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Vatican announces major restoration project in St. Peter’s Basilica

January 11, 2024 Catholic News Agency 0
Bernini’s baldacchino at the papal Mass on Jan. 1, 2024. / Credit: Vatican Media

Rome Newsroom, Jan 11, 2024 / 13:15 pm (CNA).

The Vatican announced on Thursday that the soaring baldacchino over the main altar of St. Peter’s Basilica designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini 400 years ago will undergo a major restoration.

The ambitious restoration and conservation project, expected to be completed just before the start of the Catholic Church’s jubilee year in December, will require scaffolding to be set up around the canopy of the basilica’s main altar for nearly a year.

Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, the archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, has assured that papal liturgies will still be able to take place in the basilica amid the restoration work.

The 700,000 euro (about $768,000) restoration is being funded by the Knights of Columbus and will be carried out by the Vatican Museums’ expert art restorers.

Patrick Kelly, the head of the Knights of Columbus, was present in Rome for a press conference on Jan. 11 to announce the restoration in the basilica, calling the project “one of the greatest restorations” of the many that the Knights have funded at the Vatican in the past 40 years.

“It’s Bernini’s baldacchino … It’s a singular masterpiece of sacred art — one which is instantly recognizable and impressive,” Kelly said.

“But, if that weren’t enough, this project also fits very well with our mission and with our history of service to the Church, and especially, the successors of St. Peter.”

Pope Urban VIII commissioned Bernini in 1624 to design and build the enormous canopy over the Papal Altar of the Confession, located directly over the tomb of St. Peter the Apostle. 

With its twisted bronze columns, the baldacchino stretches 92 feet high. Intricately decorated with gilded Baroque angels, cherubs, bees, and laurel branches, the canopy took Bernini nine years to create with considerable help from his architectural rival, Francesco Borromini. 

The pope directed Bernini to dismantle and melt down bronze beams from Rome’s ancient Pantheon to help create the massive baldacchino, which in total weighs nearly 70 tons. The canopy was finally revealed to the public in 1633.

After visiting St. Peter’s Basilica in 1873, novelist Henry James described his encounter with the baldacchino: “You have only to stroll and stroll and gaze and gaze; to watch the glorious altar-canopy lift its bronze architecture, its colossal embroidered contortions, like a temple within a temple, and feel yourself, at the bottom of the abysmal shaft of the dome dwindle to a crawling dot.”

At the Vatican press conference, Pietro Zander, the head of the artistic and archeological patrimony of the basilica, explained that a preliminary investigation found that the baldacchino had a “degraded state of conservation” and that its entire surface is covered “with a dark coating,” which requires significant cleaning.

“The deterioration issues … are in part to the many visitors and pilgrims who flock to St. Peter’s Basilica every day, changing its microclimate by their presence,” Zander said.

“The basilica welcomes up to 50,000 people every day,” he said. “Considerable microclimatic variations during the day and strong changes in temperature and humidity between day and night interact with the canopy, causing alterations and corrosion of the metal; oxidation of the iron supports and reinforcements; and expansion of the wooden parts with consequent lifting and detachment of layers on its surface.”

Zander indicated that further study of the “microclimate of the basilica” will also help to form a conservation plan for all of the artistic works in the basilica.

The restoration work will begin on Feb. 12, one day after Pope Francis is scheduled to preside over the canonization of Argentina’s first saint in a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. 

Alberto Capitanucci, who leads the technical team of “Fabric of St. Peter,” the office responsible for the conservation and maintenance of St. Peter’s Basilica, expects that it will take about four weeks to put up the scaffolding, which will enable a team of 10-12 experts to work each day on the restoration of the baldacchino.

The restoration in the basilica is one of many construction and restoration projects taking place across the city of Rome to prepare for the Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year.

Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri has said that the Eternal City will become “an open-air construction site” in 2024 with 1,400 building projects planned in the city ahead of the jubilee, according to Italy’s Rai News.

Construction is already underway to create a new pedestrian-only wide walkway from Castel Sant’Angelo to the road leading to St. Peter’s Square, the via della Conciliazione, with a tunnel for cars underneath, a project expected to cost about $77 million.

The jubilee year will officially begin with the pope opening the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica in December 2024.

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Fra Angelico’s rare painting of the Crucifixion fetches record price at Christie’s auction house

July 7, 2023 Catholic News Agency 1
Fra Angelico’s “The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Baptist and the Magdalen at the Foot of the Cross” / Christie’s

London, England, Jul 7, 2023 / 05:00 am (CNA).

The most publicized painting of the summer sale season is from the Italian Renaissance — and it’s unrepentantly religious — Fra Angelico’s Crucifixion just sold July 6 at Christie’s for over £5 million (about $6.4 million) to an unknown buyer, setting a new auction record for the artist.

