Exhibition “Mario Deluigi’s Litanies of the Virgin – A Dialogue between the Sacred and Abstraction” Opens at the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo

Mario Deluigi’s Litanies of the Virgin – A Dialogue between the Sacred and Abstraction” [“Le Litanie della Vergine di Mario Deluigi - Dialogo tra sacro e astrazione”] is the title of the exhibition inaugurated on the evening of Thursday, 10 September, at the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo.

The ceremony was presided over by Giuseppe Puglisi-Alibrandi, Secretary General of the Governorate of Vatican City State. Also present were Andrea Tamburelli, Director of the Pontifical Villas; Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums and Cultural Heritage, Architect Assia Carpano, co-curator of the exhibition; and Rosalia Pagliarani of the Vatican Museums’ Department of Nineteenth-Century and Contemporary Art, also co-curator of the exhibition.

Dedicated to the Venetian artist Mario De Luigi — known professionally as Deluigi — the exhibition honors this leading figure in pictorial research of the second half of the twentieth century.

Among his works is The Litanies of the Virgin (Homage to Mondrian), a large oil painting on panel dating from 1949–1950. It was intended for the Salesian community of the Astori College in Mogliano Veneto as an altarpiece for the Church of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice. However, because it was executed in a purely abstract language, it was not understood by his contemporaries and was deemed unsuitable. In 1950, Deluigi exhibited the work at the Venice Biennale, in the Italian Pavilion, within a context strongly oriented toward abstraction, where it elicited acclaim as well as irony and criticism.

On 16 September 1972, the Patriarch of Venice, Albino Luciani [future Pope John Paul I] presented the work to Pope Paul VI during the Pontiff’s historic visit to the city.

Also on display alongside the work is a portfolio (1972) comprising ten screen prints, each dedicated to one of the titles of the Virgin invoked in the Litany of Loreto. The exhibition is further enriched by two large textile panels produced by the historic Venetian textile manufacturer Rubelli and inspired by Deluigi’s screen-print compositions, Rosa Mystica and Stella Matutina.

The Litanies of the Virgin underwent conservation treatment by the Vatican Museums’ Paintings and Wooden Materials Restoration Laboratory, accompanied by scientific analyses carried out by the Cabinet of Scientific Research. The restoration was made possible through the generosity of Mark Roberts and Jan Vallone Roberts — Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, California and Northwest Chapters.