Mattia Preti: Italian Baroque Artist by Kathryn Gauci

Mattia Preti: Italian Baroque Artist by Kathryn Gauci

Detail: Mattia Preti’s Self Image - a painting by the southern Italian artist acquired by Heritage Malta. Photo:Times of Malta.

Having recently returned from Malta, I was inspired by the work of Mattia Preti (24 February 1613 – 3 January 1699) whose art illustrates the exuberant style of the late Baroque. He was such a prolific artist and his work defines St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. Preti was born in the small town of Taverna in Calabria, Italy. He is called Il Cavalier Calabrese (the Calabrian Knight) after his appointment as a Knight of the Order of St. John (Knights of Malta) in 1660. His apprenticeship is said to have been with Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, a follower of Caravaggio. Sometime before 1630, he joined his brother Gregorio (also a painter), in Rome where he became familiar with the techniques of Caravaggio and his school as well as with the work of other masters at the time such as Rubens, Guido Reni, Giovanni Lanfranco, and other notable artists of the day.

In Rome, he painted fresco cycles in the Saint’Andrea della Valle and San Carlo ai Catinari  Between 1644 and 1646, he spent time in Venice but remained based in Rome until 1653, returning later in 1660–61. He also painted frescoes for the church of San Biagio at Modena (1651–2) and participated in the fresco decoration of Palazzo Pamphilj in Valmontone (1660–61)

 

Allegoria dell’Aria. Palazzo Pamphilj in Valmontone

 

During most of 1653–1660, Preti worked in Naples and was influenced by another prominent painter of his era, Luca Giordano. His major works include a series of large fresco ex-votos depicting the Virgin or saints delivering people from the plague, which were painted on seven city gates and are now lost - two sketches for them are in the museum in Naples, including a bozzetto of the Virgin with the baby Jesus looming over the dying and their burial parties which envisions a Last Judgement presided over by a woman. Preti also won a commission to supervise the construction, carving, and gilding for the nave and transept of  San Pietro a Maiella, along with producing a Judith and Holofernes and Saint John the Baptist, both still in Naples

 

Saint Veronica with the Veil

Such religious themes were prevalent in strong catholic countries like Italy and Malta at the time, and as a consequence he was made a Knight of Grace in the Order of St John when he visited the Order's headquarters in Malta in 1659. Preti was to spend most of the remainder of his life there. He was commissioned to paint the entire barrel-vaulted ceiling of St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta and transformed it into a luminous, airy space filled with angels and saints, together with a huge series of paintings on the life and martyrdom of St John the Baptist (1661–1666). His work displays the dramatic chiaroscuro – a feature that defines this period – with the colours of the Venetian and Neapolitan tradition.

 

Ceiling in St John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta

 

 

 

Altarpiece. Cathedral.

His work in the cathedral also has an unusual technique – oil on stone – and his scenes portray an immense vigour and dynamic power, almost unparalleled, even in Italy in the second half of the 17^th-Century. He used quick, zigzag brush strokes and never made preparatory drawings, preferring to go over his work to correct it.

Preti certainly must have impressed his patrons so much that he was also given the task of designing the rich, gold decorations on the walls, along with several paintings in the Oratory where we see Caravaggio’s masterpiece, The Beheading of St John the Baptist. 

 

Boethius and Philosophy. It is believed that the painting was commissioned by Andrea di Giovanni, Knight of the Order of Malta. By the early nineteenth century it formed part of the collection of the Palace of the Grand Master of the same order. Photo: Times of Malta.

 

 

Saint George and the Dragon - Chapel of the Tongue of Aragon, Catalonia and Navarre, Co-Cathedral of St. John, Valletta, Malta

 

 

Preti's largest painting in Malta in the Church of St Lawrence, Vittoriosa, is being restored thanks to BOV - the bank of Valletta.

 

In his forty years in Malta, Preti left an impressive four hundred works. He not only painted for the Order, but for parish churches in the local communities too, leaving these small villages and hamlets with  priceless works of arts. Other paintings are in private collections. His increased reputation led to an expanded circle of patrons, and he received commissions from all over Europe. Preti enjoyed a long career with a considerable artistic output. His paintings are held by many great museums, including important collections in Naples, Valletta, Palermo, and his hometown of Taverna in Calabria.

