MUŻA Ħdejk: Niċċelebraw lil Giuseppe Calì / Your MUŻA: Celebrating Giuseppe Calì

Giuseppe Calì (1846-1930) was born in Valletta to an artistically gifted family from Naples, where he returned for his artistic formation and was drawn to the art of Domenico Morelli (1826–1921) and the great French Romantic Eugene Delacroix (1798–1863).124 He returned to Malta in 1867, a virtuoso who had attained a good academic grounding and absorbed the fresh intensity of the eclectic, romantic and, realist palettes. Nevertheless, Calì also embraced the purity of the Nazarene idiom and the insipid sweetness of the imported religious works of Pietro Gagliardi (1809–1890) to win a constant flow of church commissions as from the 1880s. This opened a new chapter in Maltese ecclesiastical art.

• Heritage Malta Publishing