The restoration of the Mattia Preti altar-painting of St James in St John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta has been completed, adding a new lease of life to the 17th-century work.
The painting, found in the chapel of Castille, Leon and Portugal, was painted by the Calabrian artist in the early 1660s when he was already engaged in the monumental decoration of the vault of St John’s and a number of its chapels.
It was restored by Giuseppe Mantella on the initiative of Francis Stivala, secretary general of the National Student Travel Foundation (Malta), which sponsored the work.
One of the major aims of the St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation is to generate revenue for the maintenance and restoration of its works of art and artefacts, said its president, Mgr Carmel Zammit.
“Funds are never enough and the initiative of NSTF is certainly much appreciated and highly commended,” he said, encouraging other entities, especially those that benefit from tourism, to contribute to safeguarding the unique and precious monument.
The St James painting had, for many years, been in a poor state of preservation. Apart from oxidised varnish, the pictorial layer suffered from “cupping”, usually caused by movement of the canvas as a result of changes in temperature and humidity, St John’s curator and CEO Cynthia de Giorgio explained.
The central vertical seam of the canvas also bore irregular tensions and had begun to tear. The restoration initiative, therefore, consisted of consolidating the pictorial layer and filling and restoring the tears in the canvas to obtain aesthetic unity.
Ms de Giorgio said the pictorial layer was cleaned and the canvas was then stretched on an aluminium frame with springs to allow it to adjust to environmental changes.
The painting represents the apostle James as patron saint of Spain. He is surrounded by a host of attributes, which refer to the various regions of the Spanish Langue.
According to legend, St James travelled as a missionary to Spain and then returned to Judea, where he was martyred. The angels carried his body to Compostela, where the shrine of St James became one of the most venerated destinations for pilgrims.