well known or not so well known artists; the public collections of the island of Malta were filled up during the last centuries with many artworks of all kind from all over Europe. Due to the increasing interest in art and history, the Maltese people and especially the scholars, historians and art historians tried and try hard to build up a proper and true history of Malta. Works from different collections (private and public) were discovered and rediscovered again and again in order to put them in proper context and to show to Europe and the world that Malta’s history of art is not only the megalithic temples and the art of the Knights. But rather something much more sophisticated and complex in their relationship with the western art world, and its context can be much broader than we thought before. After the great names, like Caravaggio, Mattia Preti and so on, other minor, Maltese and foreign artists and their works were examined properly and were lit up with a new light, which helped to form the Maltese cultural identity. Malta’s connection with the Mediterranean, especially with Italy, Sicily is inevitable; most of the works of art in different collections are related somehow to Italy, to Rome. Architecture, painting, politics and many other aspect of the life was/is related to the Italian peninsula and despite the fact that the education system is based on British pattern, the Italian influence is there. It is very true in the case of the History of Art, where we, students are taught in the Italian tradition, focusing –naturally- on the cradle of the Western Art and its influence on Maltese art.