Sironi and Modern Religious Art

Mario Sironi

1885 - 1961

Christ and the Samaritan Woman

1947 - 48

Oil on Panel

56 x 70 cm

Collezione d`Arte Religiosa Moderna, Vatican Museums, Vatican City

John 4: 1 - 30 tells the story of the meeting of Christ with the Samaritan woman near Jacob`s Well

The symbolism of Living Water as Truth and Grace is a constant theme in Christian religious art since the very beginning and is seen in the catacombs

It is an intimate scene bathed in light

Although a Modernist Italian artist, and although he mixed with Gino Severini and Umberto Boccioni, Sironi  was not one of the Italian Futurist artists

After the Second World War, his reputation tokk a "nose dive" because of his connections with the Italian Fascist regime. However his reputation has again began to revive

There was an explosion of Futurist Italian religious art in the 1930s

But Marinetti`s Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art of 1931 did not hold any attractions for Sironi

The Manifesto was a bastard attempt at political and cynical opportunism filled with self regard and filled with pompous and contradictory jargpn

Sironi would have nothing to do with it. He had too much respect for religion and God