News | Sunday, 05 April 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

National damage to Vilhena portrait

For the record, and posterity: on Tuesday 10 March, at the palace in Valletta, the great, majestic portrait of Grand Master Anton Manoel de Vilhena sustained heavy damage when through negligence or incompetence was laid to lean against one of the window openings of the Throne Room. A gust of wind flung open the windows displacing de Vilhena’s painting, and falling upon a number of chairs, the painting was ripped right through the canvas sustaining a gash several feet long. Who, may we ask, was responsible for all this? Does not Heritage Malta monitor our patrimony? I should think that Heritage Malta owes the nation explanation.
Another matter, by way of ongoing ‘maintenance’ damage, is the scandalous manner the way the palace paintings’ bottom-running frames are ‘cleaned’ by staff: wet cloths are run over the gilded surfaces ‘to remove the dust’, as the charwoman insisted, obviously ignoring the fact that liquids penetrating hair-line cracks blisters the millimetrical layer of gold-leaved surfaces with a resulting loss of texture and gold. This is how we run things in Malta – we do not deserve such custody to our patrimony.
About three years ago, I had reported to Heritage Malta vandal damage at Tarxien Temples: the stone hearth in the central temple had sizeable displaced chunks dislodged from rim to base, with the binding plaster infilling smashed and missing. I later learnt that a foreign student prankster had ‘jokingly’ jumped into the hearth. Has the damage been repaired? Not at all – the fractures are still there, wide open, allowing rain to penetrate into the fissures, allowing rain to penetrate into the fissures, allowing vegetation to take root.
There are other sad stories to be told, but what de Vilhena’s painting has suffered, is for the moment, the focus of the latest atrocities.

Stephen Degiorgio

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.