VATICAN CITY (AFP) – The Vatican on Friday said 60 artists will present their works there next month following an invitation by Pope Benedict XVI who is trying to link Christian faith with contemporary art.
Titled “Splendour of the truth, beauty of the Truth,” sculptors, painters, architects, musicians, writers and filmmakers will showcase their works at the event at Paul VI Audience Hall from July 4.
Some of the selected artists, who are mainly Europeans, paid tribute to the Pope.
The architects Oscar Niemeyer of Brazil, Mario Botta of Switzerland and Renzo Piano of Italy plan to participate in the event. Italian film composer Ennio Morricone sent a music score to the Vatican.
“This new experience is a mosaic (of different artistic expressions) aimed at deepening the exchange between faith and art,” Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi told reporters, saying more such events were planned for the future.
Ravasi, who is also president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, deplored that Christian faith and art had “gone their separate ways”.
The Vatican has been trying to woo the arts to the faith. The current pope, himself a music lover, invited 260 artists to the Sixtine Chapel in 2009.
His predecessor John Paul II in 1999 said the Roman Catholic Church “needed art”. Already in 1964 pope Paul VI apologized for the Church’s intolerance towards art.
Christianity inspired art in the Middle Ages up to the 17th-century Baroque era, including the Renaissance period. But wars and tragedies in the 20th century widened the gap between religious faith and artistic expression, which rebelled against the romanticism of the past.
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