The papal legacy

A blockbuster exhibit of Catholic Church artifacts gives a valuable history of the church and its influence on the world.

[Photos by Oscar Williams]

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Charity with Four Putti, c. 1627-28, terra cotta, traces of gilt.

Giotto di Bondone, Bust of an Angel, c. 1310-13, mosaic.

Cecco Bonanotte, cast of the hand of Pope John Paul II, 2002, bronze.

XIV Dalai Lama, Thanka, 1978, silk, pearls, coral.

Papal tiara of Pope Pius VII, a gift from Napoleon Bonaparte, 1804, wood, velvet, silk, gold, precious stones.

FORT LAUDERDALE - Try to describe faith in specific terms and you usually get a spiritual approximation of the classic Japanese film Rashomon: My version of the story doesn't sound like yours or the next person's.

And yet that's what we've tried to do through the ages. No institution has done it better - and sometimes worse - than the Roman Catholic Church, clothing its rituals and ceremony in bright raiment that is meant to illuminate faith but sometimes only enshrouds it.

"Saint Peter and the Vatican: The Legacy of the Popes," an exhibition at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, muses on the unbroken line of faith beginning with the apostle Peter that has connected the popes entrusted with his legacy.

The point is made with about 350 works of art and historical and ceremonial objects sent from the Vatican, which rarely lends its treasures but did so as a goodwill gesture by Pope John Paul II. The show has visited Houston and from Fort Lauderdale moves to Cincinnati and then San Diego.

This is a large exhibition, a blockbuster of a type we don't see much of anymore, because of the enormous cost and a post-9/11 reluctance by museums to let go of their holdings. It also requires about 16,000 square feet of gallery space, which few museums can accommodate, so we're fortunate to have it in Florida.

You don't have to be Roman Catholic to enjoy it; it may be less fraught for those who aren't. The American church has been roiled in sexual scandal for two years, and dissension among the ranks of the faithful has simmered for years over other issues, such as birth control and women's roles in the church. So this might seem like yet another effort from an out-of-touch pope to deal with American angst.

But set all that aside and this show, more than four years in the making, has enough variety and value to merit a serious look by anyone interested in history and culture, and it's well worth a trip to Florida's east coast. Arranged through 12 galleries, it's officially about the history of the Vatican, from the ancient basilica first built over the believed site of Saint Peter's burial to the Renaissance building boom featuring art and architecture by Bernini and Michelangelo. Among the treasures are a letter written by Michelangelo to his nephew two months before his death, along with two drawings, one a study of a male nude, the other of a facade for the Vatican. They're really only loose sketches, but from such a great hand and done with such spontaneity, they are powerful and eloquent.

The show is short on bona-fide masterpieces, understandably. The Pieta and the Sistine Chapel are not exactly portable, and some of the great works that are don't fit this show's theme. But the show is flush with fine and sometimes fabulous artifacts. Architectural prints, mostly 17th century, document the remarkable design and construction of the present-day basilica, from Michelangelo's dome to the anonymous group effort to move the obelisk from the periphery of the Vatican site to Saint Peter's Square. They're accompanied by a replica of the wooden tower used to lower and raise the obelisk. For the record, it took 900 men, 140 horses and 44 winches 13 months to relocate the 300-ton edifice.

Probably the star of the show is a terra-cotta study by Bernini for a marble statue on his Monument to Pope Urban VIII in the Vatican. Fluid and vital, it shows its maker's fingerprints visibly impressed into the clay. The piece is a visceral link to the artist famous for such Baroque masterpieces as the deliriously beautiful bronze canopy, or baldacchino, that towers over the basilica's main altar.

A very nice 14th century icon, Christ Pantocrator and Saints Peter and Paul, provides a transition from Byzantine painting to later periods more prevalent in this exhibition. Mosaics, including a heavily restored angel by Giotto from the 14th century, along with fragments of frescos, are historically important and allow the viewer to see up close the techniques of these two old art forms.

The show has a lot of window dressing that could be viewed as informative and educational (the intention) or distracting (the occasional result). That sounds churlish, given the generosity of Rome, but it's a truism of the museum world that most "serious" exhibitions let the art speak for itself without all those blockbuster props.

