Francesco Noletti

Biography

The inventories of the Barberini family, drawn up between 1631 and 1636, list “six oil paintings with various flowers”. This is the earliest mention of the Roman painter who would later be called Il Maltese. The author’s name in the entry does not look like the name of a celebrity.

Noletti was born in Malta, most probably in Valletta; the year of birth is more often given as 1611, sometimes 1610. Nothing is known about his teachers or his early years. In Rome he appears in documents as an already mature painter, and the nickname Il Maltese, “the Maltese”, stuck to him because of his place of origin. His patron was Pietro Cesarini, a Knight of Malta. In 1642 Noletti settled permanently in Rome: first he lived on Via Margutta, then on Via Laurina. Here he married and worked together with Andrea Sacchi. Sources give different dates for the move, from 1636–1640 to 1642, but it is 1642 that is confirmed by documents.

He specialised in still lifes with carpets and fabrics. His pictures are built around heavy oriental carpets on which stand vases of flowers, dishes of fruit, silver and glass tableware, violins and other instruments. Sometimes he enlivened a composition with a small dog. In one of the still lifes there is a small mirror reflecting a man’s face: it may be the painter’s signature or a self-portrait, but there is no proof. To my mind, such a detail suggests that he knew the worth of his own hand and wanted to remain in the picture at least as a reflection. The costly objects he painted probably did not belong to him: he was counting on the taste of wealthy patrons.

In 1661, after his death, a “Francesco Maltese” is mentioned as a specialist in paintings of richly ornamented carpets. So his reputation in this genre held up for another seven years.

He died in Rome on 4 December 1654. His death certificate calls him a “famous painter”. His works sold readily in his lifetime, but after his death he was quickly forgotten. Joshua Reynolds, in his Catalogue of Famous Painters, limited himself to a brief line: a “painter of vases, instruments, carpets and still-lifes”.

No signed works by him survive, and this led to confusion. He was long mistaken for Benedetto Fioravanti, the author of a signed picture, “Musical Instruments, Carpets and Flowers” (private collection). Other works were assigned to “Francesco Fieravino”, about whom nothing was known. The basis for discussing Noletti’s style came from two etchings published in 1703 by Jacobus Coelemans. The decisive step was the discovery of an anonymous portrait at the University of Malta, which made it possible to name the painter with confidence. Today his pictures are in various collections. The Hermitage in St Petersburg has three works, two of them a pair: “Still Life with an Oriental Carpet” and “Still Life with a Melon”. In France, still lifes with a carpet, flowers and a mirror are in the museums of Avignon (Musée Calvet), Carcassonne and Saint-Brieuc, the Saint-Brieuc work being there on deposit from the Louvre.