FRANCESCO ZAHRA

Maltese prolific and highly talented painter and designer born in Isla 15 December 1710 and died in Valletta 19 August 1773. He was born into a family of sculptors and stone carvers. He was the second child and first son of the sculptor Pietro Paolo Zahra and Agostina née Casanova who hailed from a family of stone carvers.

He studied under his father, with whom he collaborated in the decoration of churches, Pietro Paolo Troisi and possibly under the painter Giovanni Nicola Buhagiar and was on friendly terms with the painter Antoine Favray. On 16 February 1743 he married, in the Church of St Paul at Valletta, Teresa Fenech (d.1751) who bore him five children.

After his marriage he settled in Valletta where in 1766 he resided in the Quartiere di rimpetto la Chiesa dei Zoccolanti. Zahra was very much involved in designing decorations and furnishings, including the dismountable Altar of Repose, for the Cathedral at Mdina. From 1755 to 1756 he painted the splendid paintings on the soffit of the chapter hall of the Mdina Cathedral.

He produced fine altarpieces and portraits which betray elements of Neapolitan influences and rank him as a major Maltese painter of his age. He was buried in the Collegiate Church of St Paul’s Shipwreck at Valletta. A square in Senglea is named after him. Among the many portraits he painted are those of several ecclesiactics, including Bishops of Malta. In 1757 he signed and dated a fine portrait of Mgr Bartolomeo Rull, Bishop of Malta from 1757 to 1769.

From An Encyclopedia of Artists with a Malta Connection