The installation CORONA GLORIAE by the Austrian artist Helga Vockenhuber was inaugurated at the Pantheon - Basilica of Santa Maria ad Martyres.

The installation, curated by Don Umberto Bordoni and Professor Giuseppe Cordoni, is visible until September 16, 2025, and is promoted by the Pantheon and Castel Sant'Angelo Institute - National Museums Directorate of the city of Rome, in collaboration with the Embassy of Austria to the Holy See, the Basilica of Santa Maria ad Martyres, and is sponsored by the Dicastery for Evangelization - Jubilee 2025.

The Austrian artist Helga Vockenhuber, well-known internationally, presented in 2023 an installation of strong symbolic impact at the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, in conjunction with the Venice Biennale. The project, curated by Don Umberto Bordoni with the support of Father Abbate Stefano Visintin OSB and the Institutional Director of the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore - Benedicti Claustra Onlus, Dr. Carmelo A. Grasso, is now proposed at the Pantheon in a renewed and rethought form in dialogue with the space, following a site-specific approach.

It is a crown of thorns, composed of seven disassembled bronze sculptures that, starting from the Passion of Jesus, evoke - in the artist's vision - the drama of human existence, reconciled through the sacrifice of Christ. In the horizon of the Christian tradition, the crown of thorns assumes the value of a distinguished relic of the Passion: a symbolic object that accompanies Christ until the completion of his sacrifice. Placed zenithally under the oculus of the Pantheon, the metallic crown according to the artist's project and the curators becomes an immediate memory of Christ's passion and the sacrifice of the Martyrs, to whom the Basilica is dedicated, and at the same time is an epiphany of the sacred Christian space: not a refuge from the world's dramas, but the womb of their redemption for a new life. The twisted and pointed bronzes condense a disturbing burden of suffering, reflected in the water mirror on which they rest, as if suspended over the abyss. However, the infernal circle of evil is broken; the crown is broken into seven fragments, a significant number in biblical symbolism. The pain is no longer hermetically sealed, but open, shared, enough to be crossed.

In the context of the Jubilee Year, Helga Vockenhuber's installation aims to offer a reflection on the language of contemporary Christian art and on the possibility, evoked by the artist, that Christ's salvific Passion continues to represent for all humanity, marked by suffering and in search of redemption, the epiphany of an invincible hope.