With the Met Gala and a papal conclave in the same week, we can’t help but remember and overthink the 2018 exhibit “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.”
This week, a spectacular scene unfolds. Guests arrive from across the globe, dressed in fine vestments and rich colors. Security cordons off the crowds who are hoping for a glimpse of these influential figures. Their movements are traced by cameras capturing every gesture, before they disappear inside, where no reporter can enter.
Wait. Are we talking about the Met Gala or the papal conclave?
On Monday (famously, the first one of May), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will host its annual Met Gala. This celebrity fundraiser opens the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition. On Wednesday, the papal conclave begins. The College of Cardinals meets in the Vatican to elect the next pope following the death of Pope Francis.
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These events, separated by a few days and worlds apart, share coincidental timing. Mere coincidence. Nevertheless, we can’t help but recall the Met’s 2018 exhibition “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.” While we wait to discover what outrageous outfits will claim Fifth Avenue this year, and which cardinal claims St. Peter’s chair, let’s revisit why the Vatican holds such lasting fashion appeal.
Recalling the 2018 Met Gala and “Heavenly Bodies” Exhibit
In 2018, the Met Gala inspired celebrities to dress in their “Sunday Best.” Zendaya showed up in a stunning Joan of Arc-inspired Versace ensemble. Ariana Grande’s Vera Wang gown featured images of Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. But Rihanna stole the show, arriving in a papal-inspired Margiela ensemble complete with jeweled miter.
Inside the museum, actual papal vestments showed guests what the real deal looks like. Over 40 ecclesiastical masterworks were on loan from the Sistine Chapel sacristy, covering 15 papacies from the 18th to the early 21st century. This served as the cornerstone of the exhibit. Complementing them was the Met’s medieval and Renaissance art collection.
These were exhibited alongside contemporary and modern fashion that drew inspiration from Catholic iconography. Featured designers included John Galliano, Elsa Schiaparelli, Riccardo Tisci, and Cristóbal Balenciaga, to name a few.
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The effect was a momentous display of dialogue between religion, art, and fashion. The exhibition drew nearly 1.7 million visitors. It became the Met’s most-visited exhibit, breaking the record previously held by the “Treasures of Tutankhamun” back in 1978.
Catholic Imagery and Aesthetics
What draws people to Catholic imagery and iconography? The answer lies in the visceral power of the Catholic aesthetic itself. More so than other religions, Catholicism is imbued with immediate visual impact through its rich symbolism, ornate detail, and dramatic ritual.
David Tracy, a Catholic priest and theologian who served as a consultant for the exhibit, observed in his essay for the exhibition catalog: “The highly visual culture of Catholicism is a natural influence for all manner of artists, fashion designers not exempt.”
The cross, the main religious image of Christianity, featured prominently throughout the exhibit, including a 1997 gold-mesh evening dress by Gianni Versace inspired by Byzantine mosaics. There were fallen angels, interpretations of the Garden of Eden on silk, wedding gowns, nuns’ habits with mini skirts, Madonnas, and more.
The visual richness of the Catholic faith is no accident. There is the deliberate weaving of beauty and spirituality. It is the expression and manifestation of “Catholic imagination.” Maybe that’s why they put it in the exhibit’s subtitle.
What is Catholic Imagination?
The concept of “Catholic imagination” is best associated with Catholic priest and sociologist Andrew Greeley from his 2000 book. He starts it off by painting an ornate picture of faith. “Catholics,” he writes, “live in an enchanted world, a world of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads, and holy pictures.”
Why? The distinct worldview of Catholic imagination.
For Greeley, this worldview held by believers is rooted in the sacramental. There are, of course, the Church’s seven sacraments. But Greeley broadens the scope of sacrament to “reality as … a revelation of the presence of God.” It is what allows Catholics to accept seeming paradoxes (i.e., Jesus as human and divine, the Holy Spirit as three and one), and see grace come through material things, people, and rituals.
“The Catholic imagination in all its many manifestations tends to emphasize the metaphorical nature of creation. The objects, events, and persons of ordinary existence hint at the nature of God and indeed make God in some fashion present to us,” Greeley writes. “The Catholic imagination loves metaphors; Catholicism is a verdant rainforest of metaphors.”
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This sacramental understanding, where creation is a window into the divine, explains why Catholic aesthetics and rituals are so rich and complex. When believers hold that bread becomes Christ’s body and water washes away sin, why would these vessels be anything less than beautiful?
The magnificent vestments, elaborate ceremonies, and soaring cathedrals can be seen as natural expressions of Catholic belief and imagination. Under this worldview, they remind people that beauty can exist for its own sake or for something beyond.
Catholic Imagination and the Conclave
This Wednesday’s papal conclave is a demonstrative display of Catholic imagination. With its elaborate ritual of oaths, expelling outsiders, ballot voting process, and even the black or white smoke signal, it can all mean something more. There is an authentic mystery that explains the conclave’s enduring fascination for secular and non-secular audiences.
As Archbishop Charles Brown, the apostolic nuncio to the Philippines, recently expressed: “I think it’s important to remember that the Holy Spirit has already decided who the next pope will be. It’s up to the cardinals now to make that decision manifest.”
While the cardinals’ deliberations may have a twinge of politicking and negotiation if films are anything to go by, there is spiritual discernment to seek divine guidance through human means. Divine predestination and human agency. A paradox that only Catholic imagination can embrace so readily.
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Once the white smoke is seen, the newly elected pope retreats to the Room of Tears within the Sistine Chapel. In this private chamber, he chooses a pontifical robe. We return to where fashion and faith collide. When the new pope emerges, we’ll be reminded that some of the most enduring fashion moments aren’t on runways or red carpets.
Sometimes, it’s just a simple man in a white cassock.
When Pope Francis appeared after his election in 2013, he wore an understated white cassock without the traditional rochet and red mozzetta. Instead of a gold pectoral cross, he chose a silver one from his days as a bishop in Buenos Aires. It was a simple, powerful statement. In the verdant rainforest of Catholic metaphors, there is also beauty and power in the space between the trees.
So as we toggle between livestreams this week—from the celebrity spectacle on Fifth Avenue to the puffs of white smoke above the Vatican—we’ll witness twin expressions of what beauty communicates.
