COLLEZIONE D’ARTE RELIGIOSA MODERNA
Opened 1973 at the behest of Paul VI Montini (1963/78)
About 800 works by about 250 artists in 55 rooms in the Borgia
Apartment, included in the Borgia Tower and in the small Borgia rooms as well
as in some rooms one floor below the Sistine Chapel
"We
must re-establish the friendship between the Church and artists. (...) We have upset
our friendship. (...) You have abandoned us a little bit, you went far away, drinking at other fountains,
looking legitimately to express other things; but not ours. (...) But (...) we
also recognize that we gave you a little tribulation, because we have imposed
you imitation as the main canon, to you who are creators, always lively,
gushing of a thousand ideas and a thousand novelties. (...) Please forgive us!
And then we have abandoned you too. We haven’t explained our things, we have not introduced
you in the secret cell, where the mysteries of God make man's heart jump for
joy, for hope, for happiness, for intoxication" (Speech to the artists of
Paul VI on May 7, 1964)
Oil on canvas
“The
Precursor” 1927/28 by
Giulio Aristide
Sartorio (1860/1932)
“The
Colosseum” 1972, “Hand of the Crucifix” 1965 and three other
works by
Renato Guttuso (1911/87)
“Dali's surrealism has always maintained an individualistic
character, alternately ironic and problematic, dreamlike. He gave a resounding
personal version of Surrealistic activism, by acting openly with scandal and
publicity stunts, insisting on the morbid character of his representation,
supported by an exceptional technical ability” (Enciclopedia Treccani)
Huge bust
“Pius XI”
Ratti (1922/39) 1926 by
Adolfo Wildt (1868/1931)
"The features
that he considers essential are exaggerated (...) with an aggressive and moving
emphasis, so that the natural measure is not enough and (...) he makes them
larger than life so that they would be heroic, arrogant, unforgettable"
(Ugo Ojetti)
"I want to sing, not tell, exalt, not describe"
(Adolfo Wildt)
Oil on canvas
“Clair de
Lune” 1909 and cycle of fourteen evocative paintings of the
“Via Crucis”
(Stations of the Cross) 1901 by
Gaetano Previati
(1852/1920)
Previati painted the Stations of the Cross three times, but
this is his most famous
“His use of color imprinted on canvas through a filamentous
drafting, his fierce contrasts of light enveloping bodies and landscapes,
create a disturbing and mysterious charm” (Andrea Pomella)
“French spelling for the name of the Russian painter Mark
Šagal. Colorist bold and prestigious narrator suspended between reality and
fairy tale, in the paintings, the favorite themes (a repertoire of images that
combines human figures, animals, objects, landscapes) were joined by visions
related to the biblical and evangelical world. Chagall executed many impressive
engravings, he worked for the theater and created monumental works such as the
murals for the Paris Opera (1963-64) and the Metropolitan in New York (1966),
the windows for the cathedrals of Metz (1959-68) and Reims (1974)”
(Enciclopedia Treccani)
“Pietà” about 1890 by Vincent
Van Gogh (1853/90), incredibly beautiful and moving, very personal copy
of an original painted by Eugene Delacroix in 1850 that Van Gogh only knew
through a black and white lithograph
He painted
two versions. The other, bigger is kept in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
This one
was donated to the Pope by the Diocese of New York
"Sometimes
he too, like Gauguin, takes up the features of Christ, but not with the intent
of self-celebration and awareness of a role, that of the artist, but to find instead
complete harmony with Creation and, in the case of this Pieta, to be ideally
supported by the 'Mater Dolorosa' (Sorrowful Mother). The most innovative forms
of sacred art in the nineteenth and twentieth century thus were born inspired
by a spiritual solipsism that goes beyond the limits of officialdom in
expressive and deep free associations" (Anna Mazzanti – Catalogue of the
exhibit Bellezza Divina)
“The
painting is executed in the manner typical of Van Gogh: the shrill tones of
color, the convulsive signs and the frantic pace of the stroke that seems to
follow an order of force of the mind more than being based on certainty of
