Introduction [Memento Mori : a companion to the most beautiful floor in the world]

Abstract

St John’s Co-Cathedral is undoubtedly a pearl of High Baroque. Its foundations were laid in 1571, just a few years after the Great Siege of Malta (1565). The church was constructed in a sober, military style, with a touch of Mannerism at the main entrance. In the first 100 years of its existence, it remained a sober, artless affair, not in the least because the financial strain of the Great Siege was still painfully present. Only with the advent of Baroque in Malta, matters of art started to take another perspective. The Order became, through its ambassadors in Rome, Florence and Bologna the most influential patron of the arts in Malta. With the arrival of the Baroque Master Mattias Preti, St John’s Co-Cathedral was turned in to a total concept of Baroque art, covering from the painted ceiling, down the sculptured buttresses to the marble inlaid floor. Mattias Preti’s influence, who worked in Malta between 1660-99, was also visible in the Baroque art of the city of Valletta itself. He was succeeded by Romano Carapecchio, responsible for further embellishment of St John’s Co-Cathedral and Valletta’s buildings in the first half of the 18th century. St John’s Co-Cathedral is also the home of two prominent paintings of Caravaggio, namely ‘The Beheading of St John’ and ‘St Jerome’.