Alla Scoperta dei Musei Vaticani (2015): Season 1, Episode 6 - L'arte Moderna e Contemporanea - full transcript
When we think to Vatican Museums
we think it is a musuem
with classical, ancient artworks
or Renaissance or baroque
masteRpieces.
Many visitors are surprised
and touched
to see so many modern artworks.
And this is the
Modern and Contemporary
Art Museum inside the Vatican Museums.
This Museum
comes from an intuition
raised after the Second Vatican
Council.
After the Council, the Church
started to
compare itself with the world
and Pope Paul IV realized
the relationship between Church and Art
weakened during the centuries.
Church was one of the greatest
buyer,
just think to Sistine Chapel,
Raffaello's artworks.
Many mastepieces were born
thanks to the Church.
But afterwards this relationship
has weakened
and Pope Paul VI tried to
strenghten this relationship.
And thanks to him
Modern and Contemporary Art
Museum was born.
Not every artwork
has a relogious topic
and only a few were
commissionned
for this Museum.
Many of them are donations,
very important donations
whose authors are
representatives of the Modern and
Contemporary Art.
In regards to the Vatican Museums
centuries-old history
VATICAN MUSEUMS,
CONTEMPORARY ART UNIT
Contemporary Art Collection
is the youngest,
it's the last outcome
of Popes history
and adventure which brought
to its creation, thanks to a polish
intellectual Pope, Paul VI.
Giovan Battista Montini became
Pope in 1963.
It was a great modern
intellectual Pope,
an expert of modern and contemporary
culture.
VATICAN MUSEUMS DIRECTOR
He was nuncio in Paris, he knew
the maître à penser of the time.
One of the matters that worried
the Pope
was the divorce between
Art and Church.
He said "How it happened that
Church of Rome
commissioned Michelangelo,
Raffaello, Tiziano artworks.
And now the artistic evidences
are so humble and general?
Once he was elected,
in 1964, few months after
his election,
called collectors, artists,
heirs, intellectuals
art dealers, merchands
in the Sistine Chapel
and he said only two things.
Paul VI spoke to the artists
WRITER AND ESSAYST
he asked for forgiveness because
many times the Church imposed
a hood which had restrained
creativity
and he felt the need
to use the meeting
to restore the friendship pact
between him and the artists,
the Church and the artists.
Why did the artists
leave the Church
not only in the religious
practice
but just in the inspirational
way? Why?
Because christian values
do not inspire and encourage
artworks anymore.
Second Vatican Council, and "Gaudium
ed Spes" in particular,
changes direction:
nobody comdemns the world,
nobody judges it,
there are no anathemas,
no excommunications
but here there is the mercy look,
a hug, an openness
which, in some way, marks
the Papacy of that time and a very
special moment
CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY
PONTIFICIA UNIVERSITA' LATERANENSE
for this extraordinary adventure:
the Vatican Museums.
John XXII was a Pope
not so fond of contemporaneity
but he was a very smart man
and he understood
the dialogue with the
contemporary artist:
the artist must be free
to express himself,
to express in his own language.
John XXIII and Manzù had an
intellectual friendship.
It's very complicated
to speak of a friendship
between a Pope and an artist,
but between them there
was a strong esteem
and a mutual affection.
The "Death Door" is dedicated to
another famous man
who was the mean of this
friendship: Father Giuseppe De Luca.
And I quote him
because the "Chapel of Peace"
exhibited in the Vatican Museums
thanks to Manzù's generosity
who gave it at the opening
of the Collection in 1973.
It's the small Chapel Manzù
made for Father Giuseppe De Luca
for his house in Rome.
Among the amazing materials
inside Manzù's Chapel of Peace
ornaments have a great value.
I think to the pyx, to the goblet
which are more than
holy furnitures,
which represent what materially
Faith is.
Behind this light
that spreads on some elements,
gold, there's the fire
of Christianity.
They thought together the bench
where Father De Luca prayed
which on the wooden engrieved
flat surface
has an iconographic detail:
a grimacing
devil.
In the last days of his life
from 1947 to 1952,
Henri Matisse dedicated himself
to "Chapel of Vence".
He died in 1954.
This is not his last artwork
but it was also the expression
of his project as an artist,
a whole work of art.
He designed everything
of this little chapel:
architecture, glass windows,
large ceramic panels,
liturgical paraments and objects
the floor and the handles,
stoup, entry doors, every single detail.
The first idea of the
three glass windows
created through the artist hands:
we have the three glass windows
gouaches découpés...
and the last ink and pencil
drawing of "Vierge à l'Enfant"
which was realized in ceramic
inside the Chapel.
There is also a crucifix
arranged on the altar,
a small sketch of a great flèche
which crowns like a bell tower
on the chapel roof,
the chasubles, liturgical paraments
in their first stiching,
realized under Matisse's
sharp look
and a huge number of letters
Matisse exchanged
with Convent Mother Superior
with drawings and points
which remind this realization
and his attention to every
single detail.
