15 August 2025
Saw Morandi's work for the first time at the Vatican in the room dedicated to his work. Spent the most time with one of the drawings (can't remember the exact year and it isn't listed on the Vatican's website, but it was a later period one) and two of the still life paintings: Natura morta (1943) and Natura morta italiana (1957). These works alone hold the span of his inquiry and contribution. The former feels like a more or less traditionally handled still life (at least by his standards), but the latter (hung on the adjacent wall, seen first upon entering the space) is thinner, less layered, more loosely handled, and to me more playful—the gray oval representing the inside of the tallest vessel in the composition floats above a table of the same shape and color; the vessels as wireframes in the way they are so well known in his work. Which is even more evident in the aforementioned drawing, which remains almost like a bead maze even with prolonged looking. To my memory, his work was the only work in the contemporary part of the museum's collection that wasn't overtly religious in subject matter, yet his devotion is so palpable that it feels right at home in that context.