The contest to make the Lamb of God for the Sagrada Família already has a winner.
Italian artist Andrea Mastrovito creates a large glass and gold installation in a hyperboloid formed by 24 beams of light.
BarcelonaLittle by little, new details are emerging about what the Sagrada Família's Jesus Christ tower will look like. This Thursday, it was announced that Italian multimedia artist Andrea Mastrovito (Bergamo, 1978), who lives in New York, has won the competition to design the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei), which will be at the center of the cross crowning the tower and visible through the windows of the upper arm. For Mastrovito, "the Lamb suspended between earth and heaven symbolizes the relationship between matter and energy, between the Son and the Father." "Inspired by contemporary cosmology, it incorporates the luminescent inscription of John 1:29, transforming his proposal into an image of the Trinity and the origin of all reality," say sources at the Sagrada Família Basilica. Specifically, this verse reads: "The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and exclaimed, 'Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!'"
In the New Testament, the Lamb of God is "the image of Jesus Christ dead and risen, who gives life and thus redeems all humanity," as the same sources recall, and Mastrovito represents it through "a large installation of light made of glass and gold, located within a hyperbole."Agnus Dei of the New Testament," according to the same sources. The Lamb will be made of hollow glass and will be covered with fragments of brittle crystal, so that it shines during the day in the sunlight. At night it will glow with a phosphor inscription activated by lasers.
The structure of the s of the basilica. The aim is for it to be integrated into the Trinitarian symbolism of the apse.Ecstasy of Saint TeresaBernini's work through the beams of light surrounding the Lamb, to evoke its connection with the divine.
Regarding Gaudí's ideas, the hyperboloid shape follows Gaudí's principle of channeling light as in a forest, while "the 24 rays illuminated with gold leaf make the Word of God visible, creating an atmosphere of mysticism and transcendence."
Mastrovito's winning proposal and the four finalists, also from Italian Edoardo Tresoldi, Portuguese David Oliveira, Spaniard Gonzalo Borondo, and Catalan Jordi Alcaraz, can be seen from this Thursday until June 9 in an exhibition at the Museu Diocesà de Barcelona. The exhibition includes models of their proposals and other materials, including preparatory drawings.
A project from Gaudí's time
The Lamb of God in the tower of Jesus appears in the temple albums created during Gaudí's lifetime. It was decided that the Lamb would be placed within the upper arm of the cross, on the central vertical axis, and the Theological Commission of the Sagrada Familia considered that the Lamb should be clearly identifiable from within the cross and that, from the outside, its presence should be recognizable through the windows of the upper arm. At the end of 2023, the Board of Trustees of the Construction Board of the Expiatory Temple of the Sagrada Familia launched an international competition to interpret Agnus Dei. Five artists were invited to explore this figure with complete artistic freedom in form and materials, with the requirements that they be respectful of Christian iconographic tradition and conditions.
