The Vatican Museums
opened their doors to film crews in order to make the world's
most beautiful art collection available to the whole world, in a
six-disc set titled 'Musei del Papa' (The Pope's Museums)
released November 14 at newsstands throughout Italy.
The title is plural given that the museums are a system of
collections, galleries and spaces all belonging to different
historical time periods and different cultures.
Vatican Museums Director Antonio Paolucci said that when
one steps into the museums, which comprise five entire
kilometers of galleries, internal gardens and rooms, "there's
amazement, shock".
"The collections are next to each other and sometimes one
inside of another. If there's an Ariadne's thread to understand
something so multifaceted, it's that they are everything but a
museum of the clergy," Paolucci said.
So, in the labyrinth that makes up the Vatican Museums, the
Ariadne's thread is also this new six-disc collection - a
complex undertaking that involved a web of entities including
national broadcaster Vatican Television Center (VTC), Vatican
Communications Office, RAI Com, L'Espresso Editorial Group, and
two sponsors who financed the project.
The DVD series' host is Alberto Angela, a paleontologist,
journalist and writer who has hosted several popular scientific
television shows and specials on Italian television.
"I like to think that these documentaries aren't an
occasion to 'go', staying at home, to the Vatican Museums, but
rather, we bring the Museums to the people," Angela said.
"In every corner there's one work after another and behind
each one there's a story to tell. It's like taking a trip
through a continent or retracing the history of sixty-plus
generations".
Monsignor Dario Viganò, director of VTC and prefect of the
Secretariat for Communications that Pope Francis created in
June, said the current DVD collection follows the 3-disc
collection 'Alla Scoperta del Vaticano' (Discovering the
Vatican), also hosted by Angela and created with the same
production partners.
"The Vatican Museums are an education through images, a way
to have an experience of God," Viganò said.
Rai Com CEO Luigi de Siervo said when entities at this
level come together in Italy, "they can make products that are
in no way inferior to great international productions".
The story of the collections is woven in with the secular
history of the Church and various papacies that left their mark
through eternal works like the Sistine Chapel, a masterpiece
difficult to compare to any other artistic production created.
The documentaries showcase treasures from classical
antiquity, such as the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvedere, to
evidence of ancient peoples such as the Etruscans and the
Egyptians.
There are masterpieces of Italian art from Michelangelo,
Raphael, Caravaggio, through more recent international artists
such as Matisse, Van Gogh and Francis Bacon, as well as
artifacts from non-European cultures.
Paolucci jokingly said one thing he hoped the DVDs wouldn't
do is encourage more visitors to the phenomenally popular
museums.
"These DVDs are aimed at facilitating, helping
understanding. It's not like we want more people at the Museums.
Every year there are six million visitors. We're in favor of
zero growth".
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