The curtain will come up tonight on the restoration of Mattia Preti’s the Allegory of the Triumph of the Order of St John above St John’s Co-Cathedral’s main doorway.

It is a fitting tribute to Mattia Preti who was born exactly 400 years ago, on February 24, 1613.

As the Co-Cathedral’s curator Cynthia Degiorgio explains, the Allegory forms part of the impressive cycle narrating the life of St John the Baptist painted between 1661 and 1666 during the magistracy of the two brothers Raphael and Nicholas Cotoner, respectively Grand Masters of the Order from 1660 to 1663 and from 1663 to 1680.

Restoration work on the lunette started in August 2011. The painting was virtually intact and had suffered some cracks and loss or mortar joints in the stone, oxidisation of the varnish, giving it a yellowish/brownish hue and the accumulation of dust deposits.

Luckily it had not suffered from infiltration of water. The restorations work was in the hands of Giuseppe Mantella Opere d’Arte, commissioned to carry out the restoration and Francesca Muscat, conservator, St John’ Co-Cathedral Foundation.