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Until September 16, 2025, the installation Corona Gloriae, created by the Austrian artist and sculptor Helga Vockenhuber and curated by Don Umberto Bordoni and Professor Giuseppe Cordoni, will be on display at the Pantheon in Rome. After its debut at the 2023 Venice Biennale in the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, the installation returns this summer in Rome in a renewed form, redesigned as a site-specific project for the Pantheon.
The work is promoted by the Pantheon and Castel Sant’Angelo Institute – National Museums Directorate of the City of Rome, in collaboration with the Austrian Embassy to the Holy See and the Basilica of Santa Maria ad Martyres, the Christian church housed in the Pantheon, under the patronage of the Dicastery for Evangelization – Jubilee 2025.
Corona Gloriae takes the form of a crown of thorns made up of seven bronze sculptures, suspended above a pool of water placed beneath the Pantheon’s oculus. Starting from the symbol of Christ’s Passion, the artist transforms the crown into an emblem of redeemed suffering: pain does not remain folded in on itself, but is broken, opened, and shared with the public.
The twisted, sharp bronzes condense the drama of human experience, while the natural light filtering from above and the golden patina of the fragments evoke a process of transfiguration: from pain to hope, from sacrifice to redemption. The choice of the number seven, significant in biblical symbolism, underscores the tension toward completeness and reconciliation. The water, reflecting and multiplying the crown’s presence, alludes to the sacrament of baptism and the passage toward new life.
Placing the work within the Pantheon creates a highly evocative impact. The Pantheon—an ancient site of layered sacredness and continuous dialogue between light and transcendence—is thus freed from a purely touristic use and restored to its spiritual dimension.
According to Helga Vockenhuber’s vision, the crown of thorns—an eminent relic of Christian tradition—here becomes a crown of glory. The pain it represents is no longer an end in itself, but opens to the possibility of salvation. As Henri Matisse once wrote about his Stations of the Cross, the artist does not merely depict Christ’s Passion: she lives it, traverses it, and offers it back to the viewer as a shared experience.
In this light, Corona Gloriae stands as a work deeply connected to the Jubilee 2025: an invitation to recognize in the Passion, even today, the sign of an unbreakable hope for humanity, marked by suffering and in search of redemption.
Photography: Ägidius Vockenhuber, courtesy of Helga Vockenhuber
