Half a millennium after Michelangelo, the Vatican is returning to its ancient tradition of art patronage with a biblical show at the Venice Biennale commissioned to revive the rapport between art and faith. The exhibition explores themes from the Book of Genesis through works by artists including renowned Czech photographer Josef Koudelka -- but there are no depictions of the Madonna and Child or suffering Christs, the Vatican said Wednesday.

Half a millennium after Michelangelo, the Vatican is returning to its ancient tradition of art patronage with a biblical show at the Venice Biennale commissioned to revive the rapport between art and faith. The exhibition explores themes from the Book of Genesis through works by artists including renowned Czech photographer Josef Koudelka -- but there are no depictions of the Madonna and Child or suffering Christs, the Vatican said Wednesday.

Half a millennium after Michelangelo, the Vatican is returning to its ancient tradition of art patronage with a biblical show at the Venice Biennale commissioned to revive the rapport between art and faith. The exhibition explores themes from the Book of Genesis through works by artists including renowned Czech photographer Josef Koudelka -- but there are no depictions of the Madonna and Child or suffering Christs, the Vatican said Wednesday.

Vatican museum director Antonio Paolucci on Friday criticised contemporary-style churches for lacking "form" and harked back to the Baroque era when he said that shrines embodied religious faith. Award-winning architect Richard Meier's Church of God the Merciful Father in Rome "could just as well be a museum in Texas or an auditorium in Melbourne", he wrote in the Vatican's official Osservatore Romano daily. Paolucci, who is also the head of cultural heritage for the Vatican, said what was lucking in these structures was the "church form".