«Valentino Vago is the Most Oriental of the Western Artist. […] Vago perhaps does not admit, or at least he doesen’t say, that he is close to the point of the unveiling of truth which Buddhist thought calls “illumination”: He’s right not to do so, because his roots (which we have attempted to identify) are profoundly Western, they are the roots Catholic visionarieness that has been able to feed upon Byzantine and orthodox visionarieness. But in the end, the light – whether Byzantine, Buddhist or Catholic – is the same for everybody. Light is light, that is to say, beauty and salvation, for anyone who knows how to perceive it, just like Valentino Vago, like a source that issues certainties beyond the smokescreen of fleetingness and history.» (Flavio Caroli, Valentino Vago, the Most Oriental of the Western Artist, in “Vago, Catalogue Raisonné”, ed. Skira, Milan 2011, vol.1 pp.11-13)