Vatican Museums

This study forms part of the long genesis of the Resurrection for the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall. In 1964 Paul VI appointed Pier Luigi Nervi to design a hall for the papal audiences: works began in 1966 and the hall was inaugurated in 1971. Fazzini’s first contacts with the Vatican dated back to 1965, but the definitive decision to engage him was not reached until 1972, following personal intervention by Pope Montini. The sculptor began work in 1970 and took around seven years to complete the piece, which was inaugurated in 1977 on the Pontiff’s eightieth birthday. The artist conceives of the moment of the Resurrection as a fully-fledged explosion, that entirely disrupts the Garden of Gethsemane: “an explosion from the earth”, as he described the scene, “with olive trees in the air, stones, clouds, lightning bolts ... like an enormous storm in the form of the world and Christ who rises serenely from all of this”. To produce the full-size prototype that was to precede the bronze casting, Fazzini used polystyrene and formed the complex compositional structure with electrical hot keys.