Ventures and Adventures

In his long-awaited sixth instalment of Histories of Malta, Giovanni Bonello once again delights us with this excellent and well-researched collection of 16 articles. Social habits and past-times are featured in such articles about Maltese-made playing cards, gambling under the Knights, and Maltese inns and taverns. Tales of Knights like Fra Pietro Bembo, and his connection with Lucretia Borgia, and Fra Alonso de Contreras, who apart from being a Knight is also described as a corsair due to his picaresque adventures, are also included. This edition also includes an article about Francesco Potenzano and Matteo Perez d’Aleccio, and their works for St John’s Co-Cathedral, as well as another with new attributions to the oeuvre of the baroque architect Francesco Buonamici. Caravaggio is featured in an article about his friends and victims in Malta, as well as in the penultimate instalment, where Bonello discusses Philip Farrugia Randon’s book Caravaggio Knight of Malta. Robert Attard’s Malta: A Third Collection of Tales and Narratives is also reviewed.

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CONTENTS

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A Knight of Malta for Lucretia Borgia - Fra Pietro Bembo

Fra Giorgio Correa - Murder in the Annus Horribilis

Francesco Potenzano and Matteo Perez d’Aleccio

Gambling in Malta under the Order

Caravaggio: Friends and Victims in Malta

Medical Digressions in a Maltese Novel c.1660

Francesco Buonamici - Eight New Attributions

Fra Alonso de Contreras, Corsair and Knight of Malta

One or Two Cassarino Painters?

Made-in-Malta Playing Cards (1684-1750)

Clandestine Marriages by Knights of Malta

Random Notes on Artists Related to Malta

500 Years of Inns and Taverns in Malta

The Sardinia Tragedy - Death Outside Grand Harbour

State-of-the Heart Caravaggio

Finger Food from the Tables of Maltese History

Provenance

Index

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