Vatican Museums

The exhibition “20th Century Italian Sacred Art from the Vatican Museums” marks the first historic collaboration between the Vatican Museums, directed by Barbara Jatta, and the Diocesan Museum of Barcelona, directed by Monsignor Robert Baró i Cabrera. A substantial and precious selection of works from the Vatican Museums’ Modern and Contemporary Art Collection is being presented to the public for the first time. For this occasion, which constitutes a new edition of the exhibition held at the Carlo Maria Martini Diocesan Museum in Milan in 2022, a selection of paintings and sculptures has been chosen as being among the most representative of twentieth-century Italian sacred art, created by internationally renowned masters such as Mirko Basaldella, Felice Carena, Carlo Carrà, Pericle Fazzini, Salvatore Fiume, Gerardo Dottori, Renato Guttuso, Marino Marini, Giacomo Manzù, Francesco Messina and Fausto Pirandello, as well as artists less well-known to the general public but of great artistic calibre, such as Aldo Carpi, Giuseppe Montanari and Antonio Giuseppe Santagata. The central theme of the exhibition is the figure of Christ, the man of sorrows and, as such, a contemporary of every human being, in every era of history.

The exhibition – curated by Rosalia Pagliarani of the Vatican Museums’ Department of XIX Century and Contemporary Art, in collaboration with c2c Exhibitions, directed by Helena Alonso and J. Óscar Carrascosa – reaffirms the Vatican Museums’ strong commitment to international engagement. For decades, the Museums have been organising exhibitions abroad, with the specific aim, on this occasion, of promoting the mission of the Modern and Contemporary Art Collection and of conveying, through beauty, the power of the spiritual message underlying twentieth-century sacred art. The exhibition catalogue is edited by Francesca Boschetti, Head of the XIX Century and Contemporary Art Department of the Vatican Museums, and Rosalia Pagliarani. The exhibition is organised across four halls: A Comparison of Crucifixions; Narrative and Dialogue with the Artistic Tradition of the Past; Mirko and Manzù: Between the Present and the Universality of Suffering; Reconnecting the Sacred with the Human Condition.

The exhibition will be open to the public from 24 September 2026.