Rome inaugurates new exhibition space on Via del Corso.

An iconic painting by Marc Chagall will go on public display in Rome from 27 November until 27 January as part of cultural celebrations for the Vatican's Jubilee Year 2025.

The White Crucifixion, painted by the Belorussian-born French painter in 1938, can be admired for free at the new Museo del Corso on the city's central Via del Corso.

The masterpiece, on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, comes to Rome thanks to a collaboration between the Vatican and Fondazione Roma, the foundation behind the new museum space which was inaugurated on Tuesday.

The painting by Chagall, who died in 1985 aged 97, can be seen every day from 10.00 to 20.00 at the Museo del Corso which unites Palazzo Cipolla with Palazzo Sciarra.

"There is no work that can better interpret the spirit of the Jubilee", Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri said, adding that the painting "expresses at the same time the tragedies of war and violence and the light of hope, of brotherhood between peoples".

Father Alessio Geretti, curator of the exhibition, noted that the work was painted by Chagall "immediately after the Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938) with the aim of denouncing the hatred and horrors of the 20th century perpetrated against the Jewish community."

The Art Institute of Chicago states that Chagall’s painting linked "the martyred Jesus with the Jewish people being persecuted across Europe and implicitly compares the Nazis with Jesus’s tormentors."

The painting, a favourite of Pope Francis, was exhibited at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in 2015.

The Jubilee is set to attract around 32 million pilgrims and tourists to the Eternal City next year.