SACRED ART, PONTIFICAL CENTRAL COMMISSION FOR. — In Italy, it oversees the preservation and enhancement of the artistic heritage of the Church through a general program of direction, inspection, and promotion, as well as through particular assistance to and supervision of the diocesan commissions for sacred art. It was established on 1 Sept. 1924 by a circular of the Secretariat of State of His Holiness and has remained directly dependent upon that Secretariat, while maintaining relations with other ecclesiastical Congregations and Dicasteries. The founding act appointed the first members, numbering twenty-four, namely twelve liturgists, art historians, etc., four engineers and architects, four painters, and four sculptors. The number of members was considerably increased after Pope Pius XII, with the aim of promoting and regulating the reconstruction and restoration of churches and ecclesiastical buildings destroyed or damaged by the war in Italy, ordered that this work be carried out under the direction of the Pontifical Commission for sacred art (letter of the Secretariat of State, 31 Oct. 1944).
The Commission’s first act was the publication of a booklet entitled Disposizioni pontificie in materia d'arte sacra, which reproduced the circular of the Secretariat of State, laid down practical rules for the protection and enhancement of the sacred-artistic heritage, summarized the articles of the Code of Canon Law relating to it, and provided models for the catalog and inventory forms required of the diocesan commissions. In 1933 another booklet, Il monito del Sommo Pontefice in materia di arte sacra, commented on important statements by Pius XI. Other publications of an organizational nature provided the diocesan commissions with a model for their statutes, laid down practical rules concerning relations between patrons and artists, etc.
The Commission has earned great praise for promoting, organizing, and directing the sacred-art weeks for the clergy, which from 1933 to 1939 were held each autumn in Rome or in other cities especially chosen on account of centenaries or other solemn artistic commemorations. Here is the list: Rome 1933, Rome 1934, Ferrara 1935, Rome 1936, Florence 1937, Naples 1938, Venice 1939. The volumes of the Atti, published thus far for the first five weeks, bear witness to the results achieved, both from the cultural and programmatic point of view and from the organizational one: the variety of the subjects treated makes them an indispensable encyclopedia for anyone concerned with the problems of art in the house of God.
The Commission’s efforts to secure the establishment and encourage the functioning of the diocesan commissions have been highly effective: the inventories and lists that some of them have already submitted constitute an extremely valuable body of material. The Commission has examined a great many projects and settled numerous disputes, not only at the proposal of the diocesan commissions, but also at the invitation of civil authorities and foreign institutions.