When the Order was given possession of Malta in 1530, the icon was held at the Church of St. Lawrence in their headquarters in Vittoriosa. When the Order moved its base to the newly built capital city of Valletta in the 1570s, the icon was housed at a purpose-built side chapel of Saint John's Co-Cathedral. The icon remained there until the French invasion of Malta in 1798 which expelled the Order from the Maltese Islands. The French allowed the Order to take some relics with them, but not their precious reliquaries. The icon together with a fragment of the True Cross and of the hand of John the Baptist were passed by admiral Giulio Renato Litta to Paul I of Russia, who succeeded Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim as Grand Master. Paul placed them in the Priory Palace at Gatchina, near St. Petersburg.