I segreti della "nuova Sistina" del Vaticano

Simona Sarah Lábadyová completed her studies at Komensky University in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, in Art History and Aesthetics in 1994. She finished a Doctorate in Sacred Theology (summa cum laude) at the Pontifical Theological Faculty of the Teresianum in Rome, Italy, in 2006.

I segreti della nuova Sistina del Vaticano. La cappella Redemptoris Mater [The Secrets of the Vatican’s New Sistine Chapel: The Redemptoris Mater Chapel] (Marcianum Press, 2008; ISBN: 978-88-89736-58-6, 319pp., 42 colour plates)

The book was officially launched on 23 March 2009 with great praise from Dr. Paolucci, Director of the Vatican Museums, and Paul Cardinal Poupard, President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture. "Osservatore Romano", the official newspaper of the Holy See, dedicated a page to present the book on march 23,2009.

This is a short résumé of the book: In November, 1996, John Paul II commissioned a new chapel for the Vatican Palace that would represent the “two lungs” of the Church – East and West. This was the beginning of a great project that involved the work of Russian Orthodox mosaicist Alexander Kornoukhov and the artists of Centro Aletti of the Society of Jesus. Just a few metres from the Papal apartments, the artists created a private chapel for the Pope normally not open to the public whose vault and walls are entirely covered with more than six hundreds square metres of mosaics.

The Redemptoris Mater chapel – called “the Sistine Chapel of our times” – was finished just before the Jubilee of the year 2000, and represents a great work of art that reflects faithfully and surprisingly, in theological, spiritual and artistic terms, the precious but difficult way towards the unity of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

From Adam and Eve to the second coming of Christ, the chapel admirably shows the logic of the entire history of salvation through the Old and the New Testaments, up to the life in the celestial Jerusalem: God revealed Himself and personally invited every human being to freely respond to His love.

This book offers a completely new approach to sacred art: it is the first time that the Redemptoris Mater chapel has been observed in an organic and integrated way, and every aspect has been linked to the whole work of art. Theology, art, spirituality, and liturgy are not considered as one function of the others, or each per se, but as forming an inseparable entity vitally addressed to the contemporary man in a new perspective of evangelization.

This is an original and interdisciplinary perspective that allows to deeply understand the complete meaning of a great work of art, and to reveal the treasures and secrets hidden within it.