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John Azzopardi (Ed), Notary Francesco Catania (1872 – 1960), Malta, 2013. PP 228 + xviii.
Those who knew him could well claim that Francesco Catania was a rather singular person. A grave and successful professional, an amateur artist, a pious and incorruptible Christian, a passionate horticulturalist, a discerning collector and a compulsive philanthropist. When he died at 88 years of age, unmarried and with issue, he left his considerable estate to St Paul’s Collegiate Church in Rabat, Malta. His belongings included fabulous collections of remarkable historical and artistic interest.
The Rabat church that benefited from Catania’s largesse was then going through a rather distressed financial situation, and the good canons thought best to dispose of a substantial part of Catania’s collections. They commissioned a major seven-day auction a few months after his death. Those were sad days for the Rabat church, and a bonanza for Maltese art lovers.
I too left that Aladdin’s cave with a couple of minor gems. It is estimated that, notwithstanding that massive clearance sale, about one third of today’s Wignacourt Museum derives from Catania’s estate.
Mgr Dun Ġwann Azzopardi felt that a tribute needed to be paid to Catania’s memory, and went about settling that debt in the most lavish of manners. He corralled another 10 authors, all experts in their field, to pay homage to this small man with a big heart, a great purse and a huge moustache. They united to give added value to what is left of his collections now in the Wignacourt Museum, recently refurbished, and rather magnificently, too, I may add.
Catania made it a point to be super eclectic in his collecting habits. The common thread running through his hoarding life seems to have been: antique – beautiful – Maltese, with some preference for the religious. There does not seem to have been one sector of Melitensia that he did not consider worthy of attention and did not covet: archaeological artefacts, coins and medals, paintings, silver, pottery, books, sculpture, maps, jewellery, drawings, furniture. His appetite must have been unquenchable, and, to go with that, his professional success provided the financial means for satiating his hoarding instincts.
Of course, to Catania’s advantage was the fact that in his heyday few were those who showed much interest in the cultural heritage of the island, and who also had the expertise and the cash flow to go with it. Delirious bargains for the discerning were then the rule, at a time when few if any cared.
I remember the venerable notary vaguely, and mostly for his daunting outcrop of facial hair. He and my father shared their common aesthetic cravings and their political, pre-independence, grievances when they met in Rabat. It was a happy coincidence that part of Catania’s collections and all my father’s architectural and decorative drawings would end up housed under the same roof.
This book brings out the fact that quantity should not necessarily be exclusive of quality. It concentrates on those of Catania’s acquisitions that escaped being auctioned in 1960. No copy of the sale catalogue seems to have survived, so we only know what remained; what was dispersed remains a guesswork exercise. We know that a lot of what survived is of remarkable, sometimes great, quality.
Those were sad days for the Rabat church, and a bonanza for Maltese art lovers
University had trained Catania for notarial law, but nature had trained his eye for an almost impeccable judgement where beauty was concerned. This is, perhaps, most evident in some high quality paintings and old master drawings which he acquired and which today enrich the Wignacourt collections through his bounty.
Catania, himself the son and grandson of gifted artisan sculptors, led a rather secluded, unadventurous existence, with few if any salient episodes to brighten up the profile of a serene life. He once contested an election with Enrico Mizzi, under the same political umbrella as my uncle, the lawyer, later judge, Alberto Magri Sr.
His life mostly gravitated towards the focal point of the ancient village of Rabat, more particularly, the parish church of St Paul. He lived near it, he lived for it, he died with it as his shining light.
Mgr Azzopardi, the untiring curator of the Wignacourt collections, had the vision and the perseverance to transform that museum from a jumble-sale bazaar into a splendid showpiece of ecclesiastical culture.
He must have been haunted by the fact that so many of those objects were loving testimonials of Francesco Catania’s spirit, and by the remorse that so much generosity should remain ungratefully ignored. The compulsion to make amends must have disturbed Dun Ġwann. This book is the result.