In these rooms we can
admire artworks
of many other artists: Chagall,
Matisse, Van Gogh, de Chirico...
It's impossible to describe
all these masterpieces
but some are striking.
We have chosen
a famous Roman Pop Art
artwork by the Italian Tano Festa.
The famous artist of American Pop Art
was Andy Warhol.
Well, Roman Pop Art is
based on repeated symbols
represented in a different way
like Andy Warhol
represented Marilyn Monroe,
or tags,
or American cans.
Here we have this key
in a new perspective,
more linked to
our world, our culture.
"Dying Militant" by Tano Festa
was created in the Seventies and
he really is Adam by
Michelangelo,
which we admired
at the beginning of our journey
on the Sistine Chapel Vault.
There is a substancial
common thread
linking artists of different ages,
different centuries
to the same creative mood.
But these are the Vatican Museums too:
to explore creativity
from the past, through
many artworks showed nowadays.
One of the most precious
painting of the collection
is the "Small Pietà"
by Vincent Van Gogh.
He realized it maybe in
October 1989
just some months before
his death.
It is a small painting
with an amazing story
because the Pietà by
Van Gogh is a copy
of a painting by Eugène Delacroix.
It's a painting Van Gogh never
saw because
it was inside the
Royal Collections.
Van Gogh knew a black and white
copy
without knowing the colors.
This copy was not realized
only for himself
but it was sent to his sister
Willemina,
addressee of her brother
thoughts,
on his vision on art.
In a letter sent in
October 1889,
Van Gogh himself tells the reason
why he redid this painting...
The reason is the kindness of this Pietà
of this woman, with her
workwoman hands,
open for affliction,
who has in her lap
the dead body of her unique son.
She is a woman, Van Gogh wrote,
who knows what work is,
what effort is
and what pain is.
There is an olive tree
on the background,
the tree is gnarled, meager,
it knows what nature is,
which is not made of prototypes,
of models,
ma it is made of single realities...
Van Gogh was looking for this
in the Holy History,
an example he could track
in the faces
of the lasts, the sufferings
whom he dedicated al lot of attention
during his life.
Even his so simple way
of painting
where he juxtaposes bush
strokes to build
these moving natural forces:
ART HISTORIAN
It's the idea of a person
who had
an irrational vision of the world
nevertheless the Creator, who
emerges lively as God.
These vibrant colors, yellow
red, blue ones
only Van Gogh could imagine
the power of this individuality.
The Holy History is eternally
valid because it can be traced
in life of every single person.
An artwork in "sanguigna"
and artwork which chose the monochrome
but it doesn't avoid
this visionary quality
which characterized Chagall
pictorial production,
the sacred production too.
While Van Gogh looked in his Pietà
for truth of human,
Chagall identified the universality
of holy fact,
to be removed from time
and from history.
There are no elements which
characterized it
but there are elements
which allow us
to identify it and compare
with its contents
and its meaning.
Every time it was compared
to a traditional matter,
it showed its originality
and its will
to overturn the point of view.
I say it beacause
the little Crucifix,
preserved in our Collections,
moves the observer:
Christ crucified body,
almost twisted from the Cross
he is twisted from the earth,
and the observer is no more standing
in front of the Cross,
as it is tradionally,
by artists offering this subject,
but he's fluctuating
in an airy position,
and in the meantime almost overcoming
Christ figure,
in the positions taken
by God looking from above.
Bacon is an expressionist artist,
who paints the drama,
the anguish and human images.
In Roma Pope Innocenzo X
attracted him
as painted by don Diego Velasquez,
and on this image Bacon realized
many variations,
interpretations of the same painting.
It's a dramatic, anguished, tragic
imagine of the Pope.
Bacon starts from a Pontiff Pamphili
portrait
by Velasquez.
Before he saw
an imagine of Pius XII
beacuse the one he depicts
in a series of painting
he called Pope One, Two,
Three, Four and so on...
which is iconographically
Pius XII.
It represents the deep
contemporaneity,
this idea of a bygone era
of the man who is bygone.
There's the idea of a humanity
in decay
more than downfall.
Decay is like
a choked cry coming from far away
and nobody listens to it....
I think that it is a criticism
for the Pope
or a thought on religion.
Morover a dig in a
contemporary icon
in a strong imagine of
contemporaneity,
which is the Pope.
what the Pope says to the
contemporary man:
he's telling something almost
nobody listens.
It's a fabric made with
metal elements
covering the wine and liquor
bottle corks,
folded, pierced, sewed with
copper thread
to create a new fabric,
a new beauty.
The artist El Anatsui
made the kids of his village
to work on this artwork
in order to take them away from
the streets and the poverty
and it allows him
through an artistic
and antique work, to get close
to something like the realization
of an artwork.
It's really important to foster
exhibitions and events
dealing with
contemporary culture in
an international territory,
to get involved and to promote
your own vision of the world,
of culture and of spirituality.
So it will be possible
this complex and
imperfect body
born under Paul VI
keeps on changing itself
to testify new proposals
and new horizons
offered by contemporaneity,
without being complete
because this is not
Vatican Museums aim.
ETHNOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS UNITS
VATICAN MUSEUMS
Over 300 years ago, in 1692,
the Ethnological Museum was born
thanks to five gifts
from America
and since then it has expanded,
until the actual 80-100.000
pieces.
The increase in the
Ethnogical Museum Collections
was a big exhibition in 1925.
In Europe Nazism and Fascism
ruled
and Piu XI wanted to show that
the Catholic Church was open
to every culture and religion
and artistic expressions
in the world.
In the Vatican Gardens,
more than 24 pavillions,
with artifacts tell
faraway cultures.
We must thank this Pope who
widened the Vatican Museums heritage
with the Ethnological Museum
aimed to wide, expand
the borders of knowledge,
looking for
the farthest cultures,
to discover and explore them.
He was a brave Pope.
The most beautiful and interesting
matter of this Museum
is that nobody purchased
these artworks.
They are all gifts
to Popes from people
all over the world.
John Paul II was the Pope
who received more gifts,
even because
he travelled a lot
in many countries,
We have this beautiful cape
made of feathers
from New Zealand Maori.
There's an area for
ethnographic materials
made by populations,
by extra-european cultures
such as the Native American
or the Australian Aborigines,
by Eskimos, Japanese
Chinese people
which is absolutely the most
important in the world.
Every donation is here,
so the Missionary Ethnographic Museum
validates a visit
to the Vatican Museums.
It's a pacific deity,
adverse to human sacrifices,
guarrantor for Earth fertility,
a deity who protects
populations.
This is such a beautiful statue
that many museums ask it
on loan.
Artworks from Japan, India,
China,
from Himalaya or from
Southeast Asia...
Artworks representing beauty
and the refinement
of eastern artistic productions.
Here is a series of paintings
by a Chinese painter, Yun Shopint
who lived in 1600
who realized depictions,
pictural works
with the so-called
"Flower and Birds" style,
depicted in a very
sensitive way.
This laboratory is called
"Multimaterial Laboratory"
because it deals with
different materials,
with a team of professional
restorers,
each of them specialized
in a particular artwork
in a particular material.
In the Ethnological Museum
an amazing feathered hat
had been sent to Pope Pius XI
about one century ago
by Papua New Guinea populations.
This hat is 3 meters high,
made of thousands of feathers
coming from different birds
and the Laboratory made
a long and hard work
to restore it, which took
many months.
At the end of the restauration
the hat returned to its
former glory
and now it is one of the
most photographated
artworks in The Vatican Museums.
The Etnologiccal Museum
is somehow
the new Maps Gallery,
a new geographic map
of the world.
When people enter
the Vatican Museums
are astonished that the Vatican's
has this openness;
that inside the Vatican
so many cultural and religious
expressions
are respected.
Vatican Gardens are one
of the most ancient
part of the Papal State.
They were founded
many centuries ago...
It was 1279 when Pope
Niccolò III, moving from
decided to build the gardens,
in that time when
Dante and Giotto were teenagers.
During the centuries the gardens
changed al lot
and today they represent
half of the 44 hectares
of the Vatican State
and can be included in the
Vatican Museums visit.
People cannot only visit
and admire these gardens,
there are many other,
maybe more ancient,
places to visit:
the Pontifical Villas of Castel Gandolfo,
open thanks to Pope Francis,
to admire their gardens
and artworks.
This Papal Palace,
these Papal Buildings
lie on a more ancient
area because
on this area Emperor Adrian
Villas were built.
And before even the ones of
Domiziano,
Marco Aurelio, Settimio
Severo...
The Castel Gandolfo history is
very ancient
and visiting Vatican Museums
without visiting Castel Gandolfo
is a lacking experience.
Let's go now!
Pope Francis wanted to link
his name to the Vatican Museums
VATICAN MUSEUMS, PAPAL CARRIAGES,
COSTUMES AND ARMS UNIT
and he did creating
a new department
inside Castel Galdolfo
Apostolical Palace:
The Gallery of Popes' Portraits,
a new Gallery that somehow
let people know
what every of these 51 Popes did
and above all what these 51 Popes
did for Christiany and Humanity.
Popes mobility
is a little special
but it has been well documented
since the beginning
of the modern or contemporary era,
the one of trains and flights.
The most ancient mean of
transport
is Gran Gala carriage
made in 1826,
after Pius VII Chiaramonti
Papacy
who wanted solemnly enter
Rome by carriage
and he decided to take
an ordinary one
and to transform it
in a special carriage.
At the beginning, under Leo XII,
two coachmen
sat where we usually
see the coachmen seated
but the following Pope Gregorius XVI
transformed this carriage
because he didn't want
no-one would give him his back.
The coachmen moved on two horses
on the left side
and in the former coachmen seats
there were two little angels
holding Papacy symbols,
tiara and papal keys.
Some of these carriages
have an historical value
like this travelling one,
with four seats,
a gift from the king of Neaples
to Pope Pius IX when he
came back from exile in Gaeta.
