Exhibit of masterworks at Catholic school's art gallery shows how 'beauty is part of faith'

By Jim Davis

MIAMI (OSV News) -- "Beauty is part of the faith," said Federico Vannini, who is sharing the paintings from his own family's collection in an exhibit of artworks spanning more than four centuries -- from the Middle Ages to the 18th century -- on display at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in Miami.

The exhibit in the school's on-campus Saladrigas Art Gallery is titled "Faith, Beauty and Devotion: Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Paintings" and includes 30 paintings from Italian and Flemish masters.

Vannini and his wife, Daisy Diaz, chose the title for the show, which opened Sept. 16 and will close Dec. 10. He linked it with what he sees as the very purpose of art.

"Creation of beauty is the way we get closer to God. We've gotten away from it, (but) that's the real meaning of art," he told the Florida Catholic, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Miami.

The exhibit illustrates several Bible episodes, including the Crucifixion, the Annunciation, the Nativity, David and Goliath, and Susanna and the Elders. Five paintings depict Madonna and Child.

Diaz, who also is the cultural director at Vannini's gallery in Italy, said she wants the art to affect people as strongly today as it did for people in previous centuries.

"They didn't have Instagram or social media," she said. "Art was meant to move, communicate, bring people to pray."

For Sylvie San Juan, director of the Saladrigas Art Gallery, a key facet of the exhibit is how it reveals people's focus: from the divine in the Middle Ages, to more human concerns in the Renaissance, to drama and emotion in the Baroque period.

"To me, one of the greatest things about art is that it's a visual representation of history," said San Juan, who oversaw the curation of the exhibit. "It's like learning about history through pictures."

The paintings embrace various styles, shown by three paintings of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. One painting, from the 12th century, falls right on the verge of transition, she said. The arched body and the agonized face show a suffering Christ, different from the triumphant Jesus of earlier art.

Baroque art likewise reflected current events, as the Protestant Reformation began competing with the Catholic view of faith and society. That's when artists started painting rugged rocks and ragged trees, and spotlighting people.

Catholic artists countered early Protestant bans on church art with heightened drama in their paintings, San Juan said. The Belen exhibit accordingly includes a 17th-century painting of Mary in heaven with God and a Carmelite saint, with infant cherubim whirling in a cosmic dance.

"They wanted to draw people to the Catholic Church," San Juan said of the artists. "So they conveyed a sense of drama, movement, emotion, emerging from darkness."

The Saladrigas Art Gallery, taking up 3,200 square feet, has hosted works of artists from around the world over its quarter-century. It's part of the Ignatian Center for the Arts, which also includes classrooms, a music rehearsal hall and a 665-seat theater.

The exhibit has a few non-Christian works as well, including a few portraits of noblemen and two canvases from Greek mythology. Father Guillermo Garcia-Tuñon, president of Belen, said they're valuable for understanding the history of the period.

"Even secular art tries to capture something of the human condition, positive or negative," he said. "It's in God's interest to fix what is broken and uplift what is not."

The Vanninis have a story as colorful as their paintings. Federico is a fourth-generation art dealer from Florence, Italy, who has worked with museums such as the Getty in Los Angeles and the Musee d'Orsay in Paris.

Daisy was born in Miami to Cuban exiles. She studied art history at Jesuit-run Boston College, then pursued a master's degree in industrial design in Florence where she met, then married, Federico.

They evacuated to South Florida just before Italy's COVID lockdown, which took hundreds of thousands of lives there in 2020. They settled on Key Biscayne and attended St. Agnes Church, where Diaz was baptized back in 1980. Since then, three of their four children have been baptized there as well.

They planned to stay maybe a couple of months, Diaz said. But they found a welcoming campus at Belen, and a friendship with Father Garcia-Tuñon. They decided to give back.

"When we found Belen, it was an anchor point," she said. "It was a home for us."

Father Garcia-Tuñon said the idea for the exhibit budded less than a year ago over dinner with the couple. Hearing Vannini was an art dealer, the two eagerly discussed Rubens and other European art masters.

"That fascinated me -- I'm a frustrated art historian," Father Garcia-Tuñon said. He offered Vannini the on-campus gallery for a show, and "he agreed 100 percent."

Most exhibits take several years to plan and present, with the host galleries handling scheduling, shipping, documentation and other details. But this project took on an urgency because of a short timeline. San Juan, the exhibit curator, coordinated with the Vannini team in Florence.

The Vanninis said it was a bonus to place the exhibit in a school, connecting the goals of beauty and education.