Vatican Museums

The works of Tano Festa displayed in the final room of the Collection – almost an introduction to the arrival in the Sistine Chapel – belong to the Roman artist’s reflections on Michelangelo. This intense and fruitful dialogue dates from the beginning of the Sixties, and focuses in particular on the scene of the Creation of Adam. In 1963 Festa carried out his first work of homage, dedicated to the memory of his prematurely deceased brother, the artist Francesco Lo Savio; in 1964, the year of the celebrations for the fourth centenary of the death of Michelangelo, he displayed at the 32^nd Venice Biennale the paintings La Creazione dell’Uomo (in bianco e nero) and La Creazione dell’Uomo (a colori). The acquisition of Festa’s works for the Vatican Collections is linked to their display in Venice – present in the 2013 Biennale, when the Holy See participated for the first time, the three works entered the Collection following the closure of the 55^th edition, thanks to the generous donation made by the collector Ovidio Jacorossi.