Mattia Preti: Saints and Heroes for the
Knights of Malta
Cynthia de Giorgio
This book studies the iconography of saints and heroes of the Knights of Malta as depicted by the artist Mattia Preti between 1658 and 1698. Mattia Preti’s corpus of paintings was selected because it is one of the most important collections of narrative paintings depicting saints and heroes that received the devotion of the Knights of Malta. The book is organised where possible in the chronology of Preti’s production. The first section of the book relates Preti’s life and commissions, while the second part is dedicated to the saints’ stories and legends, each followed by a description of the paintings Preti produced depicting the particular saint and its narrative according to history or legend. All the paintings cited in this book have been personally inspected and examined. This book coincides well with my career as cura
