(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 02.22,.2026) – At the end of the penultimate week of February 2026, the Taranto-born painter Roberto Ferri personally presented Pope Leo XIV with the official portrait he had painted.
The painter described the moment of its presentation as one of the highest and most significant moments of his career. The work has now found its permanent location in the «Hall of Congregations» on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, becoming part of the iconographic heritage that narrates, through the centuries, the continuity of the Catholic Church.
The presentation took place in the solemn setting of the Ducal Hall, under the eternal gaze of a masterpiece by Gian Lorenzo Bernini: an ideal dialogue between Roman Baroque and contemporary painting, between tradition and the present.
«I had the exceptional and profound privilege of experiencing one of the most pivotal, intense, and significant moments of my artistic career, in the extraordinary setting of the Vatican’s Ducal Hall,» the artist declared.
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