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The white Carrara marble sculpture portraying the Madonna holding the Christ Child that was situated behind the main altar of the Observant Franciscan church of Ta’ Ġieżu in Rabat has been conserved and restored at the Prevarti Ltd laboratory.
The life-size Madonna and Child sculpture will be returned to the church this week, to be placed on the second altar on the north aisle where it was intended to be placed after the 1757 reconstruction of the Rabat church.
After being removed from the church on September 15, and as part of the research and prior to the cleaning tests and conservation, the sculpture has been subjected to intense photographic documentation, tests under UV and Gamma rays, as well as 3D scans.
‘Gagini Madonna’ was commissioned in 1504, 26 years before the Knights of the Order of St John came to Malta
Detail of existing pigment on the effigy.
An Italian Renaissance white Carrara marble statue portraying the Madonna holding the Christ Child, which was commissioned 26 years before the arrival of the Knights of the Order of St John in Malta and which was situated behind the main altar of the church of Santa Maria di Gesù (or Ta’ Ġieżu), in Rabat, has started undergoing much needed conservation and restoration.
Known as the Gagini Madonna, the statue was commissioned on February 23, 1504,in Messina, directly from the then 26-year-old Palermitan sculptor Antonello Gagini (1478–1536), purposely for the newly-built church of Ta’ Ġieżu, in Rabat dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin, which was constructed in the late 1490s.