de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 0:00 This is Episode 24 of Ethics and Culture Cast from the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Welcome to Episode 24 of Ethics and Culture Cast from Notre Dame's de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. I'm Ken Hallenius, the communications specialist at the center. In this episode, we sit down with Elizabeth Lev, an art historian, one of the world's leading experts on the Vatican Museums, and the Center's Fall 2018 Myser Fellow. We talk about the history of the Vatican collection, its role in Christian evangelization, the significance of the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian, and a bit about her newest book, "How Catholic Art Saved the Faith." Let's head into the Marion Short Ethics Library for this week's conversation. We're sitting here today with Elizabeth Lev. She's an American-born art historian who has, as she calls it, the good fortune to live and work in Rome. She teaches Renaissance and Baroque art at Duquesne University's Italian campus. She has taught and lectured in numerous venues in Ireland, Italy, the United States and Australia, including an address at the United Nations in New York and a TED talk representing the Vatican Museums. She works as Vatican analyst for NBC and has been featured on the Today Show, Nightline, and 60 Minutes, among other programs. Her books include "The Tigress of Forli" the remarkable story of Catarina Rosario Sforza de'Medici, "Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches" with George Weigel, "A Body for Glory: Theology of the Body in the Papal Collections" with Jose Granados and her newest book, "How Catholic Art Saved the Faith." Lev studied art history at the University of Chicago and completed her graduate work at the University of Bologna. Elizabeth Lev, welcome to the show. Elizabeth Lev 2:05 Hello. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 2:06 So tell us a bit about your intellectual journey. What brought you to the field of art history? Elizabeth Lev 2:12 I often think that all the signs were there that I was going to end up in art history. I loved mythology, and I loved stories. I loved biographies. So I liked to hear about people. I liked to hear about stories, particularly those that took place in Europe, which I thought was the most fascinating place in the world. And I loved the truths that came out when you read the Greek myths. And so gradually, as I got more and more interested in the reading, then one day my parents got me a copy of "Bulfinch's Mythology," the illustrated version with paintings. And it was just one of those moments when you realize that the stories in the pictures, they go together and they make the story better. The pictures make the story richer and the stories deepen and and help you to understand the pictures. And I think from there, there was already a desire to to explore a field I didn't know existed until I had an experimental Jan-term class. And you don't poo-poo Jan-term, they can be life changing. I had an experimental Jan-term class with my favorite English teacher in art history. And I took my class I came home with my copy of "The Story of Art" by Ernst Gombrich under my arm and I even vaguely remember that feeling of this is who I am. And even though it's been difficult, staying on that path, it is who I am. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 3:44 It's fun when you can find your actual vocation Elizabeth Lev 3:46 It is. It's, but it's a little bit more than fun. It's a little bit of it's a gift. I realize it every day that the worst day I'm having in the Vatican Museums is just never going to be that bad a day. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 3:58 Right? Well, and especially because people have dreamed about coming to be on a tour to see this art and you're surrounded by it every day. That's got to be pretty, much like you say, fortune smiling upon you. Elizabeth Lev 4:11 Yes. It's like being on permanent vacation except it's not. But yeah. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 4:16 Well, you regularly speak at the Center's annual Fall Conference and two years ago you gave a very well-received keynote talk on the history of the Vatican Museums entitled, "The Gift of the Magi". For those who perhaps haven't yet watched it, and we will link to it, of course, here in the show notes. Who were the three benefactors that you described in that talk as the Magi of the Vatican Museums? Elizabeth Lev 4:39 Well, first off, I was so astonished and grateful to be giving a keynote on the subject, which has been forming in my head for many years. I worked on a DVD for the Vatican Museums, trying to break down 500 years of a museum in you know, one hour DVD, and I began to realize that there's a pattern within the papacy. The papacy that has constantly nurtured and taken care of this museum. So the three magi were essentially three Popes who added different things to the museums. Each one had a particular talent and at various intervals in the 500 year history of the Vatican Museums they have given something. So we owe the Vatican Museums to Pope Julius II della Rovere, who reigned up until 1513 was his death. He's the pope who gave us Raphael of the Raphael rooms, or Michelangelo of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the new St. Peter's. The museum began when he turned over his personal art collection, which he had as a cardinal, and he gave it to the Vatican space. At the time it was called the Belvedere Palace. And put it on display to help inspire other artists to be greater and to be grander. So he had the vision of the museums. The second was the pope who in a certain