Ms. Jatta said that art had played a big role in her family: Her mother and sister are art restorers; her grandmother, who was originally from Russia, was a painter; and her paternal ancestors founded an archaeological museum named after the family in Ruvo di Puglia, in southern Italy.

Eike Schmidt, the German director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, said Ms. Jatta’s appointment was a positive sign. “Within the male-dominated Vatican, to give such a prominent role to a woman was very good news,” he said, adding that he hoped the world of culture would soon “move beyond” gender considerations and “look at people for what they did and what they do.”

One curator now working for Ms. Jatta, Maurizio Sannibale of the Gregorian Etruscan Museum, said he had known her since they were students at Sapienza University in Rome. He described her as “affable, decisive and empathetic” and said that she “knows how to set challenges for herself.”

Running the Vatican Museums is a colossal job. Ms. Jatta is responsible for preserving, displaying and sharing knowledge of all of the treasures accumulated by the popes over the centuries, including the vast Egyptian and Etruscan collections, the “Laocoön” sculpture from the first century B.C., and Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th-century painting “St. Jerome.” In their breadth, history and caliber, the Vatican Museums make the Palace of Versailles in France look like a flashy upstart.