Rocco Buhagiar and late eighteenth century painting in Malta

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to present a comprehensive study of painting in Malta during the last decades of the eighteenth century. This scarcely researched period has drawn the attention of a number of art-historians, but their writings remained always limited to a general overview, usually based on secondary nineteenth century sources. The most important among the latter were the writings of Giuseppe Calleja, Giuseppe Hyzler, and Achille Ferres. The recent studies by John Azzopardi, Mario Buhagiar, Dominic Cutajar, and John Gash, helped establish a more definite framework of activity but, with the exception of Antoine Favray and Francesco Zahra, none of the artists discussed in this study received more than a brief mention. A number of these artists were just names without any attributed or documented paintings. Their life-story was equally elusive. When the work was begun, many of the paintings here ascribed were obscure paintings without any designated authorship. Others were wrongly attributed.