 

Calling the Apostle Matthew c. 1630-1640, 104 x 164 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

 

The Concert 1630 The Hermitage Museum.

 

 Mattia Preti is buried in the Co-Cathedral in a magnificent vault alongside other Knights of the Order.

 

Polish Resistance in World War II by Kathryn Gauci

 

Polish Resistance in World War II

 

Members of the Polish resistance (Polish Institute of National Remembrance)
 

June 6, 2024, marked the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings in Normandy and although it was a success, many people lost their lives prior to that in the struggle to fight Nazi tyranny. From the very beginning of World War II, resistance groups started to form in every occupied country in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, but the first organisation was in Poland in the winter of 1939, and was led by a Major Henryk Dobrzański, known as Hubal.

Henryk Dobrzański, 

In March 1940, this group completely destroyed a battalion of German infantry in a skirmish near the Polish village of Huciska. A few days later, in an ambush near the village of Szałasy, it inflicted heavy casualties upon another German unit. As time progressed, resistance forces grew in size and number. To counter this threat, the German authorities formed a special 1,000 man-strong anti-partisan unit of combined SS-Wehrmacht forces, including a Panzer group. Although Dobrzański's unit never exceeded 300 men, the Germans put at least 8,000 men in the area to secure it

 

Witold Pilecki 1901-1948

In 1940, Witold Pilecki of the Polish resistance, presented to his superiors, a daring plan to enter Auschwitz concentration camp, gather intelligence on the camp from the inside, and organize inmate resistance. The Home Army approved this plan, provided him with a false identity card, and on 19 September, he deliberately went out during a street roundup in Warsaw and was caught by the Germans along with other civilians and sent to Auschwitz. In the camp he organized the underground organization. From October 1940, his network sent the first reports about the camp and its genocide to Home Army Headquarters in Warsaw.

Witold Pilecki as KL-Auschwitz prisoner, KL Number 4859, 1940

On the night of January 21–22, 1940, in the Soviet-occupied town of Czortków, the Czortków Uprising started. It was the first Polish uprising and the first anti-Soviet uprising of World War II. Anti-Soviet Poles, most of them teenagers from local high schools, stormed the local Red Army barracks and a prison, in order to release Polish soldiers kept there.

1940 was also the year of establishing Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland. Among the many activities of Polish resistance and Polish people one was helping endangered Jews. Polish citizens have the world's highest count of individuals who have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem as non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination during the Holocaust.

From April 1941, the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of the Union for Armed Struggle started in Poland. Operation N was complex organisation of sabotage, subversion and black-propaganda activities carried out against Nazi German occupation forces during World War II

By the beginning in March 1941, Witold Pilecki's reports from Auschwitz were forwarded via the Polish resistance to the Polish government in exile and through it, to the British government in London and other Allied governments. These reports were the first information about the Holocaust and the principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies.

In July 1941 Mieczysław (Mietzislav) Słowikowskii (using the code-name "Rygor"—Polish for "Rigor") set up "Agency Africa" one of World War II's most successful intelligence organizations. The information gathered by the Agency was used by the Americans and British in planning the amphibious November 1942 Operation Torch landings in North Africa.

General Jacob Devers with Major Mieczysław "Rygor" Słowikowski, on awarding him the Legion of Merit for his invaluable contributions to the Allied North African campaign.

Operation Torch

On 20 June 1942, the most spectacular escape from Auschwitz concentration camp took place. Four Poles, Eugeniusz Bendera, Kazimierz Piechowski, Stanisław Gustaw Jaster and Józef Lempart made a daring escape. The escapees were dressed as members of the SS-Totenkopfverbande, fully armed and in an SS staff car. They drove out the main gate in a stolen automobile Steyr 220 belonging to Rudolf Hoss with a smuggled report from Witold Pilecki about the Holocaust. The Germans never recaptured any of them.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and The Warsaw Uprising

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the Grossaktion Warsaw during summer 1942, in which more than a quarter of a million Jews were deported from the ghetto to Treblinka and murdered, the remaining Jews began to build bunkers They built dozens of fighting posts and smuggled weapons and explosives into the ghetto. Next they executed a number of collaborators, including Jewish Ghetto police officers, as well as Gestapo and Abwehr agents (such as Judenrat member Dr Nossig, executed on 22 February 1943). Józef Szeryński, former head of the Jewish Ghetto Police, committed suicide.