Fra Angelico's painting of the Crucifixion sold at Christie's on July 6, 2023, for about $6.4 million. Photo courtesy of Christie’s Images Limited 2023
Fra Angelico’s painting of the Crucifixion sold at Christie’s on July 6, 2023, for about $6.4 million. Photo courtesy of Christie’s Images Limited 2023

Just as the sensation of 2017 was “Christ as Salvator Mundi,” by Leonardo da Vinci, the latest is Christ as part of a Calvary scene. Fra Angelico died around the time that Leonardo was born, in the mid-15th century, and had been revered throughout Italy. For a major painting to come on the market by this artist is exceptional. 

Christie’s is the same auction house that sold Leonardo’s work six years ago — it was the most expensive painting ever sold — $450 million, and the buyer was probably the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. It was an unlikely choice for the Guardian of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, but for those with the means, the message is less important than the maker. It’s unlikely that Mohammed bin Salman was bidding for the Fra Angelico as “Jesus as Saviour of the World” is less of a worry for non-Christians than Jesus on the Cross. 

The Catholic identity of Fra Angelico goes deeper than Leonardo’s. ‘Fra’ is a shortened form of the Italian word for brother, which is what he was within the Dominican Order. Originally named Guido di Piero, the friar-artist’s gentle nature led to the nickname “Angelico.”

All his known paintings are religious; many of them are in the convent of San Marco in Florence. He lived there for much of his life, painting for San Marco and other Catholic institutions. The settings present a problem for collectors as Fra Angelico’s paintings are mostly still attached to the walls. The cells and common areas of his friary are covered with them and unlike the high-value graffiti by Banksy, nobody is prepared to hack apart a historic building to remove the frescoes.

During Fra Angelico’s lifetime, his fame spread far and wide. Two successive popes were so impressed, they summoned the painter-friar to work on frescoes at the Vatican on different occasions. It was in Rome that he died before his 60th year. He was buried there, despite his strong attachment to Tuscany.

The importance of Fra Angelico’s work was closely tied to his character. Unlike so many artists of questionable morals, it seems that Fra Angelico led a blameless life and used painting as a form of worship. He felt himself to have been divinely inspired and few viewers would disagree. He reportedly wept whenever he painted the Crucifixion. 

Even in a secular age, the power of his devotion is apparent. The glistening gold ground of the painted panel at Christie’s has an otherworldly glow. There is plenty of symbolism too, although some of this is lost amid the spellbinding colors and composition of this 25-inch-tall painting. A notable detail is almost invisible in the face of the grieving woman at the bottom of the painting. And above Christ’s head is a tiny Pelican in Her Piety, a well-known symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, chest bloodied from pecking in order to feed her young.

The atmosphere in the Christie’s viewing room for Part 1 of the Old Masters sale took on a heightened sense of the sacred with the Fra Angelico; there was a hushed awe that matched the subject matter. (In the same space three months ago there was another painting of the crucifixion that also transformed the highly commercial space into a haven of contemplation. Craigie Aitchison is one of the few 20th-century artists to have made a name by painting Christ’s Passion.)

Fra Angelico was not always as well known as he is now. For centuries, his fame was eclipsed but then rose again in the 19th century, along with a revival of interest in deeply spiritual early Renaissance art. 

Art historians such as Alexander Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford, championed what was often called “Catholic art” and Fra Angelico was one of his favorites. John Ruskin was another supporter, despite reservations about Catholicism. Most enthusiastic of all was that rare thing, an art writer who happened to be a Catholic cardinal. Nicholas Wiseman, the first Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, likened Fra Angelico’s “perfection in virtue” to “perfection in Christian art.”

In that 19th-century explosion of enthusiasm for Italian “Primitives,” many collectors in the UK and the USA acquired works that will seldom be seen again for sale. Still operating in London and New York, Colnaghi is the oldest commercial gallery in the world and has a long-time interest in Fra Angelico. Jeremy Howard of Colnaghi is a preeminent authority on the subject. 

Before the auction Howard told CNA that, “Paintings by Fra Angelico on the market are rare — there have only been three sales this century — and rediscoveries are even rarer.” 

“The present Crucifixion was identified in 1996,” he continued. “It was probably acquired in the early Victorian period by Lord Ashburton at a time of fervent religious revivalism … But you don’t need to be religious to appreciate the beauty and the raw emotional appeal of this very early work by one of the great pioneers of the Italian Renaissance.”

The last word should perhaps go to Pope John Paul II, who beatified Fra Angelico in 1982. The pope’s motu proprio was prefaced with a quote from Giorgio Vasari, the definitive art writer of the Renaissance. He described “Beato” Angelico (which is how he has always been known in Italy): “the one who does the work of Christ.”

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