ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to answer the question by showing how art collections, built up over the course of the lives of individual knights of the Order of St John and subsequently dispersed, present an uncommon field of research in the history of art collecting in early modern Europe. The Order’s rules did cause tensions in the acquisition and disposal of works of art, rendering art collections as much a communal matter as a private one, yet Hospitaller collectors succeeded in accumulating magnificent collections within the parameters established by the Order’s regulations. Hospitaller art collecting is a field of study which is well served by the documents held in the archives of the Order on Malta. Some dispropriamenti were drawn up for reasons other than the imminent prospect of death, such as when a Hospitaller knight was elected to a pastoral role within the Church.
