Sculptors in Malta between the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century

Abstract

This thesis is a study of the Sculptors who worked in Malta during the early decades of the Twentieth Century. Chapter two it discusses the relationship between the Middle-Classes and the sculptors who worked in Malta. It argues that although the Middle-Classes did not number as much as the lower and working/peasant classes, they nonetheless exerted a considerable amount of influence in the internal framework of the Island through the band clubs and various civil societies, with the Church as the prevailing institution in each and every village of the Island. Moreover, the chapter argues that the Maltese Middle-Classes created an Italian bias. Chapters three and four follow the formation and development of the 'Technical and Manual' School and of its students as a mile-stone in the development of Sculpture in Malta. The most successful of these students were Edward Galea and the brothers Francesco Saverio and Antonio Sciortino, all of whom emigrated to North America and Rome, respectively. The lives of the Sciortino Brothers are dealt with in extensive detail in chapter four where their artistic formation, at the Regia Accademia di Belle Arti in a time when Rome was passing through its Post-Risorgimento years, is discussed. Indeed, after that short period spent together as students of the Accademia their lives drifted apart: Antonio continued to work successfully in Rome when Benito Mussolini became its Duce, while Francesco Saverio returned to Malta. Eventually Francesco Saverio Sciortino emigrated to Canada where he lived in the shadows of his younger brother.