Roamer's Column

Based in The Hague, the 43-year-old pan-European Federation for Heritage Europa Nostra has over 220 member organisations, 170 associate members and 1,500 individual members from across Europe affiliated to it. Among them is Malta's Din l-Art Helwa, which was represented on the council of the federation for three and a half decades by Judge Maurice Caruana Curran. He was awarded, deservedly, the Europa Nostra Prize for Lifetime Service to Cultural Heritage a few years ago.

Martin Scicluna, until recently president of Din l-Art Helwa, is now Malta's representative on the council. In a recent interview carried in The Times, the Prince Consort of Denmark, currently president of Europa Nostra, paid a charming tribute to Din l-Art Helwa, "which last year celebrated 40 years of indefatigable action" and to Mr Scicluna, "our most efficient council member", and to the "invaluable support" extended to Europa Nostra in the organisation of the annual congress.

Putting it together was no mean feat and it is a credit to Mr Scicluna and his team that this prestigious event was so seamlessly organised. Apart from the jaw-jaw of a congress, this allowed our guests the opportunity, in Prince Henrik's words, "to discover Malta's unique contribution to Europe's common cultural heritage". I understand they did and were most impressed. And take a bow the consortium that received a European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Award "for the remarkable regeneration of a grandiose Baroque harbour and the establishment of an authentic link between the sea and the historic urban environment".

Prince Henrik was referring, of course, to the Valletta Waterfront which has risen Phoenix-like from the lapidary death that the magnificent Pinto Wharf had died. I cannot think of any harbour in the world that I have visited (not many) or read of, which even begins to compete with the sparkling gem that now greets cruise-line visitors to Malta and those of us who make our way there of a morning or an evening, when the lights along the waterfront turn the place to magic. The vain Pinto must be rejoicing in the heavens.

A highlight of the congress was the adoption of the Malta Declaration on Tourism, about which a word or two. The declaration calls for the right balance between economic development, sustainable tourism and heritage conservation but skirts the problem of how this is to be done (that word 'sustainable' defies definition on the ground and has too often been used tendentiously). Nor does the declaration substantially "address" in concrete terms what Prince Henrik hoped the tourism forum would do, "ways of resolving the potential conflicts that cultural tourism poses".

It claims that Europa Nostra recognises in cultural tourism one of the key drivers of European economic growth and development. But Professor Schouten, tourism professor at Breda University and one of the speakers at the congress was reported as saying that only a small fraction of tourists travel to visit heritage sites and that most come across heritage sites "accidentally". As a host country we can address this failure by encouraging the industry to direct tourists to these sites, buildings, museums.

The declaration was on safe grounds when it regards cultural tourism as a means of cultural exchange between European citizens and one of the most valuable instruments of inter-cultural dialogue.

Those of us who visit towns and cities in Europe, south, central, west and east have seen for ourselves the common threads that bind Europe together, not least, perhaps most of all, the magnificent places of worship that punctuate the continent. We must only hope that visitors to Malta are similarly awed when they come across beads that make up the rosary of churches on our island, or our Neolithic temples - or our Caravaggios and Mattia Pretis, to name but two artists who have covered us in baroque glory.

The bottom line is that in a remarkable way every country in Europe is Europe and Europe is every country. We need to learn and relish the idea that Malta is integral to Nostra Europa. It is a concept that Britain still shirks deep down in its insular heart but we, an island, subscribe to effortlessly. And it is because Nostra Europa is what Europa Nostra is all about that we need to learn more about the latter and subscribe to its ideals in word and in deed because these are, in fondo, essentially good.

By being held in Malta, this year's hugely successful congress has put us securely on the world's Heritage Trail. Those who attended and those who were taken around the place could see for themselves just what it is about Malta's heritage that is unique and a distinctive part of the European heritage.

What if?

But first a little introduction. In 2005 the National Gallery held an Exhibition of Caravaggio: The Final Years to which Dr Keith Sciberras and Professor Stone each contributed a paper. The former is a lecturer in History of Art at the university of Malta and the recipient of an Andrew W. Mellon fellowship in the department of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the latter an associate professor at the University of Delaware and a recipient of a number of Fellowships. Sciberras and Stone built on those papers and co-authored a publication Caravaggio - Art, Knighthood and Malta.

What follows is not meant to be a book review. For that you will have to turn to The New Year Review of Books "...the excellent catalog essay by Keith Sciberras (who discovered the hidden facts)... Sciberras and Stone are exceptional both for their straightforward essay, aimed at general readers as well as at specialists; to Helen Langdon in The Times Literary Supplement: "A fascinating essay on Malta by Keith Sciberras and David Stone" and to Catherine Puglisi in Simiolus, Netherlands quarterly for the history of art... "The Maltese period is discussed in a fascinating contribution by the Maltese scholar Keith Sciberras and his American co-author David Stone... (they) vividly capture the ethos of knightly culture and characterise Caravaggio's patrons..."

So, to return to the question: what if, 400 years ago to the day, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio had not sauntered out for a stroll in thug mode and embroiled himself in a brawl that ended in his murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni and collecting, as a result, a banda capitale, a sort of shoot-on-sight edict?