Photograph from SS General Juergen Stroop's report showing the Warsaw ghetto after the German suppression of the ghetto uprising.

The uprising started on 19 April when the ghetto refused to surrender to the police commander, who then ordered the burning of the ghetto, block by block, ending on 16 May. A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. German casualties were probably less than 150. It was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II.

The Jews knew that the uprising was doomed and their survival was unlikely. Marek Edelman, the only surviving commander of one of the groups, said that the motivation for fighting was "to pick the time and place of our deaths". According to the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, the uprising was "one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people".

Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, Commander of the Polish Home Army

The Warsaw Uprising which took place in the summer of 1944, was a major WWII operation by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Home Army. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army temporarily halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to raze the city in reprisal. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement in WWII.

Warsaw Old Town after the uprising. 85% of the city was deliberately destroyed by German forces

Initially, the Poles established control over most of central Warsaw, but the Soviets ignored Polish attempts to make radio contact with them and did not advance beyond the city limits. Intense street fighting between the Germans and Poles continued. Unfortunately, there were strong allegations that Stalin tactically halted his forces to let the operation fail and allow the Polish resistance to be crushed

 

Home Army soldier from the Mokotów District surrenders to German troops.

 

Warsaw's Old Town Market Place, August 1944

The Warsaw Uprising which took place in the summer of 1944, was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Home Army. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army temporarily halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to raze the city in reprisal. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during WWII. 

Polish red-and-white flag with superposed Katwice ( 'anchor') emblem of the Polish Underground State and Home Army 

Initially, the Poles established control over most of central Warsaw, but the Soviets ignored Polish attempts to make radio contact with them and did not advance beyond the city limits. Intense street fighting between the Germans and Poles continued. Unfortunately, there were strong allegations that Stalin tactically halted his forces to let the operation fail and allow the Polish resistance to be crushed

Winston Churchill pleaded with Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt to help Britain's Polish allies, to no avail. Then, without Soviet air clearance, Churchill sent over 200 low-level supply drops under British High Command, in an operation known as the Warsaw Airlift. Later, after gaining Soviet air clearance, the U.S. Army Air Force sent one high-level mass airdrop as part of Operation Frantic. 

Warsaw in flames. 

 Although the exact number of casualties is unknown, it is estimated that about 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and about 6,000 badly wounded. In addition, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions. Jews being harboured by Poles were exposed by German house-to-house clearances and mass evictions of entire neighbourhoods. German casualties totalled about 2,000 soldiers killed and missing. Approximately 25% of Warsaw's buildings were destroyed and following the surrender of Polish forces, German troops systematically levelled another 35% of the city block by block. Together with earlier damage suffered in the 1939 invasion of Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, over 85% of the city was destroyed by January 1945 when the course of the events in the Eastern Front forced the Germans to abandon the city. 

 

Apart from their fighting spirit, we must also remember that the Poles played an important role in the Enigma machine. Three Poles, Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki, and Henryk Zygalski disclosed their Enigma results and handed their allies-to-be copies of the Enigma machine. On 1 September the war broke out. The three genius mathematicians fled Poland and later joined the French cryptographers in France. The knowledge they had provided considerably contributed to the cracking of the more complicated wartime Enigma codes used by the Germans. This happened at Bletchley Park. 

 Memorial at Bletchley Park commemorating three Polish mathematicians. 

(Photo by Magda Szkuta)

Krystyna Skarbek, OBE, GM 

Poland also gave the Allies one of the best female spies. Krystyna Skarbek, OBE, GM, also known as Christine Granville, was a Polish agent of the British Special Operations Executive during the WWII. She was the first to bring back photographs of German troops amassing on the Polish border ready for Operation Barbarossa.

These people, numbered in their thousands, were exceptionally brave and their heroism must never be forgotten.

There is a currently a film about Witold Pilecki on Netflix.

Kathryn Gauci is a historical fiction writer whose WWI and WWII novels are set in France, Austria, Greece and Turkey. Three of her books are the recipients of the CIBA Hemingway Award for 20th Century Wartime Fiction.