"Rodolfo Papa's Masterpiece: Theatine Missionaries in 17th-Century Armenia and Georgia Unveiled in Rome" by Carlo Coppola
The Theatine Order was founded on September 14, 1524, when Saint Cajetan of Thiene and his companions made their solemn profession in St. Peter's Basilica.
For those unfamiliar with Rodolfo Papa, he is a painter, sculptor, art historian, and philosopher who serves as an Ordinary Academician of the Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Letters of the Virtuosi al Pantheon – one of the world's oldest and most prestigious artistic institutions – and President of the Urban Academy of Arts.
Papa has created pictorial cycles worldwide, from Rome to Palermo, from Kazakhstan to Lebanon, from Malaysia to Egypt. His work bears witness to living faith in diverse locations, filling complex spaces where painting must engage with stone, natural light, and the intimate prayer of daily worshippers.
His style – which he defines as "moderate realism" – pursues neither abstraction nor photographic realism, but seeks the inner truth of figures, where a human face transcends portraiture to become an icon in the deepest sense. Light in his paintings doesn't merely illuminate: it signifies. His painting embodies theologically sound principles while recalling – without copying – the great masters of the Italian tradition, particularly the Roman school of the 17th century at its apex.
The painting tells a story known primarily to scholars: in 1626, the Theatines sent their first religious to the Caucasus, and two years later, missionaries had reached Gori, Georgia – an ancient Christian land caught between the Safavid and Ottoman Empires.
Among them was Father Cristoforo Castelli – a Palermitan missionary, physician, and painter who visited nearly the entire region, founded hospitals, and left accounts of extraordinary historical value. The purpose of these missions was not to convert pagans, but to visit and comfort brethren whose faith was older than their own – a fact that fundamentally transforms the entire approach, as Papa's inspired painting clearly demonstrates.
The artist reveals the boldness of this specific vision through a complex study of concrete, recognizable figures in their religious vestments, set within a landscape evoking Caucasian geography with its harsh horizons and diffuse, almost shadowless light.
The monumental format represents a deliberate choice – it recalls the grand Baroque painting of the Counter-Reformation, precisely where Domenichino and Giovanni Lanfranco left some of their masterpieces at Sant'Andrea della Valle. Yet this lesson also incorporates the three-dimensional energy of Gregorio Sciltian (1900-1985), an Armenian painter from Russia who also lived in Rome – extraordinary in his rejection of dominant formal abstractionism, though unfortunately consumed by a market that debased his sculptural values into overly luxuriant forms.
What Rodolfo Papa teaches us once again is not merely continuity, much less nostalgia, but consciousness. When leaving the Theatine Curia and finding oneself under Rome's sky, one carries something more ardent: the certainty that beauty responds not only to aesthetics, but illuminates and delivers the viewer to the only possible symbol of Faith, understood in its maximum heroism.
The Tree of Life carved on the Khachkar (Armenian cross-stones), outraged by Adam's sin, shines with the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true Man. Through the example of Theatine missionaries – including Father Castelli, Father Arcangelo Lamberti, Father Andrea Borromeo, and Father Giovanni Avitabile – it projects us toward the fulfillment of His Holy and Glorious Resurrection.
