Siege of Malta, 1565

A set of fifteen numbered prints, including the title-sheet, showing the Great Siege of Malta between 18 May and 11 September 1565 by the Turks, commanded by Kara Mustafa Pasha (c.1500-7 August 1580), and defended by the Knights of the Order of St John under Grand Master Jean Parisot de Valette (4 February 1495-21 August 1568), resulting in the abandonment of the siege by the Turks on the arrival of a Spanish fleet and army commanded by García Álvarez de Toledo, 4^th Marquis of Villafranca (29 August 1514-31 May 1577). The Ottoman Empire (1500-1606): Conflicts in the Mediterranean (1532-1565).

Formerly kept in a rough buff paper folder on which is written, in black pencil and red ink, the George III heading and, in a later hand, in black pencil: a-p. All the prints, except for RCIN 721033.a, have gilt edges to the same three sides, indicating that they have been cut out of a volume and that the position of the guard was at the top edge of each print; this is confirmed by the presence of adhesive along the top edge of some of the prints.

This is the first edition of the engravings by Matteo Perez d'Alleccio, which were published in an album in 1582, and which were based on the paintings of the siege of Malta that he made between 1576 and 1581 on the walls of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of the Grand Master of the Order of St. John's Palace in Valletta. When the first edition was published in 1582, it carried a dedication to Cardinal de' Medici; this incurred the displeasure of the then Grand Master, who withdrew his support from d'Aleccio, ensuring that only a few copies of the sets were published. A second edition was published in 1631 by Antonio Francesco Lucini of Florence. Lucini renumbered the folios, adding, as Folio II, the portraits of the Grand Masters from 1099-1631, and transferred the text from the face of the prints to the bottom margins.

The prints tell the story of the siege and the scenes are based on the contemporary diaries of Francisco Balbi di Corregio, a sixty-year-old arquebusier who fought with the Spanish Corps during the siege.

Valletta was founded in 1566 by the Knights Hospitallers of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. Designed by the Italian architect and military engineer Franceso Laparelli da Cortona (1521-1570), and built on virgin ground, its regular rectangular layout of streets was surrounded by massive bastioned walls and ditches. The city occupies the end of the Scebberra peninsula, at the tip of which was Fort St Elmo which bore the brunt of the first stages of the Great Siege.