PULLICINO – BARDI – MORO – ISOLA DI MALTA Veduta dell’ Ingresso nel Porto Grande.

Description

Modelled on ALBERTO PULLICINO (Valletta, Malta, 1719-1759).

GIUSEPPE BARDI in Florence, second half of the 18th century.

[ISOLA DI MALTA Veduta dell’ Ingresso nel Porto Grande.]

Measurements: 37 x 66 cm – hand-coloured aquantint

Alberto Pullicino was a painter who specialised in producing panoramic views of Malta’s main harbours, the Grand Harbour and Marsamxett Harbour. His works were popular among the French knights of the Order of St John and some of them can now be found in France. He was active until 1749.

“The details are so close as to indicate that their source is Pullicino’s set of paintings… That Pullicino’s views were highly regarded is evidenced… by the fact that they were published as a set of etchings [aquatints]” (Boswell).

Nevertheless, they appear to be identical, and equally close in detail to the original paintings by Pullicino.

LITERATURE:

Boswell, D.M. Alberto Pulliccino: His artistic commissions, life, and times in the eighteenth-century Malta, in Melita Historica, 9, 1987, appendix, pp. 347-367.