Vatican Museums

The sculpture is one of numerous Cardinals, perhaps the most famous of a series to which Manzù began to devote himself in 1934, when in Rome he attended a solemn function at St. Peter’s Basilica for the first time. Struck by the solemnity of these figures, he began a formal reflection that accompanied him throughout his life, studying possible variations on the shape of the cloaks, the flow of their folds, while also maintaining constant the strong synthesis of volumes. This Seated Cardinal, dated 1962, marks a fundamental moment in the history of the Church: in 1962, John XXIII convoked the Vatican Ecumenical Council II, an event recalled by the solemn Cardinals that Manzù executed in bas-relief on the back façade of the Door of Death in St. Peter's Basilica, a work to which he applied himself with renewed vigour during that year.