sense, he's the one who found the money for an institution. Right? You're gonna, you want it to be big, you want them to come. You want, you want a place to receive and conserve a collection. You need to have funding for it. And so it was Pope Pius VI, a fascinating character in his own right, who conceived of the idea of rebuilding the Vatican Museums and opening it to a general public. And that transformation of a private collection into a public collection that's aimed to bring the entire world to its door involved a lot of challenges that he truly rose to. And then the final Pope is Pius XI, who's our Pope of the 20th century. He was actually the Pope of the reconciliation with the Italian state after the unification of Italy had caused an extended separation between the newly formed Italian state and the papacy which was now restricted to what we know today. The prisoner that you know, today is as as Vatican City State. And he was the first pope to make an overture, at least a very public overture towards the newly formed Italy. He's also the pope who navigated the Vatican Museums into the 20th century. And the period we're in today. So this huge outreach, which is very worldwide. So each one of these popes and of course, you know, there are people in between, important pontificates in between, but each one really gave a special gift to the museum and you can see the story of this amazing collection as driven by extraordinary popes. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 7:44 How important is it that, as you say that turn to make it a public museum? I mean, this is a publicly accessible collection of some of the world's greatest art. Not owned by an individual, not hidden away, as you say not in a private collection. How important is that for the patrimony of the world? Elizabeth Lev 8:01 It's a very important thing on several levels. One is it creates a space where the great art of the past and present of Rome can be brought together. But most importantly, in its role in outreach and in dialogue. When Pius VI was putting the museum together, we're now in 1770, 1780, secularism is is about to be unleashed on, in fact, he will be in a certain sense, a victim of the French Revolution. Secularism is about to be unleashed on the European continent. The papacy is not unaware of the increasingly secular mindset that is cast over Europe. And that the, the leaders of these movements are very interested in the art of Rome because this republic, the idea of the Republic, a view that they have of a Rome that wasn't very religious, but just lived on ideals and great moral standpoints. So they're very, very interested in the papal collection as becoming poster children for their own movement. And so Pius VI actually he has options, he could have put a big padlock on the front door and say unless you show your Catholic card you can't come in. But that's not, that's not what the Church is about. And so he hires an architect and a curator, he redoes the entire collection. Come over to my place, we'll look at some sculptures. And he's famous for having personally led King Gustav III of Sweden on a tour. And the idea was, at times when there is a breakdown, in being able to discuss politics or being able to discuss religion, art opens up the door to find things we have in common in a way to discuss things that we don't have in common. So the museum becomes "a platform of dialogue" as Pope Benedict XVI used to say, and as well as an outreach to the world. It's a hugely significant transformation. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 10:00 Now you've given hundreds, if not thousands of tours of the Vatican Museums. And I'm really interested because what I'm hearing you say is that it's also a tool of evangelization. It's impossible to walk through the Vatican Museums and not obviously have, you know, the Christian story presented and various aspects including you know, what it means to be a follower of Christ, and martyrdom, what it means to discover the truths of the faith of the Eucharist, to see how philosophy has contributed to a deeper understanding of creation and the world. What are, I guess, some of the highlights that you see, when you're giving these tours to people who maybe have dreamed of coming to the Vatican Museum? What are some of your favorite parts? Elizabeth Lev 10:42 Well, I think first of all, while yes, there are, there are many opportunities for evangelization, it is perfectly possible, and it happens, I am afraid, a great deal of the time in the Vatican Museums, that people visit the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel is presented as anything but a story of salvation. From the first book Genesis to the last book of Revelation, it becomes a story of everything the modern age can, every light in the modern age can possibly cast on it. So it's not, the Vatican Museums are not immune from tours that focus on the secular aspect of the works. But for me, what I find is art history when, when presented in form of context, if you want to understand the work of art, we do kind of have to understand that the Sistine Chapel was used for 40 odd liturgies a year. And so we when we start to look at context, people are usually willing to follow you into a discussion of context. If the discussion of context then brings forth questions of belief, faith, scripture liturgy, they're willing to follow to a certain extent in that vein. So for one example, one of my favorite parts of the Vatican Museums happens to be one of the least visited parts of the museums. And I take almost everybody there if that part is open. It's the early Christian museum. It's called the Museo Pio Cristiano. The Christian museum opened