This is a beautiful landau
linked somehow
to motion-picture industry
of Popes.
On this landau Pope Leo XIII
who ruled after Pius IX,
was filmed
by a delegate of
Lumière Brothers
on the Pope and his walk
inside the Vatican Gardens.
The first car in Vatican
was American,
was a Graham-Paige,
made in Detroit,
from an automotive company
not existing anymore.
The car represents not only
the first papal car but,
at the same time,
a frame of American automotive
history here in Vatican.
If once there was a carriage
pulled by six horses
many special cars followed
such as Citroën Lictoria
built with a sumptuos style
to recall the Papal carriages.
until nowadays
where cars are simple
means of transport, as
the so-called "Papamobile"
used by
Pope Francis
without the protection shield.
When you visit the Vatican Museums
you are amazed by
the quality of artworks but also
by abundance,
they are everywhere.
We are now in a place
not open to visitors:
The Carriages Storage.
Visiting the Vatican Museums
storages
is a never ending astonishment.
Thousands of sculptures, exhibits
surround us
and these can be showed
basically for lack of space.
You can see torsos,
face fragments...
They are cut sentences
from the past
from the art of the past
and we don't know
how the whole statue was
or a little part of the body.
They are like fragments
of pages,
of this incredible artistic
collection.
We don't know what these
statues were for,
where they were... Maybe inside
houses, in a temple
in a street, on a sarcophagus.
Each statue has a story to tell
we don't know who carved them,
but we can imagine his skill
Can we make new discoveries
in these rooms?
The answer is yes. In the Fourties,
analysing a head fragment of a statue
it was a Greek artwork,
dated back to 430 BC,
from the Parthenon fronton
maybe part of Athena's Quadriga,
and so this is maybe part of
an artwork made by the famous
sculptor Fidia.
You see this is not
only a storage
for sculptures, artworks
but also a heritage
from the past.
We are so responbible for
Ancient Museums
VATICAN MUSEUMS,
GREEK AND ROMAN ANTIQUITIES UNIT
that is not only ancient works,
but they are also ancient too.
So that we go through Statues Courtyard
to Pius Clementine,
to Braccio Nuovo and to Chiaramonti
and they all have stagings
with their historical concept,
a historical and social one.
We have to respect
the old stagings
and we cannot introduce
or move artworks
on the nowadays gusto.
because staging is a
source of knowledge.
One of the fundamental aspects
connected with artworks
inside a museum
is to remember that an artwork
is an alive body
and like every other body
it can get sick,
get old, have difficulties
just like a human body.
We know how much
prevention is important
more than a compelling intervention,
more than a treatment,
more than an operation.
Sometimes a restoration
is needed.
We cannot help to restore
artworks
but the most important problem,
the permanent attention
is on maintenance
that is to keep healthy
the works
offered to so many people.
In our laboratories
the best restorers work
but other restorers
are invitated to intervene
VATICAN MUSEUMS
CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITIES UNIT
and visitors can be so
lucky to see restorers at work.
In our museal branch
restoration has different
works: the first one is
conservative
VATICAN MUSEUMS
ETRUSCAN-ITALIAN ANTIQUITIES UNIT
to preserve and avoid the
material modification
used in the previous eras
in order not to
threaten, but to read,
to understand and in the worst cases
not to pass the artwork
to posterity.
Secondly there's the importance
of philological reading
of the same object, because when
an archeological object, an exhibit
had been restored in
previous eras,
this can be made trough
different standars
such as in a mimetic way,
or on the original parts,
interpreting or inventing.
The responsability of a museum
director like me
not only here at Vatican Museums,
but in every Italian or international
public collection
is to deliver to those
who will come after me
artworks like I have received
maybe in a better state of
preservation.
The difference between a
museum director
and a supermarket manager
is that the supermarket manager
must think to today customers
to people who this morning
go to supermarket to find
fresh mozzarella, vegetables at
fair prices.
A museum director must know
his customers are no only the
people visiting today
but people yet to be born.
We work for people yet to be come
and this is our reminder.
This responsability is
multiplied by this
"stack" of museums,
as I call them.
This is also why we talk
about Vatican Museums as a plural.
We are now at the end
of our long journey
discovering Vatican Museums,
and you saw it,
it was a time travel
through different masterpieces,
different civilizations and cultures
but they all shared something:
the sense of beauty. Our journey
aimed to discover
the sense of beauty
explained by different moments
of history and geography.
But you understood for sure that
extraordinary or unknown artists
succeeded in something
really diffult
to touch people from
their time period
and yet to be born.
The feelings we have
in front of these masterpieces
are the same the next
generations will have.
This is maybe one the most
beautiful aspects
of Vatican Museums.
This gift to the current
generations
and the ones yet to come,
a unique heritage to the world.
And you have a heart
to be touched
to be amazed in front
of a masterpiece
like these surrounding me.
People must know and must
use the eyes to see,
the cameras our Lord gave them,
a mind to think, to compare
and a heart to be touched...