So, early in the show, I could have done without the re-creation of the Sistine Chapel - small and tunnellike, not soaring - with a partially finished detail from Michelangelo's fresco, the famous one in which Adam's and God's fingers stretch toward each other (painted on wood, not frescoed, by the way). It's like a regional theater set design that doesn't for a moment convey the enormity of the artist's accomplishment or give us any insight into his genius.

I wanted to be, but was not, fully convinced by the model or the accompanying wall texts, or by the video explaining that the bones found in a tomb during an excavation beneath the Vatican in the 1940s and 1950s are those of Saint Peter. (But maybe that doubt is just the cynicism born of these DNA-reliant times.)

The more interesting backstory is that of human will in service to an ideal and the effort's cost, emotional and monetary. This show is about the popes, and you can't consider a story about them without considering how they've shaped and manipulated history.

The Bishops of Rome, primary caretakers of Christianity since about the third century, are a fascinating bunch, individual, opinionated and of their times, who have had to reconcile their fallible natures with the responsibility of making decisions considered infallible. Portraits, marble busts and bronze statues render their likenesses, and occasionally, in a wall text or a small detail, we are allowed glimmers of these men's inner lives. For all the gilded splendor in which they lived, you get the feeling most people would rather have that particular cup pass them by. But they sure knew how to commission great architecture and art.

What's less clear is how well they have understood their worldwide congregation. A gallery titled "Into the World" chronicles some of the missionary work encouraged by the Vatican and the tributes sent to popes by people outside Rome. There are letters of supplication and condition reports - many are hundreds of years old - that, unfortunately, have not been translated into English. If you really want to know what they're about, buy the catalog, which provides moving detail.

Items such as the Thanka, a wall hanging made by the 14th Dalai Lama for Pope John Paul II, isn't great art, but it is an amazing work of ecumenical homage. A missal stand made of wood, fish spine and tortoise shell in Cuba during the late 15th or early 16th century is believed to have belonged to the priest who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his first voyages to the New World. Considering the atrocities visited on indigenous people there during the centuries of exploration, it could be more about the pliancy and adaptability of the natives than a testimonial of faith.

The exhibition contains some great anecdotal information, such as an inside look at a papal election, with a video of old news footage and paraphernalia the cardinals use during the process.

Probably the best insider story concerns Napoleon. The faith of Pope Pius VII must have been tried by the Frenchman who first sacked the Papal States, then invited Pius to Paris for his coronation and had the audacity to grab the crown from the pope and do the job himself, then sent him a thank you gift of a papal tiara embellished with precious stones that the French had stolen from the Vatican. The good news was that the emperor returned the jewels, including a massive emerald that sits on top of the tiara. The bad news was that Napoleon purposely had it made too small for the pope's head. Call it humor in high places. (I'll bet Pius wasn't laughing.)

The most sumptuous galleries contain papal vestments and liturgical objects. They are as beautifully made as any haute couture, silks and velvets lavishly embroidered for copes, chasubles, stoles, miters, even footwear. Now, we're told, modern popes have exchanged the beautiful 18th century styles for sensible shoes with soft soles. Altar cushions bear blindingly fine petit point. Processional crosses, monstrances and arcane ceremonial items such as gold "straws" for the Eucharist bear witness to the belief that exquisitely crafted accessories are concomitants of reverence. One of the more surprising inclusions is a vestment set worn by Pope John Paul II when he opened the holy doors at the Vatican on Dec. 31, 1999, to begin the jubilee year. The cope and miter in a shiny blend of acetate, polyester and a little silk look positively psychedelic.

But it is the humble pieces that begin to stand out amid all the riches. In a case of priceless chalices and patens (the goblets and plates used to hold the communion wine and bread) wrought from precious metals and gemstones sits a set fashioned from a simple glass goblet and a metal container lid. They were used to celebrate the Eucharist at Auschwitz during World War II and given to the Vatican by the prison of war priests.

Objects such as these are moving and humbling, and they get to the heart of faith and the power of its enduring solace. They also take us back to a mystery that doesn't need embellishment to experience.

To its credit, the exhibition ends simply with a bronze cast of John Paul's hand. Set into the burnished bronze base is the hollowed-out impression of its mold. They are a physical positive and negative, a metaphor, probably unintended, that embodies so much church history. It is the one thing in the exhibit you're allowed to touch. Maybe it's a little gimmicky. But amid so much splendid surfeit, it reminds us that we're all, popes included, only human.

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