Vatican Museums

This room houses a small group of masterpieces by artists active in Italy and France between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, all linked to the delicate transitional phase between the two centuries, when the conditions were ripe for revolution in the first decade of the twentieth century by the historical avant-gardes. A small Pietà, painted by Vincent van Gogh shortly before his death; a rare wooden bas-relief by Gauguin, probably produced during his first stay in Tahiti; two oils in enamelled colours by Maurice Denis and the delicate wax work Aetas Aurea by Medardo Rosso offer an introduction to the complexity of one of the most fertile and fascinating moments in European art.