Masterpieces of the twentieth century from the Leone Piccioni Collection at the Vatican Museums in Rome – Carlo Franza’s blog

At the end of the Jubilee Year 2025, the Vatican Museums open to the public the exhibition “The irrepressible curiosity”. Masterpieces of the twentieth century from the Leone Piccioni Collection, the result of a new, important donation which confirms the fertile and uninterrupted dialogue between the Institution and private patrons. The exhibition, edited by Micol Forti, Head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Collection of the Vatican Museums, inaugurated on Thursday 13 November 2025, in the rooms of the Borgia Tower, presenting i masterpieces from the collection of the Catholic intellectual Leone Piccioni (Turin 1925-Rome 2018) that his children, Gloria and Giovanni, wanted to offer as a gift to the Pope’s Museums. Writer, literary and artistic critic, academic, journalist, director, deputy general director of RAI, Leone Piccioni defined his collection as “My pride, my heritage“. An epithet that well expresses the depth of the bond that the intellectual had with every single work in this highly selected collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints by masters of the twentieth century.
In his life, full of encounters, interests and friendships, his love for contemporary art occupied a place of primary importance. Main intermediary between Leo and the world
Italian and international art it was the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti (Alexandria of Egypt 1888-Milan 1970), with whom he graduated in Rome in 1948 and with whom he remained linked by an indissoluble friendship. Thanks to him the horizon of his knowledge broadens, coming into direct contact with many great artists, from Butters to Morandifrom Guttuso to Carrafrom Fautrier to Dorazio. Names present in the exhibition with selected masterpieces, which delicately reveal Piccioni’s taste. A taste that is refined over time thanks to the deepening of his interest in the sensitivity of each individual artist and thanks to the relationships he forms with each of them. Special relationships that are at the origin of this Collection. Each exhibition environment tells and illuminates a specific aspect of his birth: the importance of human encounters, the richness of exchanges in the cultural circles that Piccioni frequents and which will guide the choice of works, the variations of his refined taste, personal and never predictable.

Thus, the first room Leone and “Ungà”: a meeting lasting two lifetimes introduces and frames the birth of the Collection in the context of the bond between Piccioni and Ungaretti, a true source of inspiration, focusing attention on some of the artists dearest to both: Maccari, Morandi, Guttuso, Severini, Fautrier. The environment dedicated to follows “L’Approdo” and the artistic environment of Forte dei Marmiwhich presents some of the main protagonists of these two “places” of meeting and exchange, the first cultural, which identifies the RAI newspaper, first radio (1944) then paper (1952) and finally television (1963); the second is geographical, a summer holiday destination for artists and intellectuals of the last century.

In the rooms The taste of Leone. Between realism and social interests And The taste of Leone. Original visions and spirit of nature the public is welcomed into the heart of Piccioni’s critical sense and aesthetic choices: the first gives an account of his attentive look at reality, the human condition, social issues; the second reveals an attraction for “things of nature” translated into visionary, poetic and sophisticated works by artists of different stylistic backgrounds, from Manzù to Mafai, from Guarienti to Morlotti.

Ties and closeness it is a more limited space, dedicated to two Tuscan artists, less known to the general public, but particularly loved by Leone and linked to him by a profound friendship: the sculptor Venturino Venturi and the painter Mario Marcucci, who rework the Christian iconographic tradition with extraordinary and innovative sensitivity.

The two rooms Masters and friends. Figure, reality and abstraction and Masters and friends. Rome of the sixtiesdemonstrate the breadth of Leone’s aesthetic horizons and take their name from one of his best-known books, Masters and Friends of 1969, in which he retraces and recounts the most significant encounters with some of the protagonists of twentieth-century culture and art: Burri, Afro, Capogrossi, Guttuso; and again Ceroli, Fioroni, Dorazio, Schifano. Finally, the last room, Scriptures and visions. Valuable books, dedications and photographsreturns to the connection with Ungaretti and opens a glimpse into the preciousness of some publications collected or received as gifts by Piccioni during his life, preserved by him in the immense library preserved in his Roman home, now partly donated by his children to the Central State Archives, together with exchanges of letters with intellectuals and artists.

“The exhibition also aims to be a tribute to Leone Piccioni on the occasion of the celebrations for the centenary of his birth. The Vatican Museums express gratitude to their children Gloria and Giovanni for the generous bequest they wanted to make to our institution“, declares Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums.

Carlo Franza