Gudja’s Crucifixion altarpiece: rediscovered beauty and meaning

It has been time and again demonstrated that in 17th- and 18th-century Malta, sodalities and confraternities were very generous when it came to commissioning religious pictures and artefacts. Such method of patronage may well lie behind Gudja’s intriguing altarpiece depicting a Crucifixion scene.

It is more than likely that Gudja’s now defunct Agonia Sodality could have forked out the necessary money to commission it. Although we do not yet have proof that unequivocally connects the altarpiece’s commission to the sodality, all extraneous evidence points in this direction.

[attach id=910845 size="medium" align="right" type="image"]Detail of the Virgin’s face following cleaning treatments and the removal of past retouchings. Photo: Amy Sciberras[/attach]

Agonia sodalities were typically set up in most parishes. Their members were tasked with an activity that was considered fundamental to saving a dying person’s soul from the eternal clutches of Hell. In those most crucial of hours, when a moribund person teetered between life and death, the confratelli would have given their all to save the poor soul from damnation.

The very word agonia is etymologically derived from Greek and...