Blast fragments catalogued in plan to reconstruct Chapel of Relics at St John's

A painstaking task of documenting and cataloguing scores of wooden parts and fragments originally forming part of the Treasury, commonly referred to as the Chapel of Relics in St John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta has been successfully completed by a group of restorers on behalf of the St John's Co-Cathedral Foundation.

One of the aims of this cataloguing project was to evaluate the possibility of partial or total reconstruction of the Treasury area, according to Daniela Apap Bologna, curator at St John's.

The Chapel of Relics, or Treasury, was built to contain the vast collection of precious reliquaries, several of which had been brought from Rhodes by the Knights of St John after their expulsion from the island by the Ottomans.

The co-cathedral was the conventual church of the Order of the Knights of St John, who built it. Access to this chapel was restricted and the safety of the precious reliquaries was under the direct responsibility of the Grand Master, the seven Piliers or heads of the langues of the Order of St John, and the Prior of the church, all of whom held a key to these treasures.

"It is interesting to note that among the fragments, a panel with nine keyholes was found, suggesting that this once formed part of a chest containing precious relics. The number of keyholes corresponds to the persons responsible for the security of these relics and further highlights the ceremonial ritual and security involved when access to these reliquaries was necessary.

"The Treasury was the most sacred chamber in the vestry. Access to this area was through two anterooms situated in the sacristy area.

"These ante-rooms are also furnished in blue and gilt panelling and are still intact today," the curator said.

The idea is to draw up a graphic documentation of what the Chapel of Relics looked like before it was extensively damaged when a bomb fell in Kingsway (Strada Reale, today Republic Street) in Valletta during the Second World War, demolishing part of the vestry at St John's.

The wooden panelling for the Chapel of Relics was manufactured presumably in Malta and was commissioned in 1756 during the magistracy of Grand Master Pinto. In an attempt to reconstruct the surviving fragments a research project for the vestry area will also be launched to retrieve archival references on the history of the treasury.

In part-fulfillment of this research, photographic collections and other visual sources will be tapped to verify whether there are any representations of this area before its demolition.

Initial inquiries and searches for photographic representations of the Treasury have so far not borne any results, therefore, it would be extremely helpful if collectors possessing images of this Treasury or other related information, could contact the offices of the foundation.

The curator pointed out that the wooden fragments that have been recently catalogued have been unearthed from two rooms situated at the roof level of the co-cathedral.

Ms Apap Bologna was introduced to these findings by Joseph Galea Naudi, former executive secretary of the St John's Co-Cathedral Foundation and curator of the museum at St John's.

"At the time the Treasury and other areas were damaged by the blast, someone had the presence of mind to collect fragments and store these bits and pieces in the rooms on the roof of the co-cathedral instead of throwing them away.

"A large part of these fragments constitute the wooden polychromised and gilt panelling, cornice mouldings and cabinets that were situated in the treasury.

"Several of the precious metal reliquaries previously stored in the Treasury were spirited away when St John's was swept clean of its silver by Napoleonic troops during their brief stay on the island before they were ousted by the British in 1800.

"The bone fragments of saints were, however, left behind by the troops and are kept at St John's in the chapel of the Anglo-Bavarian langue," Ms Apap Bologna added.

Agatha Grima, one of the restorers from ReCoop, the Restoration and Conservation Cooperative Ltd who have been involved in the documentation and cataloguing of the parts of the Treasury, said that the wood carving showed the minimum amount of base preparation, indicating that the work was prepared by a master craftsman. "The wood carving is exceptional," Ms Grima explained.

Mr Galea-Naudi, an expert in antique furniture and a consultant of the project, had pointed out to Ms Apap Bologna that the room where the wood fragments had been stored haphazardly had not been sorted out since World War II. Interesting finds include the only surviving 17th century gilt wooden scanello used for placing candlesticks on the altar, fragments of the 17th century choir and pulpit and other pieces whose provenance still remains unidentified.

Other interesting finds include parts of an 18th century pipe organ which so far is undocumented.

"It seems that the instrument which is dismantled and in a bad state of repair was an 18th century portable organ," said Ms Apap Bologna.

However, the most intriguing part of this cataloguing exercise were the 500 wooden fragments of the Chapel of Relics. This chapel was described in Sir Hannibal Scicluna's book 'Church of St John in Valletta' as:

"Furnished as a chapel with an altar and embroidered altar-front... an impressive perspective on the façade and its main walls in which were a number of niches of a great variety of forms varying with the shape of the many splendid Ostensories then housing the relics of the Church."

Over the years, fragments of this chapel seem to have found their way into private collections. The curator said that it would be interesting if these pieces were also graphically documented to further assist in the reconstruction evaluation project.