The Vatican Museums and the Palace Museum of Beijing will present on Tuesday, May 28, 2019, the opening of the exhibition, Beauty Unites Us; Chinese Art from the Vatican Museums. The exhibition, curated by Father Nicola Mapelli, head of the Anima Mundi Department of the Vatican Museums and Wang Yuegong, Director of Palace Life and Imperial Ritual Department, will be displayed inside the Palace Museum of the Forbidden City in Beijing. It will remain open to the public from May 28 to July 14, 2019.
The initiative sees for the first time the Pope’s Museums organizing an exhibition in China together with the most important cultural institution in the country. This collaboration represents a concrete gesture with a high symbolic value.
The exhibition intends to present the cultural message of the Chinese collection of art from the Anima Mundi Department of the Vatican Museums, which will include as many as seventy-six works of secular, Buddhist and Catholic art inside the Forbidden City, a magnificent architectural complex, located in the heart of the great Asian country.
Of particular importance, is a considerable group of works by Chinese artists that testify to the encounter between Christianity and the artistic traditions of China.
Two extraordinary, original masterpieces will be on display; the oiling paintings from Vatican Pinacoteca: Rest On the Flight to Egypt (1570 – 1573) by Barocci and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (late 18th century) by Peter Wenzel.
The exhibition will also include works selected by the Palace Museum, who with a gesture of great friendship and generosity, wanted to add famous works by the Catholic artist Wu Li (1632- 1718) and Giuseppe Castiglione, a Jesuit from Milan known in China as Lang Shining (1688- 1766).