It is allowed to a journalist but not to an art historian, who needs to be more prudent, to answer that flatly. Caravaggio would never have come to Malta, would therefore not have been made a Knight of Magistral Obedience by Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt and, most depressing of all, would not have painted during his 15-month stay here, St Jerome Writing or The Beheading of St John in the Oratory of St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta; nor so many other works of art that he painted while he was on the run (you cannot stifle genius, still less anguished genius) between 1606 and 1607, the year he arrived in Malta, and on the run once more between 1608, when he fled the island (another crime, what else?) and 1610 when he made his tragic attempt to return to Rome in anticipation of a full pardon. Nor would we have Caravaggio - Art, Knighthood, and Malta, a Midsea publication.

In this joint venture Dr Sciberras and Professor Stone examine briefly the general story of the painter's life (Stone), in depth Caravaggio's 15 months in Malta (Sciberras - Virtuosity Honoured, Chivalry Disgraced; Stone - Fra Michelangelo and the Art of Knighthood, a detailed examination of C's work and style in Malta), and in a concluding chapter Malta in Late Caravaggio (Sciberras). Here is a good mix of painstaking scholarship and readability about the man once accused of destroying painting, when what he managed to do so tragically was to destroy himself.

July to October 1607 was the period when the artist seemed to have, banished his demons in exchange for a more tranquil life. Despite the banda capitale, he had arrived in Malta via Naples and Sicily safely; proof enough that he had powerful patrons prepared to protect him. Once on the island he settled down to a regime of work that won him the esteem of Wignacourt, whom he painted, of course, and earned him (earned must be the correct word because his lifestyle and proneness to violence should have excluded him from any chivalric honour) the knighthood he yearned to receive. Both Sciberras and Stone are agreed that his Malta phase was a "distinctive" one (Stone) and provided us with "milestone pictures" (Sciberras).

You would have thought that once his virtuosity had been honoured, Caravaggio would have done everything possible to avoid disgracing his habit. Had he not signed his rank and name Fra Michael Angelo in the blood spurting out of the Baptist's head in an altarpiece regarded by many, "as his supreme masterpiece" (Stone)? Alas, as Sciberras puts it: "Chivalry was to be disgraced barely four weeks later". C's pathological inability to put space between himself and a brawl did for him, once more.

The honeymoon, during which he basked in the delight and admiration of his new patrons, was over. Placed in detention in Fort St Angelo from which, extraordinarily, he managed to escape he hot-sailed it to Sicily. But C could never be certain that the Knights' Interpol system would not track him down. The details of the artist's breathless arrival on the island and his similarly breathless escape from Malta, as well as his downfall, are well captured in Sciberras's essay, Virtuosity Honoured, Chivalry Disgraced.

In the final chapter Sciberras takes on the formidable task of working out a chronology of the artist's work during the final years and attributions. He concedes that "(chronology) is obviously subject to pitfalls, arguments and disagreement... dangerous ground and subject to change". He therefore stops short, as the scholar of art history must, of having a final say, acknowledging the considerable research into C's last four years that has taken place and warning that "much also remains on the basis of hypothesis". He concludes by expressing the hope that the book "succeeds in bring readers up top date with the latest scholarship". It does. Sciberras and Stone have commendably seen to that.

And now...

Olivia Glazebrook in The Spectator about you know what:

"If only the film hadn't been so pleased with itself, so pompous, or so dull. If only I had been watching at home and I could have laughed out loud when I pleased. If only Tom Hanks had at least registered any reaction, not to say emotion, on his smooth chops. But as it was, a feeling of low-level boredom settled over me after only 15 minutes, and covered me like a blanket for the following 135. It wasn't painful, it wasn't horrible, it was just a big, fat let-down."

"We've never had a cheaper publicity campaign," chortled the manager of KRS Distributors. "It's a big fuss about nothing... but ultimately this is a fictional film". Point now is that film critics have slated it as a fictional film. They are not making their fuss over any theological disagreement they may have with the contents of the book but about the mediocrity of the film. This may not have any effect on filmgoers and I wonder what it proves?

Not that criticism of the book, which sold tens of millions of copies, was unfounded, surely? Nor, as surely, that criticism of the film by men and women who know their films merely provides cheap publicity. It would be a manic state of affairs if criticism were not offered because this ran the risk of providing 'cheap' publicity for any book or film. Given that approach there should be no adverse criticism of any art form, even when it is fully justified, in case this gave that particular art form a prominence it did not deserve. Which is clearly nonsensical.

Quote...

In 1964 we decided to put Hay Fever into the repertoire of the National Theatre and to ask (Noël) Coward to direct it... The rehearsals yielded a classic mot. Dame Edith Evans persisted in upsetting Coward's rhythm by saying: 'On a very clear day you can see Marlow', instead of 'On a clear day you can see Marlow'. After weeks of patience Coward interrupted. "Edith," he said, "the line is: 'On a clear day you can see Marlow'. "On a very clear day you can see Marlow and Beaumont and Fletcher". - Kenneth Tynan, on a production of Hay Fever; The Folio Book of Humorous Anecdotes.