NEW EXHIBITION
Paul VI and Jacques Maritain
The renewal of sacred art in France and Italy (1945-1973)
Press Presentation: 12 June 2025 – 9.00
Open to the public
13 June – 20 September 2025
VATICAN MUSEUMS
Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, Salette della Torre Borgia
PRESS RELEASE
Vatican City, 6 June 2025
On the occasion of the Jubilee Year 2025, the Vatican Museums pay homage to the renowned French philosopher Jacques Maritain and his special bond with Saint Paul VI and with the world of art, inaugurating on Thursday 12 June the refined exhibition Paul VI and Jacques Maritain: the renewal of sacred art in France and Italy (1945-1973).
Curated by Micol Forti, Director of the Vatican Museums Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, and displayed in the heart of the exhibition itinerary dedicated to the art of the present, halfway between the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel, the exhibition is a multiple opportunity to celebrate various important anniversaries: eighty years since the appointment of Jacques Maritain as Ambassador of France to the Holy See, in 1945; the founding, at around the same time, of the Saint Louis of France Cultural Centre; sixty years since the closing of Vatican Council II, in December 1965; and the Collection of Modern Religious Art, desired and inaugurated by Pope Montini in June 1973. The exhibition is the result of the collaboration of various institutions with the Vatican Museums, such as the Embassy of France to the Holy See, the Saint Louis of France Cultural Centre/Institut français – Centre Saint-Louis, and the Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg.
At the centre of this special collaboration is the figure of Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), sent to Rome by Charles de Gaulle in the years immediately after the second World War, from 1945 to 1948, as Ambassador of France to the Holy See. In those years he consolidated his friendship with Giovanni Battista Montini, whom he had already met in Paris in 1924. The relationship with Montini continued well beyond his diplomatic experience, and was still strong during Vatican Council II, to the premises of which Maritain’s neo-Thomist thought contributed, centred on the relationship between art and faith, between the world of culture and Catholicism, within that “integral humanism” that would be in line with the Council.
Together with his wife Raïssa, née Oumançoff, whom he met in the classrooms of the Sorbonne and married in 1904, Maritain drew closer to Christianity also thanks to the influences of intellectual friends such as Charles Péguy and Léon Bloy, until he embraced the Catholic faith through an intense journey that would lead the couple to baptism in June 1906.
Throughout the first half of the last century, the Maritains created an intense international cenacle, crucial for reflection on twentieth-century Christianity, an encounter between philosophers, men of the Church, artists, poets and intellectuals of various backgrounds, such as Paul Claudel and Jean Cocteau.
Over time the Maritain couple formed a rich collection of works of art, the result of gifts received from many artist friends; some of these some of these ended up in the Collection of Modern Religious Art in the Vatican Museums, as gifts to Paul VI from the philosopher and the ‘Cercle des etudes Jacques et Raïssa Maritain’, together with other works, donated by the artists themselves, in support of this important project inaugurated by the pontiff in June 1973.
The works on display - paintings, drawings, prints, as well as photographs, period volumes and material evidence - recount the aspirations of the many protagonists of this cultural and spiritual adventure, which flourished around Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, retracing some key episodes of the renewal of sacred art in France, Switzerland and Italy from the end of the nineteenth century and during the twentieth century.
The most significant artists are Maurice Denis, Emile Bernard, Gino Severini, with his works for the Swiss churches promoted by Cardinal Charles Journet; Georges Rouault, perhaps Maritain’s best-loved artist; and Marc Chagall, a close friend of Raïssa, with his stories animated by the extraordinary sensibility of Jewish folklore; Henri Matisse, with his masterpiece of total art of the Chapel of Vence; and the American William Congdon, an interpreter enlivened by an authentic mystical inspiration, whom Maritain met in the years of the Council. All figures of uncontested calibre, they contributed to the reflection on the quest for new forms and new paths for contemporary sacred art.
The exhibition is also enriched by the figure of the Dominican Father Marie-Alain Couturier, another major protagonist of the revival of sacred art in France, at the forefront of an operative and theoretical approach that was in many ways opposed to that of Maritain, whose presence in the exhibition is also intended to signify Paul VI’s openness to the more progressive currents of Dominican thought.
OPENING TIMES
From Monday to Saturday: from 8.00 to 20.00 (last entry at 18.00)
Every last Sunday of the month (except 29 June, Saints Peter and Paul): from 9.00 to 14.00 (last entry at 12.30)
Closed on Sundays and feast days
Entrance included in the ticket price.
Accreditation procedure
Journalists and media operators who wish to attend the press presentation must apply, no later than 24 hours before the event, via the Holy See Press Office online accreditation system, at: press.vatican.va/accreditamenti.