reality” (Andrea Pomella)
"The
painting by Delacroix conformed to tradition and followed the ways of earlier
painters, including Rubens. With Van Gogh, however, there was total freedom to
change any pattern, to the point of creating in this painting, not only the
representation of the sacred scene, but also that of his emotions and his
thoughts. His bright chromatism, the quick and almost choppy strokes of his
brush are a way to express his feelings without barriers or filters. Again, as
the great art historian Giulio Carlo Argan wrote, 'the pictorial material
acquires an autonomous existence, exasperated and almost unbearable: the
picture does not represent, it IS'. And so in his Pieta, upset and exacerbated,
he gave us a piece of himself and of his tormented and hurt soul" (Grazia
– From the blog Senza Dedica -
senzadedica.blogspot.it/2015/04/vincent-van-gogh-pieta.html)
“Into the
numerous busts and portraits of acute psychological insight, as well as into the
monumental works, Rodin was able to impress the idea of movement, forcing the
contrasts between full and empty, with effects of dynamism and vitality that
made his work an essential reference point for the next generation”
(Enciclopedia Treccani)
Oil on
cardboard “Resurrection”
by Émile Bernard (1868/1941). Reworking of a
drawing by Michelangelo of 1532, maybe a preparatory drawing for the remaking
of the fresco above the door of the Sistine Chapel, which had collapsed in 1523
“Bernard was
one of the leaders of the symbolist French avant-garde (...). Pictorial
language characterized by very expressive accents, with the heavy blacks
contours of the figures, and the intense materiality in the application of
color” (Micol Fort Catalogue of the exhibit Bellezza Divina)
“He received international attention after the Second World
War, while maintaining an isolated position in his research that, even though
it is figurative, it never becomes a story or an illustration. Distortion,
fragmentation, isolation of the image are the pictorial means in a complex
nexus of associations and working from various sources (poetry, drama,
paintings of other authors, photography) create nightmarish presences,
aggressive and violent. Critics have often pointed to the relations of Bacon's
research with nihilism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and in particular its
affinity with positions at the edge of surrealism” (Enciclopedia Treccani)
“Landscape with farmhouse” 1935,
“Still Life”
1943 and “Italian Still Life” 1957 by
Giorgio Morandi (1890/1964)
“In paintings by Giorgio Morandi is manifested in the highest
form that character of abstraction common in contemporary art. It gives a sense
of perfect serenity, spiritual order of brightness, as the logical
demonstration of a poetic intuition” (Palma Bucarelli)
“Among the most significant exponents of the English
avant-garde, he had considerable influence on the subsequent generations of
artists. His early style, marked by a peculiarly English Expressionism, is
gradually enriched by European expressionist experiences, abstract, cubist and
surrealist, on which he built the most significant aspects of his imagination,
as the search for murky and dark events, twisting of shapes, linear expansions,
visions of landscapes” (Enciclopedia Treccani)
Cycle of the “Miserere” and painting “Automne ou Nazareth”
1948 by Georges Rouault (1871/1958) one of the
most important painters of religious art of the twentieth century
Bronze reliefs “The horrors of war” by Francesco Messina (1900/95) that echoes the cycle of
etchings by Goya, The Disasters of War
“In the Conversion of St. Paul the taste of telling
everything is in the seemingly long-haired sky, in the opulence of the
characters, in the bright colors, inflamed and intensely lived” (Andrea
Pomella)
“Singer of Montmartre, the neighborhood where he was born and
lived among alternate admissions to mental hospitals, Utrillo offers a
rereading through his paintings tended to highlight the alienation of his
psychological condition: scenes dominated by mostly deserted streets, at the
most traveled by lonely men and women, surrounded only by imposing buildings
and churches” (Andrea Pomella)
