Vatican Museums

In 1967, Angelo Biancini produced a series of twelve ceramic reliefs dedicated to the stories of St. Paul. Based on the Acts of the Apostles, the episodes retrace the most significant events, from the Fall to the Martyrdom, in the life of the saint who is the central figure of each work, as shown by his disproportionate size compared to the other characters. Almost as if they were a “cartoon strip”, the artist suggests the character of the saint through his dimensions and recognisable physical features, and enriches the individual scenes with a limited number of elements that make it possible to identify places and subjects: in the Arrival in Athens, the Parthenon is recognisable, while the Colosseum appears in Towards Rome. A master of the art of glazed ceramics, Biancini confirms his technical expertise here, creating the illusion of surfaces that resemble wood: the scenes, rendered with a synthetic and geometrically crude style, seem to be carved into different forms of wood, characterised by tones ranging from rust to amber yellow and finally brown.