Celebrating Francis in the time of Francis
Vatican Museums Conference Hall – in person and live streaming
A few days after the Eighth Centenary of the Stigmata of Saint Francis of Assisi (17 September 1224) and in view of the upcoming Franciscan celebrations, the Vatican Museums are dedicating Thursday in the Museums on 24 October to the Poverello of Assisi, Patron Saint of Italy and one of the world’s most venerated saints.
The celebratory intention of the conference is proclaimed by the title: “Celebrating Francis in the time of Francis. Franciscan echoes in the Vatican Pinacoteca, 800 years after the appearance of the Stigmata”. The meeting will be introduced, as usual, by the Director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Jatta, followed by speeches from the speakers: Claudia Bolgia (University of Udine), Anna Pizzamano (Vatican Museums Department of Byzantine-Medieval Art), and Adele Breda (former curator of the Department of Byzantine-Medieval Art).
The fame of Saint Francis transcends the boundaries of the religious community, and has become an emblem and model of peace, brotherhood, harmony with creation, and radicality, in its deepest and most authentic sense. He is a figure the world continues to honour and whom the Holy Father himself has honoured every day of his ministry, ever since the choice of his name on the occasion of his election to the papal throne.
In the time of Pope Francis, Saint Francis is to be celebrated, understood and studied in the enormous breadth of the relevance that his example of life has given. It is a celebration today, but this particular Thursday in the Museums opens up the perspective of an ancient feast, the feast in the time of Francis. At the end of summer 1224 a Seraphim appeared at La Verna and made the Saint of Assisi a real and tangible image of the Passion and the Resurrection, a true Alter Christus. To what extent did the miracle of history’s first bearer of the stigmata reverberate, and how was he depicted in early times? The intention is to take a closer look via the documentary sources and the cultural and artistic evidence of that long-ago 1224, at the time of Cardinal Ugolino de’ Conti dei Segni, the future Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241).
It will be a privileged opportunity to appreciate in the medieval section of the Vatican Pinacoteca in a new guise, researching and enhancing the original, as well as profound, narrative connections that link the various pictorial masterpieces.
