We have just returned from a Painted Optics Symposium with the main focus on Caravaggio. You had a direct personal exchange with David Hockney, the main speaker, who was described as the greatest living British artist and, by Mina Gregori, as the 'greatest living portrait painter in the world'. What where your impressions?
The conference was a first event in the series discussing Galileo's decisive observations which provided empirical proof that the earth went round the sun. The lenses of the telescope used by Galileo, which was exhibited as part of the conference, were made in Messina in 1608 exactly at the time when Caravaggio was in Messina, and no doubt still not having lost his lifelong interest in optical instruments.
Hockney's presence meant there were plain clothes security men, since his life has notoriously been threatened, and because he has never been chary of highlighting political aspects of his theories.
On this occasion he developed the scene of the importance of visual images in struggles for power. He claimed the churches' supreme power in the middle ages was linked to the quasi-monopoly of visual communication by churchmen as patrons of the arts. The massive decline of Church influence began with the rise of visual mass media such as cinema and television. He predicted the Obama-McCain contest would be the last American presidential election in which TV would be important. Already this year, the parody of Hilary Clinton on Youtube was much more expensive than TV appearance.
This topic arose because Hockney presented the Photoshop techniques as quite like some of those used by Caravaggio. I was very intrigued by this observation since your sister had assisted me with the use of Photoshop in both the TV series of programmes on Caravaggio and in the book on Caravaggio for children that we have been putting together.
My exchange with Hockney related to Caravaggio's relation to the reverse perspective of Byzantine art.
Although the great art historian Berenson had stressed Caravaggio's references to Byzantine arts, nobody among those present had seen the great Damascena Icon at the Greek church next to the Grandmaster's palace in Valletta, although Caravaggio himself must have done so, and some details may even be hinting at it.
Originally, the conference we attended in Florence had been planned to take place in Malta by the Caravaggio Foundation, which had organised the Mostra Impossibile at Vittoriosa as part of the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio's Maltese sojourn. Do you think there is still chance of establishing international publicity for Malta as the Island of Caravaggio and Valletta as his city?
I strongly feel the opportunity should not be lost when 2010 will be the fourth centenary of the death of the painter in whom there is at present maximum interest throughout the world.
In fact, Caravaggio's Maltese connections are more extensive than just his visit here. For instance, the very precise Caravaggio scholar Fernando Bologna has identified Tommaso Campanella, a friar portrayed in Caravaggio's our lady of the Rosary.
(The feast was established linked to the feast established by Pope Pius V, the Dominican patron of the founding of Valletta, in Thanksgiving for the victory at Lepanto in which Maltese galleons and the future Grandmaster Wignacourt himself, Caravaggio's future patron in Malta had played a great part).
It is widely known that Campanella wrote one of the most famous Utopias, or ideal cities, the Citta' del Sole.
Fewer know that Campanella had addressed his political project to the Grandmaster of the Order of St John clearly implying that Malta could be turned by him into his projected ideal city-state.
It is also known that Campanella was briefly a fellow guest with Caravaggio at Cardinal Del Monte's residence in Rome.
That Caravaggio may have thought of Malta under Wignacourt as some sort of ideal place where he could develop his radical world-vision seems all the more likely, and also that he may have been disillusioned when he actually came here. Nevertheless the artist's link with Malta is surely deeper than it might appear at first.
Surely, especially with the reputation that has been established by a scholar like Keith Sciberras, Malta can reap many advantages from self-development as a world centre for Caravaggio studies.
What other connections between Florence and Malta struck you?
The presence in Florence of two of the paintings that Caravaggio painted in Malta, the dead Cupid and the portrait of the Knight Martelli (whose family is remembered in the names of main streets and other places in Florence) is certainly not accidental.
I myself stayed at the Casa del Clero, which was formally the Convent of the Dames of the Order of Malta.
More impressively, September 8, the feast of the nativity of Our Lady, was celebrated on the waters of the River Arno by a Regatta with Gondolas (so curiously reminiscent of the Maltese dgħajsa especially since in Florence as against Venice they are propelled not by a pole but by oars similar to the Maltese).