Celebrating the arrival in Malta of the Schranz artists' family in 1818

Abstract

July 17, 1818… 200 years ago – the brig Madonna del Carmine cast anchor in Grand Harbour, having left Menorca some days before. On it were Anton Schranz’s wife, Isabel Howard Tudurí, and their nine sons and daughters. May 27, 1817… one year earlier, in Menorca – Anton and Isabella obtained a joint passport to Malta. Discovered recently, it confirms earlier researchers’ conjectures of some 35 years ago, that Anton arrived in Malta around June 1817. In her fifth month of pregnancy, accompanying Anton to Malta, Isabel then sailed back unaccompanied to Menorca to give birth to their ninth child; evidently, the thought of relocating to Malta from her island-home was sudden – they needed to share it. She gave the go-ahead: returning to Menorca, she gave birth, raised Justina for eight months and then promptly sailed again to Malta, 13 months after her first visit, coping – alone – with all nine children, seven of them under age. Impressive, for a woman born in 1778: clearly, she was of strong mettle. More importantly, the move was unmeditated, not one matured over the years, which it would have been had they moved to Malta to follow “his British navy clientele”, as the ungrounded conjecture held for a hundred years.