Mattia Preti

Mattia Preti (1613-1699) was an Italian Baroque painter from Calabria who spent much of his later career in Malta. He became especially known for his large fresco cycles in churches, above all his transformation of St. John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta with a series of paintings on the life and martyrdom of St. John the Baptist completed between 1661 and 1666. His style shows the influence of Caravaggio, and in 1660 he was made a Knight of the Order of Saint John, earning him the nickname Il Cavalier Calabrese, the Calabrian Knight.