In 1932, at the inauguration of the new Vatican Pinacoteca, Pope Pius XI made a speech contrasting the historic masterpieces in the papal collections with “certain other so-called sacred works of art, which do not seem to evoke and present the sacred other than to disfigure it to the extent of caricature, often going as far as true and actual profanation”. It was the opening salvo in an iconographic war on the avant-garde that would be carried on by Pius’ successors – with lessening conviction – until the election of the modern art-loving Pope Paul VI in 1963. Although papal condemnation could keep modern sacred art away from Catholic churches, it could not stop it from flourishing outside them. A current exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence reveals the