Vatican Museums

The new season of Thursdays at the Museums is underway with the presentation, on Thursday 19 September, of the anthological collection “The silence of images. Theories and processes of artistic invention” edited by Micol Forti and Claudia Cieri Via.
Included among the Vatican Museums’ scientific editions, the book is addressed to a broad public, not only to specialists, thus representing a “particular reason for pride” - says director Barbara Jatta – “in the irreplaceable impulse to knowledge that museums can offer to everyone through the most diverse instruments".

The fruit of a long but concerted effort of conception and redaction, the book is the outcome of meetings, seminars and conferences organized by the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, in collaboration with the Vatican Museum, the Kunsthistorisches Institute of Florence, and the MAXXI National Museum of 21^st Century Art, where the conference of the same name was held in 2015.

The anthology, produced mostly in Italian with some contributions in English, is divided into four broad thematic areas, and brings together reflections from both great contemporary art historians and young scholars. From medieval sculpture and the drawings of Leonardo to the Rothko Chapel, passing, and almost literally journeying, by way of Goethe, Carpaccio, Bernini and Matisse, expressionist cinema and modernist architecture, up to contemporary masters such as Barnett Newman, William Kentridge, Sidival Fila and Claudio Permiggiani, the volume reflects on the autonomous and irreplaceable value of visual language and of art tout court.
In the presence of the editors of the book and of Professor Jatta, the speakers at the event will be Corrado Bologna (University of Rome “Sapienza”), Marco Ruffini (University of Rome “Sapienza”), and Stefano Chiodi (“Roma Tre” University).