Maltese participation in conference on cities and festivities in the baroque age

Prof. Denis De Lucca, director of the International Institute for Baroque Studies at the University of Malta, was recently invited to give an illustrated presentation during La festa e la città nell’età barocca, a conference held in Sicily.

The conference focused on the use of the effimero in the baroque urban environments of Sicily, Spain and Malta, and was held in the School of Architecture of the University of Catania, based in Syracuse.

The conference saw the presentation of a number of academic papers focusing on grand festive occasions that were repeatedly held in the 17th and 18th centuries in Madrid, Catania, Messina, Caltagirone, Noto, Syracuse and Hospitaller Valletta.

In all these cities, impressive festivities using diverse types of ephemeral manifestations concerning the living and the dead all enriched the urban scenarios of the time, amid impressive displays of water devices and pyrotechnics.

These manifestations included false building façades, the installation of triumphal arches and impressive stage settings, the manufacture of funerary chapels and catafalques and other objects.

Prof. De Lucca’s illustrated presentation revolved around Festive Spectacles and Ephemeral Manifestations in Baroque Valletta, 1566-1798.

The presentation covered several themes, including the laying of the foundation stone ceremony by Grand Master Jean de la Valette; the festive occasions in the conventual church marking the election proceedings and the festa funebre of the Grand Masters; the bonfire illuminations held on the feast of St John the Baptist; and the festive celebrations announcing the arrival of important personalities from mainland Europe.

The latter included the arrival of papal delegate Mgr Giovanni Francesco Abbati Olivier to give the ‘stoc and pilier’ to Grand Master Vilhena in 1725.

Prof. De Lucca also discussed these events in the context of outstanding examples of visually-stimulating urban spectacles in baroque Europe, among them the spectacular martial spectacle titled Constantine.

During this event, the entire city of Munich was in 1574 transformed by the Jesuits into a truly triumphal scenario dominated by the presence of the ‘emperor’ Constantine on a chariot surrounded by 400 horsemen in glittering armour.

These baroque festive occasions were meant to underline the political ideology of absolutism and the militant spirit of the Counter-Reformation which marked the Baroque Age.

In the case of the Catholic Church, this hinged on an accentuation of the belief in the triumph over death evoked by the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday, when grand festivities were held in Piazza Navona in Rome and in other cities.

Such festivities were marked by the construction of magnificent ephemeral triumphal arches designed by the best architects of the time.

The Syracuse conference concluded with a discussion of a new publication titled La festa barocca in Sicilia, authored by Prof. Lucia Trigilia of the Syracuse School of Architecture.