Andrea Mastrovito's Agnus Dei installed atop Sagrada Familia

Italian artist Andrea Mastrovito (Bergamo, 1978) has created the Agnus Dei sculpture now installed at the center of the cross atop the Torre de Jesús, the highest point of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The work, titled Gv 1,29 after the Gospel verse identifying Christ as the Lamb of God, was selected through an international competition. It sits at 172 meters and is visible both from outside and from the central nave. The life-sized lamb looks backward and downward, interpreted by Mastrovito as Christ's nostalgic gaze toward humanity. The sculpture is enclosed in a hyperboloid structure of twenty-four intertwined rays, each about three meters long and covered in gold leaf, with LED lighting illuminating twenty-four New Testament quotations. The lamb's fleece is made of thousands of glass fragments representing human suffering, refracting light from the golden rays. Phosphorescent elements make it glow at night. The Sagrada Familia, begun in 1882 and redefined by Antoni Gaudí in 1883, was completed on June 10, 2026, exactly one hundred years after Gaudí's death, with an inauguration by Pope Leo XIV.