The Popes' stylist

Art in Respect - A personal exhibition of the artist, organist and couturier Filippo Sorcinelli hosted in the rooms of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan has been extended until 24 June 2025.
It is not only an exhibition itinerary but also a multi-sensorial and spiritual one where fashion, painting and perfume merge in a profound dialogue with the works of the great masters preserved in the Museum, from Leonardo da Vinci to Raphael to Caravaggio.
‘Filippo Sorcinelli is an artist in the etymological sense of the term, i.e. a master of art who for more than twenty years has been proposing a new concept of beauty, a contamination between the arts and a lifestyle that embraces different aspects of contemporaneity: a path cultivated by pursuing in synergy his passions for music, art, fashion and perfumery,’ a press release explained. ‘In 2001 Sorcinelli began his adventure with the LAVS (Liturgical Atelier of Sacred Vestments) and in 2013 he founded an art perfume house that is now known worldwide. The Art in Respect exhibition aims to explore the concept of respect as an ethical, spiritual and aesthetic tension in a continuous exchange between past and present, between sacred and human. One can admire the sartorial creations of the LAVS atelier together with some pictorial works accompanied by an olfactory itinerary that completes the perceptive experience by making the material vibrate with the breath of the invisible.
Among the works on display are some exceptional pieces: objects that belonged to Pope Benedict XVI and the sumptuous cope created for the Veneration of the Crown of Thorns in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris saved from the cathedral fire on 14 April 2019. Testimonies of an art that is not only beauty but also gesture, liturgy and living memory. The cope, from the Latin pluvial for rain, is a liturgical garment of great ceremonial significance, a symbol of authority but also of service since it accompanies the most solemn rites and the most profound veneration in the Christian tradition such as the rite of the Veneration of the Crown of Thorns kept in Notre-Dame that takes place every first Friday of the month and on Good Friday.
The body of the cope is made of wool damask and viscose vermilion, the colour of martyrdom and the most radical love.  The ornaments and the archiacutic shield feature Renaissance motifs, enriched by inlays that pick up on historical emblems taken from Pope Pius XII's large pillow, preserved in the same cathedral. Kept in the sacristy, this cope is now exceptionally on display at the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, as a testimony to an art that combines liturgy, fashion and spirituality, a work that does not just dress a body but celebrates the Mystery. Accompanying the cope on display is a fragrance created by Filippo Sorcinelli that evokes the burning of the cathedral in April 2019. The smell of Notre-Dame is not incense. IT IS TODAY THAT SMOKE OF SMOKE THAT IMPACTS HISTORY. It is also water overflowing from the stones, flowing down the sides of the organ. It is today's rift in the vaults that lets in light from the bare sky. It is the odour of life unbroken, of the Soul untouched, it is the Golden Cross gushing forth.