The Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Cathedral Museum) in Florence is hosting an exhibition dedicated to Elia Dalla Costa, Cardinal of Florence for 30 years. The three artists and the works in which they portray the Cardinal include a sculpture by Antonio Berti, a painting by Luciano Guarnieri, and a painting by Oskar Kokoschka, on special loan from The Phillips Collection in Washington.

While Antonio Berti shows Dalla Costa in 1938 as the brave defender of the Church against Nazism and Fascism, ten years later Oskar Kokoschka depicts him as an ecclesiastical prince full of pastoral tension and, in 1957, Luciano Guarnieri contemplates the aging prelate who silently goes over past events, his eyes now turned to the God who redeems history.

It has been 50 years since the death of Elia Dalla Costa, the heroic Archbishop of Florence during the years of the fascist regime of the Second World War and the post-war reconstruction. The Director of the Museum, Monsignor Timothy Verdon, who is the curator of the exhibition, explains that "in Elia Dalla Costa portrayed by Berti, Kokoschka and Guarnieri, just as in many of the masterpieces from the permanent collection - the prophets sculpted by Donatello, for example - we contemplate the human being transformed by faith, his spiritual physiognomy when, in Christ, he enters into a stable state of transfiguration."
The exhibition opened on 8 December and runs until April 15, 2012.

Elia Dalla Costa, the man and the image -

Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence

From Monday to Saturday 9:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, December 26 and January 6 hours 9:00 a.m. - 1:45 p.m.
Admission: full price € 6

For information and reservations: tel.055-282226
opera@operazioni.firenze.it