Public Lecture | Art Knowledge: Theoria and Contemplative Seeing of Identity
Public Lecture | Art Knowledge: Theoria and Contemplative Seeing of Identity
12
Apr
The Public Lecture “Art Knowledge: Theoria and Contemplative Seeing of Identity” by Prof. Yvonne Dohna Schlobitten, Extraordinary Professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University, will take place on Sunday, 12 April 2026, from 4 – 6pm at the Seminary Campus.
About the Talk:
WHAT IS ART? | Encounter of myself, the World and the Transcendence
In his work “Memory and Identity,” John Paul II understands art as a mediator between temporal existence and eternal being. In comparison with other popes, such as Paul V, Benedict XVI, and Francis, the role of art as a mediator between God and humanity will be examined more closely, and the differences will be highlighted. While Paul VI, following French theology, compares the creative act of the artist, such as Matisse, with that of the priest during Mass, thus describing the space of the artwork as a spiritual space for encountering God, Benedict sees in Gruenewald’s Crucifixion the “crack,” the pain that draws us upward. For Pope Francis, however, life itself becomes a work of art. A work of art, he writes, teaches us contemplative seeing.
CONTEMPLATION OF ART | To let yourself be looked at
The relationship between Christian art and contemplation is a relatively new and multifaceted topic. The question is, what do we contemplate in a work of art? What is contemplative seeing? Michelangelo asks, do I see the external, or do I see what I wish it to be, or do I see what it truly is? Here we must distinguish whether we want to use the artwork to contemplate or meditate on specific content, or whether we want to encounter God in it, or whether we accept the artwork as a space of promise by acknowledging it as an “entity” and allowing ourselves to be seen by it. What attitude do we adopt toward the artwork?
About the Speaker:
Prof. Yvonne Dohna Schlobitten is an Extraordinary Professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University, specializing in the history and aesthetics of Christian art within the Faculty of History and Cultural Heritage of the Church. Her teaching and research explore the relationship between art, theology, and spiritual perception, with a particular focus on how visual culture mediates religious experience.
After studying jurisprudence, sciences of art and the philosophy of media, she was a Max Planck fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, where she earned an interdisciplinary PhD in philosophy with Prof. H. Belting in ‘Canova and the origin of Cultural Heritage’. She specializes in ‘droit international e comparé’ (CTL, Genf), ‘Philosophie der Religion’ (Université di Fribourg) and ‘Spiritual Theology’ (Teresianum, Rome). She is Professor for History, Philosophy and Spirituality of Art and Culture at the Pontifical Gregorian University, where she is teaching in the new Catholic Studies in Rome program. She has been a visiting professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM) in Mexico. She has been collaborating for several years on “Romano Guardini” with the research center The McLean Center for the Study of Cultures and Values (MCSCV) at The Catholic University of America (CUA) and developed a recent joint project on “The Ascesis of Thinking in Socrates, Buddha, and Christ” with the patronage of the Rome Catholic Studies Program.
Her field of research is silence and contemplation, Romano Guardini and the epistemology and phenomenology of seeing and the theory of the Holy and Sacred Space. She is a member of the editorial board of Donne Chiesa Mondo of the Osservatore Romano, vice president of the Centro di Formazione alla Meditazione Cristiana (CFMC) in Rome, and founder of the Intercultural School of Silence (ISS). She is a spiritual guide of creative thinking in the interreligious context. In 2022, she received for her Opera Omnia the award of the ‘Premio Basilicata di Letteratura Spirituale e Poesia Religiosa’.
Leonardo da Vinci, Andy Warhol
Fra Angelico, Mark Rothko
Details:
Date: Sunday, 12 April 2026
Time: 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Location: Conference Room – USJ Seminary Campus (Rua do Seminário, Macau)
Language: English
*Free event, open to the general public
Organised by: Faculty of Religious Studies and Philosophy
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