In the third week of January, Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar will be holding its first heritage talk for 2015 – Interpreting the Symbols on the Tombstones and Monuments of St. John’s Co-Cathedral, which will be delivered by Dane Munro.

Although the passage of time has blurred the meaning of the images and symbols used on the tombstones and monuments of St. John’s Co-Cathedral, the iconography continues to fascinate many people today. What do the symbols on the tombstones and monuments in St. John’s Co-Cathedral reveal about the deceased and those who created the memorials?

Members of the public who would like to know more about the complex symbolic iconography on the marble tombstones and monuments of St John’s Co-Cathedral are invited to FAA’s first heritage talk for 2105, when Dane Munro, an authority on St. John’s marbles, and author of the definitive book Memento Mori, will reveal all this in his interesting and perhaps controversial lecture about “the most beautiful floor in the world.”

In this lecture, specifically prepared for FAA, Dane Munro will interpret the symbols on the tombstones and monuments of St John’s Co-Cathedral using digital photo enhancing. Munro will also explore the relationship between the viewer and this complex symbolic iconography in a way that has never been done before.

Dane Munro (1958, Melbourne) is an independent scholar, lecturer, cultural interpreter and guide, based in Malta. He regularly gives public lectures and publishes at home in Malta and abroad on the (art)historical aspects of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

His academic work and publications on the sepulchral art at St John’s Co-Cathedral at Valletta, Malta, was both welcomed and critically acclaimed, since for the first time a wider public could enjoy reading the translations into English of the more than 400 inscribed text in Latin of the sepulchral slabs and monuments on what is considered to be the floor of floors.

His corresponding monumental publication Memento Mori, a companion to “The Most Beautiful Floor in the World’ received excellent reviews in the New York Review of Books and in the British Journal of the Church Monuments Society.

He is frequently asked to conduct research on the lives and career of knights the Order of St John for family

The talk is being given on Wednesday, the 21st of January, starting at at 6.30pm, at the Corinthia Palace Hotel, Attard.

To reserve a place at this intriguing and thought-provoking lecture, please go to: www.faa.org.mt or www.ticketengine.faa.org.mt or kindly phone 21310720.

Participants are kindly requested to be seated by 6.00pm A €5 donation towards FAA’s art restoration project is kindly solicited.

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