Vatican Museums

As we reach the end of the Pauline Year, this exhibition invites the visitors to the Vatican Museums to rediscover the figure and the work of Saint Paul, through selected works of art housed in various cultural institutions of the Holy See. The exhibition is occasioned through a combined initiative of Prof. Antonio Paolucci, Director of the Vatican Museums and His Excellency Mons. Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, and was made possible thanks to the contribution of the Department of Christian Antiquities of the Vatican Museums.

The first section focuses on the historical and artistic remains which come from the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside-The-Walls, now housed in the Vatican Museums.
A second section accompanies the visitor to discovering the origins of Saint Paul's iconography within Christian Art. From the portrait of the philosophers, including the one resembling Plotinus, to the birth of the Apostle Paul's "face", portraying the characteristic features which have been handed down through sentries of Christian Art.
The third section invites the visitor to rediscover the presence of Saint Paul in the Vatican through important works of art coming from the ancient Basilica of Saint Peter, before its reconstruction in the 16^th Century.

In the last section the visitor can follow the journey of the evangelical announcement of Paul through precious renaissance illuminations, printed books in the vulgate and in the more recent translations, including the inter-confessional text used by all Christians.