If everyone of us has
these basic devices
what else does it want?
What is he looking for?
Right?
we think it is a musuem
with classical, ancient artworks
or Renaissance or baroque
masteRpieces.
Many visitors are surprised
and touched
to see so many modern artworks.
And this is the
Modern and Contemporary
Art Museum inside the Vatican Museums.
This Museum
comes from an intuition
raised after the Second Vatican
Council.
After the Council, the Church
started to
compare itself with the world
and Pope Paul IV realized
the relationship between Church and Art
weakened during the centuries.
Church was one of the greatest
buyer,
just think to Sistine Chapel,
Raffaello's artworks.
Many mastepieces were born
thanks to the Church.
But afterwards this relationship
has weakened
and Pope Paul VI tried to
strenghten this relationship.
And thanks to him
Modern and Contemporary Art
Museum was born.
Not every artwork
has a relogious topic
and only a few were
commissionned
for this Museum.
Many of them are donations,
very important donations
whose authors are
representatives of the Modern and
Contemporary Art.
In regards to the Vatican Museums
centuries-old history
VATICAN MUSEUMS,
CONTEMPORARY ART UNIT
Contemporary Art Collection
is the youngest,
it's the last outcome
of Popes history
and adventure which brought
to its creation, thanks to a polish
intellectual Pope, Paul VI.
Giovan Battista Montini became
Pope in 1963.
It was a great modern
intellectual Pope,
an expert of modern and contemporary
culture.
VATICAN MUSEUMS DIRECTOR
He was nuncio in Paris, he knew
the maître à penser of the time.
One of the matters that worried
the Pope
was the divorce between
Art and Church.
He said "How it happened that
Church of Rome
commissioned Michelangelo,
Raffaello, Tiziano artworks.
And now the artistic evidences
are so humble and general?
Once he was elected,
in 1964, few months after
his election,
called collectors, artists,
heirs, intellectuals
art dealers, merchands
in the Sistine Chapel
and he said only two things.
Paul VI spoke to the artists
WRITER AND ESSAYST
he asked for forgiveness because
many times the Church imposed
a hood which had restrained
creativity
and he felt the need
to use the meeting
to restore the friendship pact
between him and the artists,
the Church and the artists.
Why did the artists
leave the Church
not only in the religious
practice
but just in the inspirational
way? Why?
Because christian values
do not inspire and encourage
artworks anymore.
Second Vatican Council, and "Gaudium
ed Spes" in particular,
changes direction:
nobody comdemns the world,
nobody judges it,
there are no anathemas,
no excommunications
but here there is the mercy look,
a hug, an openness
which, in some way, marks
the Papacy of that time and a very
special moment
CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY
PONTIFICIA UNIVERSITA' LATERANENSE
for this extraordinary adventure:
the Vatican Museums.
John XXII was a Pope
not so fond of contemporaneity
but he was a very smart man
and he understood
the dialogue with the
contemporary artist:
the artist must be free
to express himself,
to express in his own language.
John XXIII and Manzù had an
intellectual friendship.
It's very complicated
to speak of a friendship
between a Pope and an artist,
but between them there
was a strong esteem
and a mutual affection.
The "Death Door" is dedicated to
another famous man
who was the mean of this
friendship: Father Giuseppe De Luca.
And I quote him
because the "Chapel of Peace"
exhibited in the Vatican Museums
thanks to Manzù's generosity
who gave it at the opening
of the Collection in 1973.
It's the small Chapel Manzù
made for Father Giuseppe De Luca
for his house in Rome.
Among the amazing materials
inside Manzù's Chapel of Peace
ornaments have a great value.
I think to the pyx, to the goblet
which are more than
holy furnitures,
which represent what materially
Faith is.
Behind this light
that spreads on some elements,
gold, there's the fire
of Christianity.
They thought together the bench
where Father De Luca prayed
which on the wooden engrieved
flat surface
has an iconographic detail:
a grimacing
devil.
In the last days of his life
from 1947 to 1952,
Henri Matisse dedicated himself
to "Chapel of Vence".
He died in 1954.
This is not his last artwork
but it was also the expression
of his project as an artist,
a whole work of art.
He designed everything
of this little chapel:
architecture, glass windows,
large ceramic panels,
liturgical paraments and objects
the floor and the handles,
stoup, entry doors, every single detail.
The first idea of the
three glass windows
created through the artist hands:
we have the three glass windows
gouaches découpés...
and the last ink and pencil
drawing of "Vierge à l'Enfant"
which was realized in ceramic
inside the Chapel.
There is also a crucifix
arranged on the altar,
a small sketch of a great flèche
which crowns like a bell tower
on the chapel roof,
the chasubles, liturgical paraments
in their first stiching,
realized under Matisse's
sharp look
and a huge number of letters
Matisse exchanged
with Convent Mother Superior
with drawings and points
which remind this realization
and his attention to every
single detail.
In these rooms we can
admire artworks
of many other artists: Chagall,
Matisse, Van Gogh, de Chirico...
