MATTIA PRETI

Italian prolific and influential painter considered one of the major artists of his time born in Taverna, Calabria, 24 February 1613 & died in Valletta 3 January 1699. He was the second son of Cesare Preti and Innocenza Schipani. He was educated at Taverna under Mgr Marcello Anania, Archpriest of the Church of St Barbara.

He learnt the rudiments of art from his elder brother Gregorio Preti (1603-1672) a painter active in Rome. During his formative years he travelled widely and was influenced by Neapolitan Caravaggist painters. However, he was not insensitive to the lighter chromatic qualities of Venetian painting and the art of Correggio (1489-1534), Lanfranco (1582-1647) and Guercino (1591- 1666). In 1642, while in Rome, he was created a knight of the Order of St John and in 1650 he was commissioned to paint three scenes for the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle.

By 1653 he was living and working in Naples; it was here that he executed the canvas of St Francis Xavier for the Chapel of Aragon in St John’s Church, Valletta. He also produced for the same Chapel of Aragon the splendid St George altarpiece and the St Firminus completing the chapel’s decoration with a pair of lunettes respectively depicting the martyrdom of St Lawrence and St Lawrence meeting Pope Sixtus II (257-258).

In 1659 he requested the Order to be promoted to Knight of Grace which was granted in 1661. In that year he took in hand the decorations of the vault in the Conventual Church of St John which he completed in 1666. From then onwards he settled permanently in Malta, briefly leaving the island once in 1672 to go to Italy and visit his native town.

He died in Malta after thirty years of residence and was buried in St John’s. Preti’s powerful artistic personality was pervasive in Malta where he maintained a busy workshop and his paintings abound. His self-portrait was engraved by Lasinio Figlio after a drawing by V. Gozzini, while another portrait of his was lithographed by the Brocktorffs after a drawing by Paolo Cuschieri and published in Malta in 1859 in Sacra Serie di Santi ed Eroi of the Order of St John painted by Preti at St John’s Conventual Church.

In the Museum of St John, Valletta, there is exhibited an oil on canvas portrait of the master by a follower. Preti’s surname surfaced again in Malta in 1735 when Luigi Preti of the late Matteo and Anna married Giuseppa Galea on 23 October at Porto Salvo, Valletta.

From An Encyclopedia of Artists with a Malta Connection