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Louis Scerri:
Treasures of Malta, No. 63.
Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, 2015
Giuseppe Calì’s Death of Dragut, on the cover of this issue of Treasures of Malta, is probably the painting that has contributed most to how the collective memory of the Maltese views the events around the Siege of 1565.
It becomes even more remarkable, considering its technical competence, when one recalls that it was painted when the artist was still 21 and it helped set him on the way to achieve his great popular appeal.
Although this particular issue is dedicated to the Great Siege, it is more than right that the editor Giovanni Bonello should pay tribute to the memory of Maurice de Giorgio, the quintessential gentleman who oversaw the birth of Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti and headed it for 23 years as it developed into one of the proud flagships of Maltese culture.
May his noble example en-lighten other businessman that the real way to obtain the nation’s gratitude is not by erecting concrete monsters and paying blind homage to Mammon.
A unique siege map recently discovered in Venice shows that even today, 450 years after the events, new documents relating to the siege keep appearing. William Soler, an architect by profession, but also a Melitensia expert, explains the importance of the map that gives several salient events of the siege, with an odd, superimposed trace of the Valletta bastions. The evidence points to a date between late June 1565 and early January 1566.
Robert Dauber, the Viennese scholar who has written profusely on the Hospitallers, writes about Ascanio delle Corgna, the colourful one-eyed character who was released from prison to become the chief strategist of the Gran Soccorso and lead it to lift the four-month siege.
Another hero of the siege was Mechor de Monserrat, whose martyrdom at Fort St Elmo elevated him to the ranks of a ‘saint’ of the Order and even earned him a place painted by Mattia Preti in the vault of St John’s. Christopher Gerrard and Alejandra Guiterrez trace his and his family’s connections with Canet, a small village near Valencia.
Fortifications expert Stephen Spiteri analyses the structure of St Elmo at the time of the siege. Fort St Elmo was the smallest and most exposed of the Order’s fortifications but its valiant defence was the turning point of the siege.
Despite the inherent imperfections in its designs, it held out to prove that fortifications are only as strong as the hearts of their defenders. This article gains a lot by the inclusion of Spiteri’s own excellent diagrams and graphic reconstructions.
The Turkish military machine understood well the psychological effect that the sound of massed trumpets and percussion instruments would have on the enemy. Such musicians were present at the siege and are depicted in d’Aleccio’s frescoes. The use of martial music would become part of Western armies too and seem to have even influenced local bands. Musicologist Anna Borg Cardona provides all the details in her paper on the sounds of war.
A physicist by profession, and the author of the latest three-volume siege novel The Course of Fortune, Tony Rothman analyses and evaluates the various contemporary and modern sources of the siege and discusses the difficulties of drawing one coherent account, difficulties that all historians have to face in explaining past events. Perhaps the route to a greater ‘truth’ may lie in the penning of historical fiction.
William Zammit discusses the siege as seen in various Maltese school textbooks over the years, the accounts that have helped form our national idea of the events of 1565.
Robert Attard investigates and questions whether the three pieces kept at the Valletta Armoury are part of Jean de Valette’s armour, actually worn during the siege as claimed by Laking in 1902. On the other hand, a helmet conserved in the Museo di Piazza Venezia in Rome seems to have a stronger claim to have belonged to the grand-master.
One of the most touching visual depictions linked with the siege is the lunette of The Massacre of the Knights at Fort St Elmo which has been attributed to Bartolomeo Garagona. Originally, it was displayed at the oratory at St John’s above Caravaggio’s masterpiece.
Composer and pianist Alexander Vella Gregory focuses on a seven-part commemorative motet entitled Congregati sunt composed by Fernando de las Infantas (1534–c.1610), a Spanish nobleman who enjoyed some fame for his musical talents and a greater renown for his theological knowledge. Its chief value lies in the fact that it is because the only motet written directly during for the siege that we know of, as it implores God for deliverance from the gathered enemy.
Martin Micallef, a collector of Maltese coins and medals, shares his favourite object with us. It is a bronze medal coined to commemorate the lifting of the siege which shows the grandmaster on its obverse side and a David about to cut off Goliath’s head on the reverse, the work of the Flemish master of the mint Simon Prevost.
This issue of Treasures of Malta will surely keep its readers interested as they eagerly await the promised hefty pictorial volume by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, dedicated to the Valletta that no longer exists. It promises to be one of the best-sellers for this Christmas period.