Collection of Modern Religious Art, Vatican Museums, Modern religious art collection at Vatican Museums, Vatican City.

The Collection of Modern Religious Art at Vatican Museums displays over 500 artworks distributed across 55 rooms, including paintings, sculptures, and graphic works by artists from around the world. These pieces illustrate how different artistic movements of the 20th century approached religious and spiritual subjects.

The collection grew out of Pope Paul VI's appeal to artists in the Sistine Chapel on 7 May 1964, when he called for renewed ties between the Catholic Church and figurative art. Artists, their heirs and collectors answered with donations, joined to a group of works Pius XII had gathered in the 1950s. It opened on 23 June 1973 under the supervision of Paul VI's secretary Pasquale Macchi, with Mario Ferrazza presiding over the selection committee.

Artists like Matisse and Picasso reimagined religious subjects through modern artistic styles visible in these galleries. The works show how contemporary movements engaged with spiritual questions in fresh ways.

The collection sits in the Borgia Apartment and the Salette Borgia, reached near the end of the compulsory Vatican Museums route, after at least an hour of walking. Visitors arrive tired, and the small modern works hang beside Raphael and Michelangelo frescoes. Graphic works rotate, so which sheets are on view changes between visits.

One section houses chasubles, liturgical garments designed by Henri Matisse and later donated by his son. These textiles show how a major artist engaged with sacred clothing as well.