| After uploading the last blog entry at our assigned studio in Valletta Design Cluster, Paul went to the Fast Ferry website to purchase tickets for our passage to Gozo on Saturday where we are conducting the main portion of our residency for the next three weeks. We were alarmed to see a notice that high winds required the cancelling of the ferry service from Valletta to Gozo. Fortunately the various folks connected to different organizations we are dealing with were very responsive to our emails. We have altered our itinerary to take a taxi to the Cirkewwa terminal and catch the ferry there. This is a much shorter trip than the one from Valletta (25 minutes v. 45 minutes) and is in more protected waters and the boat is larger from Cirkewwa so the windy conditions are less of an issue. Once this was decided we were able to relax. We are happy to have had the time to explore Valletta on the island of Malta but are quite eager to begin what is the primary focus of our residency: "Gozo - A Sense of Place". We strolled to Muża, the National Museum of Fine Arts and spent two and a half hours exploring the permanent exhibits there. The ground floor is dedicated to 20th century/contemporary artists, the 2nd focuses upon the 16th century reign of the Knights of St. John, and the third floor upon the time of the British rule. There didn't seem to be any exhibits dealing with the arts during the Napoleanic rule of the archipelago. Unsurprisingly we were most taken by the more contemporary works featured on the ground floor. The exhibit circa the rule of the Knights reinforced impressions we had during our tour of the Co Cathedral. There were many, many paintings of John the Baptist. It appears that painters created and gifted pictures of the patron saint of whichever organization/community that had the deepest pockets with the hopes that this would result in further commissions. The portraits of bloated, obese officials of the Order revealed a privileged elite, many of whom seemed incapable physically of mounting any sort of martial attack. Will and Arial Durant reveal in their multi-volume Story of Civilization that Cardinals, Bishops and other high officials of the Church oftentimes weren't in the priesthood, to the contrary, the "red hat" was oftentimes given to those who would donate the most to the Vatican and they would then practice rather extreme nepotism in the awarding of prestigious and rewarding positions. We noted that the style of painting shifting considerably after Caravaggio, most following were heavily influenced, if not direct imitations of his style. There were several works by Mattia Preti, including preliminary sketches for the six sections of the Co Cathedral ceiling. It was good to be able to view them up close as one would need binoculars to view details within St. John's and be able to ignore the baroque cacophony of images dulling the senses to focus solely upon his beautiful renderings. By the time we reached the British rule on the third floor we had already reached museum saturation which affected our receptivity but our interest in the work was inversely correspondent to the higher it was from the ground. It was interesting, given his recent ascension to the crown, to see busts of the former Prince of Wales. Afterwards we tried to find a store that would sell quality beer. After walking past a few no-go's we found a possibility that was scheduled to open at 4:30 PM. We strolled along the waterfront, heard a cannon fire in a tourist |
oriented event from a historical site and enjoyed seeing a red phone box ala Dr. Who's tardis. When we came back to the store it showed no signs of opening at the appointed time so we came back to the apartment to make a wonderful meal of whatever was still left in the kitchen (onion, garlic, celeriac root, sweet potato, red pepper in a wine/balsamic vinegar sauce with local ricotta cheese over couscous).
Tomorrow morning we pack, get a ride with Bolt the Maltese version of Uber and take the ferry to Gozo to begin the next chapter of this adventure.
Tomorrow morning we pack, get a ride with Bolt the Maltese version of Uber and take the ferry to Gozo to begin the next chapter of this adventure.