by Pius IX. It's a museum that never has anybody in it. So my first excuse is, well there are a bazillion people in this museum, let's go in here. There's nobody in here. And so already getting out of the crowd of the entryway and walking into a place where there's nobody, it's mentally soothing to all of us. But the other reason I go in there is that it contains works between maybe, between the fourth and fifth century A.D. It is among the earliest examples of paleo Christian art we have. And it and the reason I give and the reason I go, is that in those images, that shortlist of images that the Christians chose when they first started to make art, we find the same scenes as the Sistine Chapel. And so already the idea of creating a continuity between what the Christians were doing in the fourth century, what Michelangelo is doing in 1508, is a very important way to already express that the church isn't sort of, you know, throwing darts at a dartboard. Oh, I think I'll do this. I think I'll do that. There's a meaning and there's a purposefulness and mostly that we have a story, the same story we've been telling for 2000 years now. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 13:35 What are the, obviously people rush through to get to the Sistine Chapel and then that's almost near the end you know, in many ways. what are some of the other things that maybe that you think of as there, that gets skipped on the way? Elizabeth Lev 13:48 The common belief in this particular day and age: dash to the Sistine Chapel is, is a funny one. You walk, you end up walking into a space where you don't really know anything about it. Guides aren't allowed to explain in the Sistine Chapel and you may have your audio guide. But you there's no sense of, it comes out of the blue. You don't have a sense of where this is seated in, in the history of the Church or even in the history of art. So another part of the museum, the picture gallery has a number of just splendid works of art that help one prepare for the shock that was the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was avant garde not because Michelangelo was using Freudian themes, or what we consider avant garde in the 20th century or 21st century. It's avant garde because his way of representation is very, very new. So we have a Last Judgment from the 12th century in, in the early Christian, in the picture gallery. Wooden, it's tempera on wood panel, with the Last Judgment all kind of with registers, everything explained very neatly. So this is what's happening here. This is what's happening here. If you'd like to get to heaven, try to do this. Try not to do that. It's just it's a wonderful little didactic piece of art, which is what people were used to. And when you look at that, and then you walk in and see Michelangelo's, you know, 1534 Last Judgment, it is a jumble of almost 400 bodies, you begin to understand, oh, that's why everyone's hair stood on end. They ran around in circles, and were shocked when they saw it. I have a personal favorite piece, which is in their 17th century room. It's right across from the Caravaggio Deposition. So nobody pays any attention to it. Because Caravaggio, in his way, always demands attention when he's in a room. But there's a little painting by one of his super rivals, a man named Guido Reni, who did a little painting of St. Matthew being inspired by the angel. And by Baroque standards, it's, it's literally a miniature. It's a foot and a half by a foot. And you have just these two faces. The angel whose face is turned slightly away from the viewer, he's touching his fingers, counting off the points of a proposition, that's a that's a gesture in art of explaining. And the angel is painted very softly and Guido Reni had a very, he had the capacity for a very light touch with the brush. So the angel is painted very softly and all you really see as the viewer is the effect the angel's words have on the writer; on Matthew. And you see his hair, this kinetic gray hair standing on end, his hand gripping the pen. It's, it's it's an up close illustration of inspiration. I mean, I really I think it's a very, very beautiful painting. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 16:44 Wow, well, we'll link to that in the show notes as well. Wow. Well, one of your books is "Roman Pilgrimage," which is a beautiful volume of reflections and photos and a deeper dive into some of the artistic value of the Roman stational churches which you coauthored with George Weigel, who's another one of the Center's fellows. Tell us about your experience of the stational churches and, and perhaps are there any favorite highlights? Elizabeth Lev 17:14 Well, it was quite, it was quite a Lent. We were all there. George was staying with, staying up at the North American college. His son Stephen, who is the photographer who did those incredible photos for the book. And then me all bright and early 7am, traipsing across town. George and Stephen were a little bit more, let's say macho. They walked. I biked. But the one thing that really remains deeply impressed is how full those churches are at seven o'clock in the morning, and how beautiful it is to see them filled with prayer and worship. And especially with the churches of the stations that those are very early churches with a few exceptions, most of them are fourth, fifth century churches. So they're very, very ancient churches, which you know, in in a city, which lives off tourism, they're mostly tourist attractions. And so you mostly see a group walking in following an antenna, walking in, walking out, the two works of art and then you leave. And the Masses, the liturgies at the station churches allow us to stop. I mean, that's exactly what a station church is. Estacio, the place where the pope stops, the place where the congregation we stop and we worship. And they are, each one tells its own very particular story. And so it also because of the geographic moving around, we also get a sense of the development of Christianity in the city. We find these early Christian churches are all located--not all located--but many of them are located right around the contours of the ancient Roman city and so we can see Christianity going from the outskirts, working its way closer and closer and closer to the heart of the Roman Empire till eventually, they enter with the church of Cosmas and Damian, which is one of the stations and very, very beautiful and special day. