Mario Tavella is Chairman Europe at Sotheby's, President of Sotheby's France, and Chairman of Major Collections for Europe. He joined Sotheby's in 1991 after an economics degree and studies at Sotheby's Institute in Fine and Decorative Arts, rising through the London office to the European Board (1998) and Deputy Chairman (2003) before becoming Chairman of Europe in 2016 and later relocating to lead the Paris office. Despite his broad expertise, his specialism is in the field of decorative arts, and he publishes regularly on this subject on academic publications.

He has curated the sale over 100 single-owner collection sales in London, Paris, Milan and New York, belonging to respected collectors and celebrities and encompassing various categories of fine and decorative arts.

Tavella is delighted to be joining the Faith Art Prize judging panel, and looks forward to seeing the breadth of work that comes in this year,  bringing decades spent handling some of the world's most significant collections to bear on how contemporary artists are interpreting faith, devotion and the sacred today.

Jemila Isa is a self-taught painter whose work has a distinctive naïve quality, both intentional and instinctive. Without formal art training, Isa developed a practice through long periods of solitude in childhood, when drawing with just paper and pen became a way into imagination and introspection.

Raised in a strict religious environment that valued obedience over curiosity, Isa explores the lasting effects of that upbringing: timidity, restraint, and a quiet tension between wanting to express and learning to stay small. At first glance, the paintings seem to deal with faith and identity. Closer up, they are deeply personal. Awkward, searching lines and figures suspended between reality and imagination reflect an inner world shaped by longing and restraint.

At its core, Isa's practice is about the ongoing negotiation between hope and reality, fantasy and limitation, and expression and suppression. It also questions the comfort faith offers against the complexities of human life.

Father Patrick van der Vorst, founder of Christian Art Today and a former Director at Sotheby's Europe, is now a priest at Westminster Cathedral. 

Nic Fiddian-Green has been represented by the Sladmore Gallery for over 25 years. His work, which ranges between strikingly monumental and more intimate forms, is highly prized around the world in both public and private collections.

Born in Hampshire in 1963, he graduated from Wimbledon School of Art after a three-year degree in Sculpture. Engrossed in the horse as a subject and working in marble, he was greatly moved by the power, skill and beauty of the Parthenon frieze and the horse as depicted by the Ancient Greeks. In particular the remarkable "Selene" horse at the British Museum.

He next attended St Martin's School of Art where he learned the skill of casting in bronze. He gained a Diploma in Advanced Lost Wax Casting and then began to cast his own work whilst living in Stoke Newington. In 1992 he moved to Gozo with his wife Henrietta and he continued to cast his own work for numerous commissions he received, particularly from religious communities on the Island. Upon the birth of their first son, they moved back to Wintershall, near Godalming, Surrey where they have lived since.

Through sheer determination and passion for his subject, Nic Fiddian-Green has stayed true to the form of the horse's head for 25 years. The task of capturing the spirit and power of the equine form can be argued as almost a long-term obsession for Nic. We have been venerating horses in art as long as we have ridden them, and Nic's sculpture continues the very long line of artists inspired by these animals. The earliest example of art ever discovered in Britain was of a horse: a flat bone with a horse's head carved into it of 10,000 BC. Through da Vinci's sketches, the sculpture of Degas, the paintings of Constable and Stubbs, to the work of recent masters, like Marini, Frink and Flanagan; Nic's glorious obsession with the subject is a worthy inheritor of many distinguished forebears.

Nic's encounters with an array of life-threatening illnesses a few years ago caused an obvious and honest creative re-assessment. There emerges a stronger, deeper and more contemplative vision that permeates the new work via modes of stillness and reflection. He shows us how his spirit and his faith help him triumph over the physical. In the eyes of his model's, we feel pain, strength, fear, wisdom and more as he asks complicated questions of the viewer that leave a powerful and spiritual resonance.

In his recent body of work he continues to show he is an artist of our time, formed and inspired by his recent experience. The early influences of the elegant Parthenon frieze are still apparent, the classical Greek principles of grace, beauty, serenity, and harmony balanced with new sensibilities of scale to create both unique and modern forms of sculpture.

John Studzinski CBE is Founder and Chairman of the Genesis Foundation, the 25-year-old UK-based charity that supports gifted young artists and creative professionals from a diversity of backgrounds.

John Studzinski established the Genesis Foundation in 2001 with the aim of opening career opportunities for gifted young artists from a diversity of backgrounds. Over a period of 25 years the UK-based Foundation has broadened its scope to nurture talented artists and creative professionals at decisive stages in their careers, enabling them to develop their professional skills and experience and gain access to mentors and valuable networks.

Born and educated in the United States, John Studzinski has been resident in the UK since the early 1980s. In 2018 he became managing director and vice chairman of PIMCO, the global investment management firm, having previously served in senior roles in financial services at Blackstone, HSBC and Morgan Stanley. 

His philanthropic ethos, which has found expression in the fields of arts and culture, human rights and homelessness, grows from his commitment to sustaining human dignity.

Among his voluntary posts in the UK are Chancellor of Leeds Trinity University, Chairman of the Benjamin Franklin House Museum, and Founding President of Arise, which facilitates frontline programmes against human trafficking and modern slavery around the world. He has a long association with The Passage, which provides services, advice and advocacy for homeless people in the City of Westminster, is Vice Chair Emeritus of Human Rights Watch, and acts as a commissioner of the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, an initiative launched in 2023 by The Rt Hon Theresa May MP. In the USA he serves on the board of, among others, the J. Paul Getty Trust, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the American Associates of the Saint Catherine Foundation.

An entrepreneurial approach to philanthropy informs John Studzinski’s book A Talent for Giving: Creating a more generous society that benefits everyone, which was published by Bloomsbury in 2025. His presence in the media includes regular appearances on Thought for the Day on Today, BBC Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme.

Awarded a CBE in 2008 for his services to the Arts and Charity, John Studzinski has also received the Papal honours of Knight of the Order of St. Gregory and Knight Commander of St. Sylvester, the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award, the Beacon Prize for Philanthropy, the Prince of Wales Medal for Arts Philanthropy, and the Prince of Wales Ambassador Award for his work with the homeless. In 2017 the Catholic Herald named him Catholic of the Year.

Image credit: Andrew Atkinson