Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - “A woman clothed in the sun” - The Immaculate Conception in words of the Great Masters- is the title of an exhibition organised by the Pontifical Commission for Cultural Heritage of the Church to mark the 150th anniversary of the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception opened recently in the Vatican. On show more than 100 precious works (paintings, sculptures, liturgical objects) covering a chronological and thematic arc of 1000 years. The exhibition in 6 sections offers not only cultural enrichment it also provokes reflection and uplifts the spirit as it contemplates beauty. Fides asked Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, president of the Commission and also the Pontifical Commission for Church Archaeology how art is part of the history of the Church and its mission.
Archbishop you are in charge of an immense heritage which often represents a direct testimony of the life of the Church and therefore also its mission through the centuries …
Yes, art is in fact a witness to the life of the Church and therefore also to its mission. Art represents a personal way of living the mission. These cultural objects, germinated in the womb of the faith and agents of evangelisation, demonstrate how the faith beats in daily life.
So, cultural heritage as an expression of the Church?
Cultural objects are a living testimony of Tradition, the Church’s work in the world under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to carry the Gospel to the nations, to the pagans of all ages as well as nourishing the faithful spiritually and culturally.
In your opinion can witness to the Gospel through education to approach the cultural heritage, draw the men and women of today to Christ?
For the Church artistic expressions can serve as a privileged tool for encounter and confrontation with present day generations to fulfil in this sense her missionary vocation through cultural promotion and Christian evangelisation. The many different manifestations which find in beauty a universal language and a means of approaching the sacred are the spiritual treasure of every culture which comes to maturity when, reached by the proclamation of the Gospel, it favours Christian conversion and consequently, authentic development.
In your opinion has the Church always given special attention to the world of art?
Countless from the early Church are the interventions of ecclesiastical institutions in the sector of art. We can go back to Pope Zephir (199-217) who made Deacon Callisto, later his successor, supervisor of the catacombs on the Via Appia prefiguring a work of preservation, iconographic embellishment and support for the inculturation of the faith. When persecution ended there was the period of the construction of the great basilicas and the conflict on the question of sacred images. In the Middle Ages the whole of Europe became a huge building site for the construction of cathedrals, in the renaissance the most important artists sought for new ways of expressing the sacred inculturating it in the great classical tradition; in later centuries each generation of the Christian civitas left its mark on the path of the faith; even in the difficult clutter of the 1900s the Church did not fail to reaffirm her alliance with art, as the Second Vatican Council stated in its Message to Artists.
Let’s talk about art and its relation with esthetical pleasure
Art must serve to transform the world with its delectable beauty ordered for the truth and goodness. In this context esthetical pleasure is a sign pointing to the pleasure of life shared with others. The esthetical or hedonistic heresy which has marked the cultures of modernity, must be resolved in a new ethical era thanks to commitment by the liberal arts.
So artists have an enormous ethical responsibility since art has a considerable influence on people. Authentic artists are to be counted among the greatest benefactors of humanity, because they nourish the qualifying sense of man, which is his spirituality. Through their works they say and sing the divine, winning attention and interest, because beauty enhances the contents. Their works manifest man’s proprium as an interlocutor with his fellow human beings communicating, emotions, intuitions, decisions, resolutions.
What relation is there between art and the mystical experience?
A very close relation because art aims precisely for the intrinsic opening of man towards God. Art opens minds to the Absolute, it draws souls to worship God in spirit and truth. Beauty is the splendour of sensible forms, the sacred is the splendour of the glory of God. (P.L.R.) (Agenzia Fides 5/3/2005; righe 62, parole 774)