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 19:17 It's actually the one that I that I marked in my book here because I remember on my last visit there I stopped by and saw it. Elizabeth Lev 19:23 Hey, that's pretty good without without, like, calling each other. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 19:26 Without calling each other in advance, exactly. Elizabeth Lev 19:29 Great minds. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 19:30 Well, and that that mosaic, I mean, it's so incredibly, beautifully blue as well as it's just it's pastoral and it's I mean, obviously, it's depicting you know, kind of sheep and, and all of this. It was stunning and you think Cosmas and Damien these guys get named in the canon, you know, of the of the Mass. And so, these are names that are, that were heard, you know, at every Mass for hundreds of years, if not thousands of years, you know, calling upon the martyrs to help us, to pray for us, and intercede for us. Elizabeth Lev 20:01 And it offers actually a great deal more. The location, it's the first Christian church to be, to enter into the space of the Forum. It takes, 525 is when it's transformed into a church. So the Christians have been legal since 313. And they can't get a church in the Forum till 525, after the Roman Empire has fallen. An Arian heretic, you know, King Theodoric, who's handing over the church to the Christians. So it already tells you a lot about the situation of the Christians even after the legalization of Christianity. The second thing is when you look at the church today, you come in through a back way because of excavations because of the unification of Italy. But if you were to go in through the front door, you'd be entering in through the Roman Forum, yes? And so you would look directly across from the church is the Palatine Hill, where Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus, who are twins not unlike Cosmas and Damian. And then a little bit between the between the Palatine and the church, there's also the temple to Castor and Pollux, who are two of the Romans favorite gods. Also twins like Cosmas and Damian. So this idea of the Christians really thinking it through about who they want to, to come in and represent our faith in this ancient ancient space of the Roman gods. The mosaic itself is particularly striking because of the transformation in the building in 1600 where they had to lift the floor. So it's one of those very rare occasions where the mosaic isn't something like far away in the distance, and you're squinting at it, you walk in and you know, there's the giant golden Jesus looming above you. Oh, okay, Hi. And it's, the blue ground is a very Roman technique. If you notice the rest of the churches, mostly decorated from 600 on they'll use gold backgrounds. So that blue ground mosaic is a sort of a Roman type of background. And then when you look at their feet, their feet are planted on the ground. So you have Jesus, Peter and Paul, Cosmas and Damian. And then you have the you have the Pope who is Felix. And on the right, you have St. Theodore, who's in to substitute the donor who's an Arian, so he can't be in the picture. Ordinarily, donors get to be in the picture, but in this particular case, there's that little, that little hiccup, so they just put in his patron saint. And, and he's dressed in really fancy clothes, too. But when you look at their feet, their feet are planted on the ground, they cast shadows, so the Romans retain a very incarnational art. That's one of the reasons why it feels so real to you. Their feet aren't dangling like Flat Stanley's above the ground, they're, they're there. They're resting on the ground. They're part of nature. They're part of this world, but they've already made that transition and they're also in heaven. So that's it's a very, very special mosaic for that reason. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 23:06 What are you working on when you're in residence this semester here at the Center? Elizabeth Lev 23:10 Well, I am turning "The Gift of the Magi" into a book, which will be called "The Pope's Art" because my editor thinks that Gift of the Magi is too recherche. