VALLETTA (AFP) — Four centuries ago, Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a man in trouble.
Celebrated for his dramatic chiaroscuro (light and shadow) paintings, he was equally theatrical in life, and one of the many brawls he was notorious for ended in the death of a young adversary in Rome, Ranuccio Tomassoni, in 1606.
With a price on his head, Caravaggio fled to Naples and then to Malta, where he hoped to curry favour with the Knights of Malta and secure a pardon for Tomassoni's death.
The gamble paid off only partially, since the artist was quickly invested as a knight and won a succession of commissions on the tiny Mediterranean island, but he landed once more in jail before two years were up, after yet another brawl.
By the end of 1608 Caravaggio, who escaped from prison, was unceremoniously expelled from the Order of the Knights of Malta, who called him a "foul and rotten member." He died less than two years later aged 38.
It is this period of self-imposed exile -- during which Caravaggio painted the only work he actually put a signature to, "The Beheading of Saint John" (1608) -- that Malta will mark with an exhibit opening Sunday at Valletta's National Museum of Archaeology.
The two-month exhibition titled "Caravaggio: The Image of the Divine" was "nearly impossible" to mount in logistical terms, Kenneth Gambin, the head curator of Heritage Malta, told AFP.
The 11 Caravaggios and one copy include two contributions from the Piasecka-Johnson Collection in Princeton, New Jersey, "The Sacrifice of Isaac" and "St Francis in Ecstasy."
Another two are from private collections in Italy, "Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy" and a second "Sacrifice of Isaac."
A pair of paintings, both titled "Saint Francis in Prayer," are sure to spur debate, Gambin said.
The first, from the Museo Civico of Cremona, northern Italy, and dated 1606, was long considered an authentic Caravaggio, but was determined not to be in 2000.
The second, thought to have been completed in 1604, is on loan from the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica at Rome's Palazzo Barberini, and was identified as the authentic version in the 2000 evaluation.
The two paintings most associated with Caravaggio's ill-fated stay on Malta, however, will not be part of the exhibition.
"The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist" and "Saint Jerome Writing" will remain at their habitual home, the oratory of St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta, built by the Knights of Malta.
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