The Art of Faith

The exhibition was born from a project curated by don Alessio Geretti to demonstrate how faith has inspired art, literature, and music. Five masterpieces will be presented at the Galleria Borghese. These include the Annunciation by Fra Angelico from the Diocesan Museum in Cortona, which is one of the three large panels the artist painted. The other two are those in the Museo Nacional del Prado and in San Giovanni Valdarno. They were all made around 1430, although no one knows which one was created first. According to scholars, Angelico painted as many as eighteen versions of the Annunciation of the Virgin. The elements that make the artist one of the masters of the early Renaissance are evident in the panel on display: architecture and light. Mary is sitting under a lodge with Corinthian columns that echo Brunelleschi's works, in the midst of a picketedgarden that symbolizes purity, beneath a ceiling that has been painted like a starry sky.