It's impossible to describe
all these masterpieces
but some are striking.
We have chosen
a famous Roman Pop Art
artwork by the Italian Tano Festa.
The famous artist of American Pop Art
was Andy Warhol.
Well, Roman Pop Art is
based on repeated symbols
represented in a different way
like Andy Warhol
represented Marilyn Monroe,
or tags,
or American cans.
Here we have this key
in a new perspective,
more linked to
our world, our culture.
"Dying Militant" by Tano Festa
was created in the Seventies and
he really is Adam by
Michelangelo,
which we admired
at the beginning of our journey
on the Sistine Chapel Vault.
There is a substancial
common thread
linking artists of different ages,
different centuries
to the same creative mood.
But these are the Vatican Museums too:
to explore creativity
from the past, through
many artworks showed nowadays.
One of the most precious
painting of the collection
is the "Small Pietà"
by Vincent Van Gogh.
He realized it maybe in
October 1989
just some months before
his death.
It is a small painting
with an amazing story
because the Pietà by
Van Gogh is a copy
of a painting by Eugène Delacroix.
It's a painting Van Gogh never
saw because
it was inside the
Royal Collections.
Van Gogh knew a black and white
copy
without knowing the colors.
This copy was not realized
only for himself
but it was sent to his sister
Willemina,
addressee of her brother
thoughts,
on his vision on art.
In a letter sent in
October 1889,
Van Gogh himself tells the reason
why he redid this painting...
The reason is the kindness of this Pietà
of this woman, with her
workwoman hands,
open for affliction,
who has in her lap
the dead body of her unique son.
She is a woman, Van Gogh wrote,
who knows what work is,
what effort is
and what pain is.
There is an olive tree
on the background,
the tree is gnarled, meager,
it knows what nature is,
which is not made of prototypes,
of models,
ma it is made of single realities...
Van Gogh was looking for this
in the Holy History,
an example he could track
in the faces
of the lasts, the sufferings
whom he dedicated al lot of attention
during his life.
Even his so simple way
of painting
where he juxtaposes bush
strokes to build
these moving natural forces:
ART HISTORIAN
It's the idea of a person
who had
an irrational vision of the world
nevertheless the Creator, who
emerges lively as God.
These vibrant colors, yellow
red, blue ones
only Van Gogh could imagine
the power of this individuality.
The Holy History is eternally
valid because it can be traced
in life of every single person.
An artwork in "sanguigna"
and artwork which chose the monochrome
but it doesn't avoid
this visionary quality
which characterized Chagall
pictorial production,
the sacred production too.
While Van Gogh looked in his Pietà
for truth of human,
Chagall identified the universality
of holy fact,
to be removed from time
and from history.
There are no elements which
characterized it
but there are elements
which allow us
to identify it and compare
with its contents
and its meaning.
Every time it was compared
to a traditional matter,
it showed its originality
and its will
to overturn the point of view.
I say it beacause
the little Crucifix,
preserved in our Collections,
moves the observer:
Christ crucified body,
almost twisted from the Cross
he is twisted from the earth,
and the observer is no more standing
in front of the Cross,
as it is tradionally,
by artists offering this subject,
but he's fluctuating
in an airy position,
and in the meantime almost overcoming
Christ figure,
in the positions taken
by God looking from above.
Bacon is an expressionist artist,
who paints the drama,
the anguish and human images.
In Roma Pope Innocenzo X
attracted him
as painted by don Diego Velasquez,
and on this image Bacon realized
many variations,
interpretations of the same painting.
It's a dramatic, anguished, tragic
imagine of the Pope.
Bacon starts from a Pontiff Pamphili
portrait
by Velasquez.
Before he saw
an imagine of Pius XII
beacuse the one he depicts
in a series of painting
he called Pope One, Two,
Three, Four and so on...
which is iconographically
Pius XII.
It represents the deep
contemporaneity,
this idea of a bygone era
of the man who is bygone.
There's the idea of a humanity
in decay
more than downfall.
Decay is like
a choked cry coming from far away
and nobody listens to it....
I think that it is a criticism
for the Pope
or a thought on religion.
Morover a dig in a
contemporary icon
in a strong imagine of
contemporaneity,
which is the Pope.
what the Pope says to the
contemporary man:
he's telling something almost
nobody listens.
It's a fabric made with
metal elements
covering the wine and liquor
bottle corks,
folded, pierced, sewed with
copper thread
to create a new fabric,
a new beauty.
The artist El Anatsui
made the kids of his village
to work on this artwork
in order to take them away from
the streets and the poverty
and it allows him
through an artistic
and antique work, to get close
to something like the realization
of an artwork.
It's really important to foster
exhibitions and events
dealing with
contemporary culture in
an international territory,
to get involved and to promote
your own vision of the world,
of culture and of spirituality.
So it will be possible
this complex and
imperfect body
born under Paul VI
keeps on changing itself
to testify new proposals
and new horizons
offered by contemporaneity,
without being complete
because this is not
Vatican Museums aim.
ETHNOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS UNITS
VATICAN MUSEUMS
Over 300 years ago, in 1692,
the Ethnological Museum was born
thanks to five gifts
from America
and since then it has expanded,
until the actual 80-100.000
pieces.
The increase in the
Ethnogical Museum Collections
was a big exhibition in 1925.
In Europe Nazism and Fascism
ruled
and Piu XI wanted to show that
the Catholic Church was open
to every culture and religion
and artistic expressions
in the world.
In the Vatican Gardens,
more than 24 pavillions,
with artifacts tell
faraway cultures.
We must thank this Pope who
widened the Vatican Museums heritage
with the Ethnological Museum
aimed to wide, expand
the borders of knowledge,
looking for
the farthest cultures,
to discover and explore them.
He was a brave Pope.
The most beautiful and interesting
matter of this Museum
is that nobody purchased
these artworks.
They are all gifts
to Popes from people
all over the world.
John Paul II was the Pope
who received more gifts,
even because
he travelled a lot
in many countries,
We have this beautiful cape
made of feathers
from New Zealand Maori.
There's an area for
ethnographic materials
made by populations,
by extra-european cultures
such as the Native American
or the Australian Aborigines,
by Eskimos, Japanese
Chinese people
which is absolutely the most
important in the world.
Every donation is here,
so the Missionary Ethnographic Museum
validates a visit
to the Vatican Museums.
It's a pacific deity,
adverse to human sacrifices,
guarrantor for Earth fertility,
a deity who protects
populations.
This is such a beautiful statue
that many museums ask it
on loan.
Artworks from Japan, India,
China,
from Himalaya or from
Southeast Asia...
Artworks representing beauty
and the refinement
of eastern artistic productions.
Here is a series of paintings
by a Chinese painter, Yun Shopint
who lived in 1600
who realized depictions,
pictural works
with the so-called
"Flower and Birds" style,
depicted in a very
sensitive way.
This laboratory is called
"Multimaterial Laboratory"
because it deals with
different materials,
with a team of professional
restorers,
each of them specialized
in a particular artwork
in a particular material.
In the Ethnological Museum
an amazing feathered hat
had been sent to Pope Pius XI
about one century ago
by Papua New Guinea populations.
This hat is 3 meters high,
made of thousands of feathers
coming from different birds
and the Laboratory made
a long and hard work
to restore it, which took
many months.
At the end of the restauration
the hat returned to its
former glory
and now it is one of the
most photographated
artworks in The Vatican Museums.
The Etnologiccal Museum
is somehow
the new Maps Gallery,
a new geographic map
of the world.
When people enter
the Vatican Museums
are astonished that the Vatican's
has this openness;
that inside the Vatican
so many cultural and religious
expressions
are respected.
Vatican Gardens are one
of the most ancient
part of the Papal State.
They were founded
many centuries ago...
It was 1279 when Pope
Niccolò III, moving from
decided to build the gardens,
in that time when
Dante and Giotto were teenagers.
During the centuries the gardens
changed al lot
and today they represent
half of the 44 hectares
of the Vatican State
and can be included in the
Vatican Museums visit.
People cannot only visit
and admire these gardens,
there are many other,
maybe more ancient,
places to visit:
the Pontifical Villas of Castel Gandolfo,
open thanks to Pope Francis,
to admire their gardens
and artworks.
This Papal Palace,
these Papal Buildings
lie on a more ancient
area because
on this area Emperor Adrian
Villas were built.
And before even the ones of
Domiziano,
Marco Aurelio, Settimio
Severo...
The Castel Gandolfo history is
very ancient
and visiting Vatican Museums
without visiting Castel Gandolfo
is a lacking experience.
Let's go now!
Pope Francis wanted to link
his name to the Vatican Museums
VATICAN MUSEUMS, PAPAL CARRIAGES,
COSTUMES AND ARMS UNIT
and he did creating
a new department
inside Castel Galdolfo
Apostolical Palace:
The Gallery of Popes' Portraits,
a new Gallery that somehow
let people know
what every of these 51 Popes did
and above all what these 51 Popes
did for Christiany and Humanity.
Popes mobility
is a little special
but it has been well documented
since the beginning
of the modern or contemporary era,
the one of trains and flights.
The most ancient mean of
transport
is Gran Gala carriage
made in 1826,
after Pius VII Chiaramonti
Papacy
who wanted solemnly enter
Rome by carriage
and he decided to take
an ordinary one
and to transform it
in a special carriage.
At the beginning, under Leo XII,
two coachmen
sat where we usually
see the coachmen seated
but the following Pope Gregorius XVI
transformed this carriage
because he didn't want
no-one would give him his back.
The coachmen moved on two horses
on the left side
and in the former coachmen seats
there were two little angels
holding Papacy symbols,
tiara and papal keys.
Some of these carriages
have an historical value
like this travelling one,
with four seats,
a gift from the king of Neaples
to Pope Pius IX when he
came back from exile in Gaeta.
This is a beautiful landau
linked somehow
to motion-picture industry
of Popes.