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 23:26 O. Henry kinda almost has the corner on that market at this point, right? Wow. So obviously, you're expanding on what was a, you know, 55 minute presentation which we have the whole thing available. And again, we'll be linking to that in the in the show notes from the Fall Conference a few years ago, but what are what are some of the areas that get expanded in your writing? Elizabeth Lev 23:48 Well, I see it as a, in a certain sense the biography of the Vatican Museum, so that's propelled by my main three characters, but now I can bring in some of the other people who are instrumental. There are sort of major currents, the current of, the vision of Julius II, which has a sort of an abrupt and problematic drop off with the Reformation. So after the Reformation, many of the works are taken out of the museum and moved to another museum. There are a number of things that happen as the boat tries to right itself even in its artistic collection. Then there's another kind of giant growth during the course of the 1700s. But as soon as Pius VI creates his collection, Napoleon shows up and loots it. And so it's one of the most tragic stories. He lived to see, he lived to cut the ribbon on this incredible vision of his. He had a 25 year pontificate he did it, only to be, to watch his entire, the best works of his collection removed and brought to Paris. And his successor, Pius VII has to navigate into this new era and then there'll be room for Pius IX. It's just, it's nice and of course, you know, there'll be room for John Paul II and the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And I just would like to be able to fill in a little bit more of the blanks in the history of the museums, to point out some of the very innovative things about the Museum. The museum is, we have the custodian, the manual for the custodians from when the museum first opened, so how employees were treated in the Vatican Museums, the idea of conservation, the idea of installation, these are all things that the Vatican Museum really took the lead on for many years. And it gives us we are today I think, leaders in art conservation. So it's a great opportunity to talk about, also just fascinating growths and developments of this museum has gone through. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 25:51 Wonderful. Well finally, tell us a bit about your newest book, which is just coming out right now, "How Catholic Art Saved the Faith." What's the, what's your idea? Elizabeth Lev 26:02 Well, a long time ago at the University of Bologna, when I was working on my graduate degree, I was working on the Counter-Reformation, as they called it. And it was a very small church in, in Rome. And half the time, I thought to myself, why am I dealing with this period that nobody cares about million years ago? They produced kind of questionable quality art. Why do I care? Little did I know that in 2017, everything I learned, everything I studied would all of a sudden come to the forum. Because the art of the post-Reformation or what we would call the Catholic restoration, is an art which takes a church which has been torn asunder, which is essentially, the Protestant Reformation sees the church torn, not just torn, shredded into different pieces. And the edges are so jagged and so ragged, that there's such hostility and venom between the parts. So any discussion of sacraments will usually end up with name calling, screaming, any discussion of intercession, any just any discussion regarding these sensitive matters of how we are saved and who is saved end up in a rhetoric that makes it almost impossible for Christians to talk to each other. And the church while during the Council of Trent they very clearly and directly reaffirm church teaching, there's no, there's no muddling. But in order to teach that doctrine, they start to recruit artists and artists produce work that reaffirm the importance of the sacraments, they, they hold up and explain why we believe in intercession. And in the part of the book that I find most fascinating, art of the 17th century, really engages with the challenges of a modern world. The Council of Trent is dealing with the church which is moving into a modern era. The artists are dealing with the questions of salvation, not salvation as we see it back in 1200. How'd you do it? Nope. How do we put the rubber to the road in the 17th century in the modern era where there's exploration, where there's a globalization, where women, what do we do with women? It's it's a fascinating, fascinating thing to see that the church made room in its beautiful art and its beautiful art patronage to explore these questions. So the book is basically divided into three sections. One deals with works of art that reaffirmed the teachings of the sacraments. One deals with works of art that, the second one deals with works of art that reaffirm and look at intercession. So everything from the Virgin Mary but also the idea of purgatory. All Peter and everything else in between. And then the third one, cooperation, talks about this church facing the modern era. And what are we going to do now that we've circumnavigated the globe? What how are we going to evangelize these, these people we've never heard of. It's, it's, to me that was the most fun part. No, it's challenging, but the most fun part of writing it. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 29:24 Well, it sounds like it's gonna be a good read. Elizabeth Lev 29:27 I hope so. It's got lots of pictures. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 29:29 Oh, well, there you go. Wonderful. Well, Liz Lev, thank you very much for chatting with us. And thanks for coming to be with us at the Center. Elizabeth Lev 29:38 Thank you. It's great fun here. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 29:47 Thank you to Elizabeth Lev. You will find links to some of the pieces of art that she talked about, as well as her TED Talk, and her latest book in the show notes. Subscribe to Ethics and Culture Cast so that you can also get the latest episodes by visiting ethicscenter.nd.edu/podcast. We would love your feedback. Please review the show on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, and email your suggestions to cecpodcast@nd.edu. Our theme music is "I Dunno" by grapes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. We'll see you next time on Ethics and Culture Cast. Until then, make good decisions. Transcribed by https://otter.ai