The renewal of sacred art between France and Italy (1945-1973). The exhibition at the Vatican Museums – Carlo Franza’s blog

Jacques Maritain French philosopher and his strong link with Pope Paul are at the center of a jubilee exhibition curated by the Vatican Museums inaugurated on June 12, 2025 which has by title: “Paolo VI and Jacques Maritain: The Renewal of sacred art between France and Italy (1945-1973), which can be visited until 20 September 2025.

Set up in the heart of the exhibition path dedicated to the art of the present, halfway between the rooms of Raffaello and the Sistine Chapel, The exhibition curated by Micol Forti, head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Collection of the Vatican Museums, is an opportunity to focus on several important anniversaries. First The eighty years from the appointment of Jacques Maritain to Ambassador of France at the Holy See, in 1945, but also the almost contextual foundation of the Cultural Center of San Luigi dei Francesi; and also the sixty years from the closure of the Second Vatican Council, in December 1965 and the modern religious art collection, desired and inaugurated by Pope Montini in June 1973.

Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), invited to Rome by Charles De Gaulle in the years immediately following the Second World War, from 1945 to 1948, as an ambassador of France at the Holy See. Arriving in Rome a first time in 1918 to congratulate the cause of the controversial Marian apparitions in La Salette, in the French Alps, Maritain will return several times to the eternal city, until you remain from 1945 to 1948 as an ambassador of France at the Holy See, personally appointed by Charles De Gaulle immediately

after the liberation.

It is in those years that friendship with Giovanni Battista Montini is strengthened, already known in Paris in 1924. The rapPorts with Montini will continue well beyond the diplomatic experience and will still be very lively during the Second Vatican Council, to whose premises the neotomist thought of Maritain contributes, focused on the relationship between art and faith, between the world of culture and Catholicism, within that “full humanism” which will be in the Council line. Together with his wife Raïssa, born Oumançoff, met in the classrooms of the Sorbonne and married in 1904, Maritain approaches Christianity also thanks to the influences of intellectual friends such as Charles Péguy and Léon Bloy, up to embrace the Catholic faith through an intense path that will bring the spouses to baptism in June 1906. Maritain and Montini Ama A renewal of sacred art that, in the years between the two world wars, finds committed artists in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland, in the context of the debates of the avant -garde; From here here are Severini’s decorative cycles in Switzerland and for the Cathedral of Cortona, his hometown; Many works by Chagall, with whom Raïssa publishes a book illustrated by her drawings, and of the Jewish artist, a crucifixion contemplated by himself are exhibited (The Christ et Le Peintre) and a deposition (Pietà Rouge) which in 1951 and 1956 wonderfully recreate Renaissance and Baroque examples.

Pope Paul VI gives Jacques Maritain the message for men of science and intellectuals at the end of the Vatican Council II, on 8 December 1965, on the churchyard of the Basilica of San Pietro.

During the first half of the last century, the Maritain give life to an intense cenacle with an international breath, crucial for the reflection on Christianity of the twentieth century. Un meeting of philosophers, church men, artists, poets and intellectuals of various training, such as Paul Claudel and Jean Cocteau.

Over time, the Maritain spouses collect a rich nucleus of works of art, the result of gifts received by the many artist friends; Some of these arrive precisely in the modern religious art collection of the Vatican Museums, such as gifts to Paul VI by the philosopher and the “Cercle des Etudes Jacques et Raïssa Maritain”, together with other works, donated by the same artists, in support of this important project inaugurated by the Pope in June 1973.

The works on display – paintings, drawings, prints, but also photographs, vintage volumes and material testimonies – tell the aspirations of the many protagonists Of this cultural and spiritual adventure, florit around Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, retracing some key episodes of the renewal of sacred art between France, Switzerland and Italy between the end of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the most significant artists Maurice Denis, Emile Bernard, Gino Severini, with his works for the Swiss churches promoted by Cardinal Charles Journet; Georges Rouault, Perhaps the most loved interpreter by Maritain; and again Marc Chagallvery friend of Raïssa, with her animated stories by the extraordinary sensitivity of Jewish folklore; to land a Henri Matisse, with the masterpiece of total art of the Vence chapel; up to the American William Congdon, interpreter vivified by an authentic mystical inspection, known by Maritain in the years close to the Council. The exhibition itinerary is also animated by the figure of the Dominican father Marie-Alain Couturieranother great protagonist of the renewal of sacred art in France, leader of a line operational and theoretical for many verses opposite to that of Maritain, whose presence on display also means the opening of Paul VI towards the most progressive currents of Dominican thought. The exhibition was commissioned by the Vatican Museums, by the Embassy of France at the Holy See, by the San Luigi of the French Cultural Center/ Institut Français- Center Saint-Louis and to the Biblothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg.

Carlo Franza