On this landau Pope Leo XIII
who ruled after Pius IX,
was filmed
by a delegate of
Lumière Brothers
on the Pope and his walk
inside the Vatican Gardens.
The first car in Vatican
was American,
was a Graham-Paige,
made in Detroit,
from an automotive company
not existing anymore.
The car represents not only
the first papal car but,
at the same time,
a frame of American automotive
history here in Vatican.
If once there was a carriage
pulled by six horses
many special cars followed
such as Citroën Lictoria
built with a sumptuos style
to recall the Papal carriages.
until nowadays
where cars are simple
means of transport, as
the so-called "Papamobile"
used by
Pope Francis
without the protection shield.
When you visit the Vatican Museums
you are amazed by
the quality of artworks but also
by abundance,
they are everywhere.
We are now in a place
not open to visitors:
The Carriages Storage.
Visiting the Vatican Museums
storages
is a never ending astonishment.
Thousands of sculptures, exhibits
surround us
and these can be showed
basically for lack of space.
You can see torsos,
face fragments...
They are cut sentences
from the past
from the art of the past
and we don't know
how the whole statue was
or a little part of the body.
They are like fragments
of pages,
of this incredible artistic
collection.
We don't know what these
statues were for,
where they were... Maybe inside
houses, in a temple
in a street, on a sarcophagus.
Each statue has a story to tell
we don't know who carved them,
but we can imagine his skill
Can we make new discoveries
in these rooms?
The answer is yes. In the Fourties,
analysing a head fragment of a statue
it was a Greek artwork,
dated back to 430 BC,
from the Parthenon fronton
maybe part of Athena's Quadriga,
and so this is maybe part of
an artwork made by the famous
sculptor Fidia.
You see this is not
only a storage
for sculptures, artworks
but also a heritage
from the past.
We are so responbible for
Ancient Museums
VATICAN MUSEUMS,
GREEK AND ROMAN ANTIQUITIES UNIT
that is not only ancient works,
but they are also ancient too.
So that we go through Statues Courtyard
to Pius Clementine,
to Braccio Nuovo and to Chiaramonti
and they all have stagings
with their historical concept,
a historical and social one.
We have to respect
the old stagings
and we cannot introduce
or move artworks
on the nowadays gusto.
because staging is a
source of knowledge.
One of the fundamental aspects
connected with artworks
inside a museum
is to remember that an artwork
is an alive body
and like every other body
it can get sick,
get old, have difficulties
just like a human body.
We know how much
prevention is important
more than a compelling intervention,
more than a treatment,
more than an operation.
Sometimes a restoration
is needed.
We cannot help to restore
artworks
but the most important problem,
the permanent attention
is on maintenance
that is to keep healthy
the works
offered to so many people.
In our laboratories
the best restorers work
but other restorers
are invitated to intervene
VATICAN MUSEUMS
CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITIES UNIT
and visitors can be so
lucky to see restorers at work.
In our museal branch
restoration has different
works: the first one is
conservative
VATICAN MUSEUMS
ETRUSCAN-ITALIAN ANTIQUITIES UNIT
to preserve and avoid the
material modification
used in the previous eras
in order not to
threaten, but to read,
to understand and in the worst cases
not to pass the artwork
to posterity.
Secondly there's the importance
of philological reading
of the same object, because when
an archeological object, an exhibit
had been restored in
previous eras,
this can be made trough
different standars
such as in a mimetic way,
or on the original parts,
interpreting or inventing.
The responsability of a museum
director like me
not only here at Vatican Museums,
but in every Italian or international
public collection
is to deliver to those
who will come after me
artworks like I have received
maybe in a better state of
preservation.
The difference between a
museum director
and a supermarket manager
is that the supermarket manager
must think to today customers
to people who this morning
go to supermarket to find
fresh mozzarella, vegetables at
fair prices.
A museum director must know
his customers are no only the
people visiting today
but people yet to be born.
We work for people yet to be come
and this is our reminder.
This responsability is
multiplied by this
"stack" of museums,
as I call them.
This is also why we talk
about Vatican Museums as a plural.
We are now at the end
of our long journey
discovering Vatican Museums,
and you saw it,
it was a time travel
through different masterpieces,
different civilizations and cultures
but they all shared something:
the sense of beauty. Our journey
aimed to discover
the sense of beauty
explained by different moments
of history and geography.
But you understood for sure that
extraordinary or unknown artists
succeeded in something
really diffult
to touch people from
their time period
and yet to be born.
The feelings we have
in front of these masterpieces
are the same the next
generations will have.
This is maybe one the most
beautiful aspects
of Vatican Museums.
This gift to the current
generations
and the ones yet to come,
a unique heritage to the world.
And you have a heart
to be touched
to be amazed in front
of a masterpiece
like these surrounding me.
People must know and must
use the eyes to see,
the cameras our Lord gave them,
a mind to think, to compare
and a heart to be touched...
If everyone of us has
these basic devices
what else does it want?
What is he looking for?
Right?