Explore the dynamic imagination of Christian artists who transformed pagan gods into powerful symbols of their new faith. From the early Church’s reinterpretation of Hercules to the Renaissance genius of Michelangelo, discover how classical art was not rejected, but creatively absorbed and given profound new theological meaning.
Men and women of faith continue to draw on the wisdom, wonder, and beauty of the evergreen Catholic tradition to inform a particular mode of understanding and engaging with the world around them. Inspired by a sacramental vision of reality, the Catholic arts in particular grapple with the mystery and meaning that permeate the created order, giving shape and expression to the transcendent.
At its 24th annual Fall Conference, the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture considered the idea of the Catholic imagination, its enduring and inexhaustible nature, and how it continues to illumine our modern world. With a particular focus on the literary arts, the conference explored unique expressions of the Catholic imagination in more than 150 presentations, performances, and discussions across the disciplines, including philosophy, theology, ethics, law, history, and the natural and social sciences, as well as the creative domains of film, music, theater, and the visual arts.
For 2024’s Fall Conference, the de Nicola Center was pleased to partner with the Biennial Catholic Imagination Conference, which aims to enhance the understanding and appreciation of the richness and variety of contributions by Catholic artists; to explore the critical and theoretical foundations of the Catholic imagination; and to foster community and collaboration among writers and readers who share a knowledge of and respect for the Catholic tradition.
How did the Christian imagination engage with, absorb, and ultimately transform the art of the classical pagan world? In a compelling dialogue spanning centuries, Professor Robin Jensen and art historian Elizabeth Lev trace a cohesive narrative of creative appropriation from the early Church through the High Renaissance. They reveal a continuous artistic and theological tradition that saw Christian creators repurpose the most powerful images of their cultural past to tell the story of their faith.
Professor Jensen begins by addressing a puzzling historical question: Why do so many luxury objects from the 4th and 5th centuries, owned by wealthy Christians, feature prominent depictions of pagan gods like Apollo and mythological scenes? While some historians have interpreted this as evidence of a pagan revival, a sign of religious confusion, or simply a taste for decorative status symbols, Jensen proposes a more sophisticated explanation: iconographic appropriation. She argues that early Christians were not wavering in their faith but were engaged in a confident theological project. They deliberately endowed figures like Hercules, the sun-god Apollo, or the goddess Victory with new meaning, reinterpreting them as “Christ types” or as angels. This act of absorption served to neutralize pagan rivals while asserting the intellectual and spiritual superiority of Christianity, demonstrating its power to claim and sanctify the highest forms of the surrounding culture.
Picking up the narrative a millennium later, Elizabeth Lev explains that the Renaissance re-engagement with the classical world was not a return to paganism, but a confident reimagining of ancient beauty through the lens of Catholic theology. She focuses on the unparalleled genius of Michelangelo, who took the most celebrated forms of pagan antiquity and transformed them into profound Christian statements. Lev details how Michelangelo studied the divine, idealized body of the Apollo Belvedere, a statue representing a perfect but detached deity. He then fused that perfection with the grim reality of a human corpse to create the body of Christ in the Pietà—a god who suffers, for whom we can feel sorrow. He applied a similar transformative logic to the figure of David. Using Apollo’s ideal proportions as a starting point, he deliberately broke from them to create an awkward, adolescent hero. The head and hands are too big for the body, communicating not serene divinity but human vulnerability. David is not yet a hero; he is a boy who has “bit off more than he can chew” and is visibly in need of God’s help.
Lev’s analysis culminates in Michelangelo’s most audacious act of creative transformation. On January 14, 1506, the ancient sculpture of Laocoön—a pagan priest being crushed to death by sea serpents—was unearthed in Rome before Michelangelo’s eyes. Rather than seeing only an icon of tragic death, Michelangelo saw a dynamic form of divine power. He repurposed that twisting, tormented figure to create the image of God the Father on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, turning the ultimate symbol of pagan agony into the quintessential Christian image of creative, life-giving power.
Together, Jensen and Lev illustrate a continuous, imaginative dialogue between Christian faith and classical culture. Across centuries, artists found that the old forms, far from being a threat, could be infused with new and even more profound meaning, becoming powerful vessels for expressing the most profound mysteries of Christian salvation: suffering, creation, and redemption.
Here are the key highlights from this insightful conversation on faith and artistic transformation.
• Strategic Appropriation Over Rejection: Early Christians did not simply discard pagan art; they actively reinterpreted it, infusing familiar gods and heroes with sophisticated Christian meaning to serve their own theological ends.
• Art as Theological Statement: The use of pagan imagery was often not a sign of weak or confused faith, but a confident assertion of Christianity’s power to absorb, neutralize, and ultimately transcend the older religious traditions of the Roman world.
• Renaissance as Reimagination: Renaissance masters did not seek to revive paganism. Instead, they confidently reimagined classical forms, using the unparalleled beauty of ancient sculpture as a visual language to explore complex Christian doctrines about God and humanity.
• Michelangelo’s Transformative Genius: In a series of brilliant artistic moves, Michelangelo converted pagan icons of detached divinity (Apollo) and tragic death (Laocoön) into profound Christian images of divine suffering (Christ) and creative power (God the Father).
• A Continuous Catholic Imagination: Across centuries, a defining feature of the Catholic imagination has been its remarkable ability to find powerful cultural symbols, adopt them, and elevate them to tell the enduring story of salvation in a new light.
