“The proud and the arrogant excluded themselves”, sniffed the Vatican newspaper, the Osservatore Romano.
That was the only, semi-official reference to the fact that some of the
artists invited to take part in the exhibition, “The Splendour of
Truth, the Beauty of Charity” (until 4 September) celebrating the 60th
anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's ordination, declined the honour.
Still, Gianfranco
Ravasi, the dynamic president of the Pontifical Council for Culture,
with a sophisticated understanding of contemporary art, persuaded 60
artists of various kinds to accept (only seven women among them: does
this reflect the proportion invited, one wonders?), among them El
Anatsui, Mimmo Jodice, Jannis Kounellis, Matthias Schaller and Arnaldo
Pomodoro.
Not
surprisingly, architects are to the fore, with Oscar Niemeyer sending a
model of the campanile for the cathedral of Belo Horizonte in Brazil,
Renzo Piano, the designs for the Santuario of Padre Pio in San Giovanni
Rotondo, and Santiago Calatrava, a model of his work for St John the
Divine in New York. Among the musicians, Ennio Morricone, famous for his
soundtracks for spaghetti Westerns, has contributed a musical score in
the form of a cross.
At
the opening of the exhibition on 4 July, the Pope, who had already met
250 artists in the Sistine Chapel in November 2009, appealed for the
artists present “not to divorce artistic creativity from the truth and
from charity…but to make the beauty of your works stimulate a desire and
need in those who see them to render their lives beautiful and
truthful”.