Helga Vockenhuber – Pantheon ‘Corona Gloriae’

Arte

Pantheon Piazza della Rotonda 00186 Roma (RM) Italia, Rom, RM, 00186, Italia

02/07/2025 - 16/09/2025

Rome, July 2 - The CORONA GLORIAE installation by the Austrian artist Helga Vockenhuber has been inaugurated at the Pantheon - Basilica of Santa Maria ad Martyres. The installation curated by Don Umberto Bordoni and Prof. Giuseppe Cordoni and visible until September 16, 2025 is promoted by the Pantheon and Castel Sant'Angelo Institute - National Museums Directorate of the city of Rome, in collaboration with the Embassy of Austria at the Holy See, the Basilica of Santa Maria ad Martyres and is sponsored by the Dicastery for Evangelisation - Jubilee 2025.

The Austrian artist Helga Vockenhuber, well known internationally, presented in 2023 an installation of strong symbolic impact at the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, in conjunction with the Venice Biennale. The project, curated by Don Umberto Bordoni and with the support of Father Abbate Stefano Visintin OSB and the Institutional Director of the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore -Benedicti Claustra Onlus, Dr. Carmelo A. Grasso is now proposed to the Pantheon in a renewed and rethought guise in dialogue with space, according to a site-specific approach.

It is a crown of thorns, composed of seven decomposed bronze sculptures that, starting with the Passion of Jesus, evoke - in the artist's vision - the drama of human existence, reconciled through the sacrifice of Christ. In the horizon of the Christian tradition, the crown of thorns assumes the value of a distinguished relic of the Passion: object-symbol that accompanies Christ until the fulfilment of his sacrifice. Placed zenithally under the oculus of the Pantheon, the metal crown according to the project of the artist and the curators becomes an immediate memory of the passion of Christ and the sacrifice of the Martyrs, to whom the Basilica is dedicated, and at the same time it is the epiphany of the sacred Christian space: not a refuge from the dramas of the world, but the womb of their redemption for a new life. The contorted and sharp bronzes condense a disturbing load of suffering, which is reflected in the body of water on which they rest, as if suspended above the abyss. However, the infernal circle of evil is broken; The crown is broken into seven fragments, a significant number in biblical symbology. The pain is no longer hermetically clamped, but open, shared, so much so that it can be crossed. In the context of the Jubilee Year, Helga Vockenhuber's installation thus intends to propose a reflection on the language of contemporary Christian art and on the possibility, evoked by the artist, that the saving Passion of Christ continues to represent for the whole of humanity, marked by suffering and in search of redemption, the epiphany of an invincible hope.