For the first site-specific artwork ever commissioned for its exterior, the Vatican Apostolic Library turned to French artist JR for an image of the thing it fears most: water. Titled Diluvium, the installation spreads a flood engraving by Gustave Doré across the library’s 16th-century facade in the Belvedere Courtyard, a black-and-white wave rearing up against the building. The institution that has spent centuries keeping its collections dry now appears to stand directly in the water’s path.
The fear came first, and it came from the institution rather than the artist behind this Vatican Library installation. JR has explained that the library approached him because water is the greatest threat to everything it preserves, from paper and parchment to the memory they carry. That reasoning runs through the statement he issued for the project. “There is something almost mystical about books. These fragile objects contain the thoughts of the world; they carry voices, stories and knowledge across centuries,” JR said.
Doré at architectural scale is the central move of the work. The image comes from Gustave Doré’s 1866 wood engraving of the Great Flood, created for a French edition of the Bible, and a rare 1870 Milanese edition published by Treves is on display inside the library. Enlarged to roughly 70 meters (230 feet) wide and 30 meters (98 feet) high, according to Vatican News, the engraver’s parallel lines become readable from across the Belvedere Courtyard. Set against the Vatican Library facade, a nineteenth-century print takes on the scale of the 16th-century architecture behind it.
What stands behind the wave gives the image its weight. Pope Sixtus IV formalized the library’s structure with a papal bull in 1475, and its holdings of manuscripts, archival records, early printed books, prints, drawings, maps and photographs have been open to qualified researchers from around the world for centuries. Every one of those materials is vulnerable to water. On the facade, Doré’s flood rises directly in front of the walls that house the Vatican Apostolic Library collections.
A wave with several readings widens the meaning of the JR wave installation beyond conservation. Speaking at the unveiling, JR tied the image to climate change and extreme heat, to political polarization and to the rise of artificial intelligence. His statement keeps returning to the object at the center of it all. “Their strength is immense, and so is their vulnerability: paper resists none of the elements. By bringing a wave into the Vatican Library, DILUVIUM and UNDAE confront this paradox. What can survive, and what do we choose to preserve?” the artist said.
The first image visitors see, Diluvium opens the AQVA exhibition, first chapter of the library’s five-year Catastrophe and Wonder cycle, which will later address fire, light, insects and human intervention. Pope Leo XIV inaugurated the exhibition on September 14, while UNDAE, JR’s second site-specific piece, carries the wave inside the building. “Believing that the wisest response to fear is to pause and confront it directly, we invited three extraordinarily creative minds to dialogue with our heritage,” said Don Giacomo Cardinali, Vice Prefect and Commissioner for Exhibition Activities.
Historic buildings as surfaces have run through JR’s recent work. Earlier this year he covered the facade of Palazzo Ca’ da Mosto in Venice with Il Gesto, a reinterpretation of Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana, the biblical scene in which water is turned into wine, and turned Paris’ Pont Neuf into a cave. At the Vatican, the reference image is once again centuries old, and once again it is about water. “I think the symbol of creating a wave on the library will resonate with libraries around the world,” JR told Le Figaro.
Two timestamps, one day mark the official photographs of the work. Their titles record the exact moment each was taken, September 12, 2026, at 07:18 and at 19:36, two days before the inauguration. Across those twelve hours the wave on the facade stayed exactly where it was, while the light over the Belvedere Courtyard shifted around it.
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Diluvium by JR | Where: Vatican Apostolic Library, Cortile del Belvedere, 00120 Vatican City — When: September 25, 2026 – May 14, 2027