Melchiorre Cafà, born Melchiorre Gafà and also known as Caffà, Gafa, Gaffar or Gafar, was a MalteseBaroque sculptor. Cafà began a promising career in Rome but this was cut short by his premature death following a work accident. He was the older brother of the architect Lorenzo Gafà.
Biography
Cafà was born in Vittoriosa, Malta, and given the name Marcello at his baptism on 21 January 1636. After his move to Rome in 1658 or shortly after, he was most frequently referred to as Melchior Maltese. His brother Lorenzo Gafà was one of the leading architects in Malta. Cafà was already an accomplished sculptor when he came to Rome and entered the workshop of Ercole Ferrata, who was not strictly speaking his teacher although he probably helped him refining his technique. Despite soon attracting his own commissions, he stayed in close contact with Ferrata and collaborated with him. In 1660 Cafà signed his first independent contract with Prince Camillo Pamphilj for the relief of the Martyrdom of Saint Eustace in Sant'Agnese in Agone. In 1662 he became a member of the Accademia di San Luca and was even elected its principal in 1667, but declined the honor. Reportedly, he was a close friend of the painter Giovanni Battista Gaulli. Cafà died on the 4 September 1667 after some material collapsed on him in the foundry of Saint Peter's while he was working on the altar decoration for Saint John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta. There is no monument or plaque in his honour in his home city of Vittoriosa, Malta. However, the Maltese Post Office issued several stamps with Cafà's sculptures as motives.
Works
Extremely busy throughout his short life, he only managed to finish a few major commissions himself:
Wooden statue of Saint Paul in St. Paul's Shipwreck in Valletta.
The marble statue of the dying Saint Rose of Lima was in 1668 the centrepiece for the future saint's Beatification ceremony in Rome's Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and shipped to Peru straight after that event. While it has some formal analogies with Bernini's Ecstasy of St Theresa and possibly influenced in its turn the latter's Death of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, Cafà's statue depicts a peaceful death, free from the turmoil in the two works by Bernini.
The relief in white marble of the Ecstasy of Saint Catherine of Siena at Santa Caterina a Magnanapoli in Rome. The curved polychrome background is suggestive of cloud formations and of a halo, intensifying the idea that the saint is carried to heaven. There are no known dates for Cafà's intervention, but it is generally accepted that he finished it himself, i.e. 1667 or earlier. The wax bozzetto for this work was discovered by Edgar Vella in 1995 and is now in a private collection in Malta.
Martyrdom of Saint Eustace in Sant'Agnese in Agone, Rome. Cafà's terracotta is in the Museo di Palazzo Venezia in Rome. In 2014, Vella published his discovery of a wax bozzetto by Cafà for this marble relief.
