To your right is the Coleção de Arte Moderna e Contemporânea dos Museus do Vaticano - and I love this part because it is, basically, the Vatican saying: “Alright, modern world… come here, let's talk.”
Think that you are in a place where, for centuries, the Church was the great patron of art. However, in the 20th century, many artists began to look at religion with suspicion, irony, or pure restlessness. Then enters a pope with the courage of a mediator: Paulo VI. On May 7, 1964, there in the Capela Sistina, he met artists and made a kind of emotional appeal: the Church needed you again, and you perhaps needed it too. It wasn't nostalgia; it was a bridge between past and present.
This bridge became physical space on June 23, 1973, when the collection was presented to the public. And it's not “a small room.” It spreads across 55 rooms, occupying places steeped in history, such as the Apartamentos Bórgia, which were the home of Alexandre VI. It's a delightful contrast: where Renaissance politics were once plotted, now you find nervous brushstrokes, broken forms, strange dreams, and colors that almost argue with the frame.
The collection holds almost 800 works by about 250 artists, and the list reads like a gala call: Bacon, Chagall, Dalí, Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso, Rodin, Van Gogh, Matisse… Many arrived here through donations from artists and collectors to the Santa Sé, as if to say: “I want this to live in a place where people truly stop to look.”
And there are rooms with their own personality. Matisse, for example, got a room thanks to his son, Pierre, who donated pieces in 2011 - including liturgical vestments from Vence, those chasubles used in mass. Van Gogh appears with a Pietà that hurts a little just to look at. Rodin? He is present with engravings and even a bronze “Mão de Deus” (Hand of God), heavy, almost a frozen gesture. And there's Marino Marini, with a crucifix and a relief “Crocifissione” (Crucifixion), as well as a bust of a juggler - because, sometimes, faith and vertigo go together.
Oh, and in November 2021, the Vatican installed a permanent contemporary gallery, as if renewing the invitation: the conversation continues.
