Heading for Rome? There’s a fascinating art exhibition opening soon
By Desmond O’Grady
A permanent Henri Matisse exhibition will open in the Vatican Museums on 22 June.
It consists of preparatory material for his renowned chapel in Vence: full scale cartoons for three stained glass windows, a depiction of the Virgin Mary and Child which was executed on white ceramic tiles, models for the altar crucifix, a roof top crucifix and bell plus vestments he designed. Later, a Matisse lithograph of the Virgin Mary and some Matisse letters will be added to the exhibition.
In 1941, Matisse, who was 72, underwent an intestinal operation for cancer. In convalescence, he was nursed by Monique Bourgeouis who became his model. In 1948, she became Sister Jacques-Marie, a nun of the Dominican Order and asked Matisse to help when it was decided to build a small, free-standing chapel for their convent at Vence in the hills behind the French Cote d’Azur.
The exhibition will also display letters, with illustrations and decorations, which Matisse sent to the superior of the convent during construction of the L-shaped chapel.
In the three years after 1951 he threw himself into the task participating in the architectural design and other aspects of the chapel as if preparing his visiting card for the next world. He was in a new and final phase of his career which had lasted from the beginning of the century and won him acclaim as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
In this last phase, he had taken up “painting with scissors”, cut-outs of coloured paper which he composed in collages. The technique was new but the pure colours used were in keeping with his reputation as a painter of the joie de vivre.
Some of the preparatory works which will be exhibited in a rectangular room below the Sistine Chapel are huge: the cartoons for the windows are over five metres high by six wide. Matisse used one-to-one scale cartoons.
In Vence, the windows were inundated by sunlight but in the Vatican Museum, the exhibits will be suffused by cool lighting.
Matisse wanted his cartoons to be donated to a museum but on his death in 1945 left them to his son Pierre who ran a New York art gallery. In 1979, Pierre gave them to the Vatican.
The Vatican Matisse room will not be a recreation of the Vence chapel but, instead, will document Matisse’s preparations for it.
Not even scholars have been able to see any of the exhibition material in the past 30 odd-years.
Micol Forti, a Rome and Paris trained art historian in charge of the Collection of Modern Art , says the exhibition “shows a great artist working in respect for liturgical purposes like many major artists in the past”.
She added that it had taken a long time to find an appropriate space in the Vatican and raise money to mount the exhibition.
Pope Paul VI instituted the Collection of Modern Art, which opened in 1973, to re-establish the link between the Catholic Church and art, which had been broken in preceding centuries.
About 400 works are on display with 7,000 in storage.
It has works by a wide range of artists including Marc Chagall, Ben Shahn, important German impressionists, Francis Bacon with a version of Velazquez’s Pope Innocent X, Graham Sutherland, Giorgio de Chirico, Marino Marini and an early Matisse copy of Goya.
There are works by several Australians: Justin O’Brien, Roy De Maistre, John Coburn, Ray Crooke and Eileen Slarke.
– Desmond O’Grady writes from Rome
Fact File
Except for major religious feasts, the Vatican museums’ ticket offices are open daily from Monday to Saturday from 9am-4pm. The museums, 13 in all, close at 6pm.
Tickets cost 15 Euro but there are reductions for children and students.
Entrance is free on the last Sunday of each month. A ticket gives access to all Vatican museums including the Sistine Chapel and the Matisse Room once it is inaugurated.
Online booking details are available by googling Vatican Museums. Those who have booked bypass the queues which in the high season stretch for kilometres.