painting, and gilding,
make it difficult to argue on the basis of style. None the less,
the grotesque features and the fleshiness of the form suggest
another ship sculpture. It was not a figurehead because the
galleys of the Knights did not carry one but it might have decorated
the stern cabin or, perhaps the beak-head of a ship such as
the caracca.
It is probable that the statue was not originally
a St. Joseph. The Child is obviously a later interpolation
and is very uncomfortably posed on the outstretched right hand
which seems to have been intended to carry a completely different
object such as an alms, or pilgrim's, bowl. The blossoming stick
may similarly be replacing a pilgrim's staff. My suggestion
is that the statue may, quite possibly, be identified with the
Pierre Vianny's St. James, metamorphosed as a St.
Joseph.
During their long stay of over two hundred
years, between 1306-1522, on Rhodes, the Knights came into close
contact with Byzantine art. |
In spite of the fact that they seem
to have remained essentially western in their aesthetic and
artistic orientation, they could not escape its influence. While
they continued, all along, to commission and import from the
West liturgical and other objets d'art, the cultural
realities of their convent home made it impossibile for them
to avoid the employment of Greek artists and, in time, came
to rely increasingly on them38. They also acquired a rich collection
of icons, some of which they brought in their luggage to Malta.
The latter included the exceptionally high quality Madonna
of Damascus, which for the warmth of its human poignancy
and simple sureness of line stands out as one of the finest
surviving, early twelfth century paintings of the School of
Constantinople. It is an earlier and more accomplished work
than the better known Madonna of Vladimir in the Tretiakov
Gallery Moscow, which is iconographically very similar. The
Knights cherished it more for its talismanic significance than
artistic worth and concealed the original image beneath an over |
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| Diptych reliquary of miniature
steatite icons. Constantinople (?), 13th century or earlier.
Cathedral Museum, Mdina. Photo credit: The
Marquis Cassar de Sayn. |
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[38] As shown by the
surviving fresco cycles: J. Gash, "Painting and Sculpture
in Early Modern Malta", in V. Mallia-Milanes (ed.), Hospitaller
Malta 1530-1798: Studies on Early Modern Malta and the Order of
St. John of Jerusalem, Malta 1993, 513.
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