"Shall we go in?",

asked the english woman of her boyfriend as she looked at the (not very long) queue to enter the Co-Cathedral of St John.

"Nah. You're alright",

he replied,

"I've seen some cathedrals at home."

And off they wandered. No doubt in search of something they couldn't see at home.

I found myself hoping the next thing they saw would be one of the original red, Gilbert Scott 'phone boxes that can be found on the streets of Valletta. You certainly can't see those at home.

I stayed put and joined the queue.

Although I have seen and indeed worshipped and sung in many cathedrals at home, none had what this one has. Something I had travelled one thousand four hundred and fifty six miles to see.

I was in the queue for perhaps ten minutes and before I knew it was standing , awestruck, before "The Beheading of St John the Baptist" (1607/8).

It is an extraordinary painting. The largest of the seventy or so that survive painted by Michelangelo di Merisi, better known simply by the name of the small unprepossessing town where he lived as a child.

Caravaggio.

It is also the only one he signed for reasons I'll come to.

It is a gruesome picture but that is because it depictes a gruesome event. In almost all his religious works Caravaggio avoids any great religious message that you might hear from a pulpit, or any doctrine or theology one can find in the confessional. Rather he takes us into a moment. A moment in time with all the muck and wrongdoing, the filth, violence and brutality, the sheer bloody awfulness of the manner in which human beings behave towards one another.

And no moment in time can claim to be more violent, filthy and brutal that the one in which, severed by the executioners no doubt blunt and dirty blade, the prophet's aortic artery spews forth his blood, with some force, from his neck.

Whether or not he is quite dead at this moment is, and has been for centuries, a moot point and hotly debated. What we do know is that as the blood is expelled from the neck it flows onto the floor and forms the words 'I Caravaggio, did this'.

Is the artist simplyclaiming authorship of what many, myself included, believe to be his finest work. A work that many would number amongst the top ten most significant in the history of Western Art.

Or is it a confession to the murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni who had did during a street brawl in which Caraggio was involved. Another moment in time that came to define and shape the rest of the artists life.

As a painting it is not just gruesome though. It is also utterly, utterly beautiful.

No matter how many other cathedrals you have seen, this one is is well worth a visit.

You can also see 'St Jerome' (1607/8). Another Caravaggio masterpiece that ios all too often ovewrshadowed by by its illustrious companion.