PRESS RELEASE
Fabric of Saint Peter in the Vatican
Previati’s Via Crucis at Saint Peter’s: art and faith for the time of Lent
The temporary devotional exhibition is repeated in this Jubilee year, after the three-year experience from 2022 to 2024, enabling greater participation in the preparation for Holy Easter.
VATICAN, 6 MAR – The fourteen stations of Gaetano Previati’s Via Crucis return to Saint Peter’s Basilica for a temporary devotional exhibition only in the Lenten period.
Thanks to the collaboration between the Fabric of Saint Peter, the Governorate of Vatican City State and the active support of the Directorate of the Vatican Museums, the fourteen paintings of the cycle of the “Passion of Christ” (oil on canvas, 121 x 107 cm), produced by the artist Gaetano Previati (Ferrara 1852 – Lavagna 1920) between 1901 and 1902 and currently held in the Vatican Museums storage deposits, have been placed in the transept and along the nave of the Basilica.
The initiative – repeated in this Jubilee year after the three-year experience from 2022 to 2024 – will enable greater participation in the preparation for Holy Easter.
Indeed, from tomorrow, Friday 7 March, the faithful and pilgrims visiting the Vatican Basilica will have the opportunity to admire the works, participating in the Procession of the Via Crucis every Friday from 16.00 throughout the entire Lenten period.
“May the hope that does not disappoint (cf. Rm 5:5), the central message of the Jubilee, be for us the horizon of the Lenten journey towards the paschal victory”: Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, vicar general of His Holiness for Vatican City State, archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Peter and president of the Fabric of Saint Peter echoes Pope Francis’ words in his message for Lent this year. And he adds, “As Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Spe Salvi teaches us, ‘the human being needs unconditional love’”.
“Previati’s Via Crucis allows us to contemplate the mysteries of the Passion of Jesus, and accompanies us in our journey of immersion in God’s unconditional love for us through the Pasch of the Resurrection”, explains Gambetti.
“In harmonious dialogue with the architecture of the Vatican Basilica, Gaetano Previati’s Via Crucis once again invites reflection and prayer among the faithful and pilgrims in this Jubilee year”, says Professor Pietro Zander, head of the Section for the Necropolises and Artistic Heritage of the Fabric of Saint Peter.
Gaetano Previati - Via Crucis, 1901-1902
Oil on canvas
121 x 107cm (156 x 123 x 11.5 cm with frame)
invv. 23467-23480
Vatican Museums, Modern and Contemporary Art Collection
Gaetano Previati (Ferrara 1852 - Lavagna 1920) painted the 14 stations of the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross, starting from November 1901, when he began to paint the canvases, acquired for the purpose, in his workshop in Piazza Duomo in Milan.
An uncommissioned work on which the artist worked intensely and incessantly during the subsesquent months, even equipping himself with a real wooden cross that he carried on his shoulders to better understand the drama and sacrifice of the Passion of Jesus, to better interpret the power of the gift offered to humanity.
In its entirety it is conceived as a single, continuous work, and this is how it was first presented in Turin in April 1902.
The palette is dominated by the red of Jesus’ robe and a jagged sky of clouds that grows darker as the crucial stages of his martyrdom to death and burial unfold.
The long brushstroke, which characterizes the Divisionist language of which Previati was a master, eludes details and concentrates on the dramatic force of Jesus’ body and the expressive intensity of those who surround him, support him, mourn him, and rescue him.
The work arrived in the Vatican in 1972, during the preparatory stages of the Collection of Modern Religious Art established at the behest of Saint Paul VI and donated by the pontiff to the Vatican Museums on 23 June 1973.
