Dr Charlene Vella, Lecturer at the Department of Art and Art History, was invited to deliver a lecture at the University of Cyprus, Nicosia. The lecture titled 'Malta in 1530 and the Hospitaller legacy' was held at the Archaeology Research Unit on Monday 29 January 2018.
The focus of the lecture was the art of the Maltese islands before the arrival of the Knights of the Order of St John in 1530 with the aim to display that the islands were not the cultural and artistic backwater that Jean Quintin’s (1500-1561) bleak report on the islands published in 1536 would lead us to believe. Renaissance sculptures and paintings had in fact reached Malta from nearby Sicily as early as 1474. The island’s artistic sophistication was enriched with the settling of the Hospitallers on Malta, with the treasures they carried with them from Rhodes, and other works of art they commissioned upon settling in Birgu, their first conventual city on Malta.
The lecture generated a lot of interest on the art of Malta in question by art historians, archaeologists, Byzantinists and historians as well as members of the general public.
The lecture was streamed live online and is now available online.