Robert Francis Prevost has been elected Pope Leo XIV—why does this matter to the worlds of art and heritage?

Robert Francis Prevost has been elected pope, taking the name Leo XIV. He becomes the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, and the 267th holder of the office in succession to the first pope, St Peter.

Through his office, the new pope becomes proprietor in trust of the great art and architectural treasures of Vatican City, and will be looked to as a moral authority, a global diplomat, and a voice for social justice in line with the teachings of the Catholic church and the pursuit of world peace.

His actions as pope will be analysed for how they align with or differ from those of his predecessors, whether in political, social, doctrinal or liturgical matters. This will be done with particular reference to the impact of his three immediate predecessors: two largely conservative pontiffs—John Paul II (pope in 1978-2005) and Benedict XVI (2005-13)—and the more progressive Francis (2013-25), the first pope from the Americas and the first from the global south.

The examples of recent pontificates indicates that the new pope’s office gives him the stature, and the traditional foundations, to be an influential leader in multiple areas—from art history to climate change—of specific interest to cultural and visual arts organisations.

Art history

The new pope becomes head of one of the historic revealed religions, with ultimate charge not just of the Vatican Museums and Library, with their holdings covering two millennia of Christianity, but also the remainder of the built patrimony of the tiny Vatican City state at the heart of Rome.

As well as St Peter’s, a great Renaissance edifice and a building of special religious and architectural importance, the built patrimony includes the Sistine Chapel and its famous ensemble of late 15th- and early 16th-century frescoes. This of course includes the jewel-like Niccoline Chapel adorned with frescoes by Fra Angelico; and the Raphael apartments, or stanze, in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, with the artist’s The School of Athens their crowning achievement. The Vatican also owns and runs three papal basilicas in Rome that are outside the Vatican City but owned and run by the Holy See—Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in Laterano and San Paolo Fuori le Mura.

Under Benedict XVI and Francis, the Vatican Museums became involved as never before in exhibition loans to and from international museums, in a parallel development to the way that the Royal Collection Trust was opened up to the world of art history during the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Objects of devotion

Recent history suggests that the new pope will be in a position to influence the taste of the Catholic faithful in objects of devotion. During the early weeks of the global pandemic in 2020, Francis gave a powerful Easter speech, standing alone, in the rain and windswept darkness of St Peter’s Piazza. He prayed for deliverance from Covid-19 accompanied by a reproduction of his favourite devotional image: the Salus Populi Romani icon from the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

The Salus Populi Romani (the Salvation of the Roman People), as its name suggests, has a long connection to the city of Rome. Another of Francis’s favourite images, Johann Georg Melchior Schmidtner Mary Untier of Knots (around 1700) was a revelation to many Catholics, one that he popularised first in Argentina and then across the globe. The image’s subject spoke to Francis’s fundamentally practical, down to earth, nature; and his insistence that decisions had to be taken with thought, their difficulties “untied”.

Contemporary art

Four centuries on from the era of the great Renaissance art patron Popes—Julius II, Paul III, Paul V and Urban VIII—Pope Pius XII launched a competition to build three new bronze doors to link the portico of the basilica to the nave, replacing old doors. Giazomo Manzù’s Door of Death was dedicated by Pope Paul VI in 1964.

Paul went on to set the Vatican back on a concerted course of collecting contemporary art. His galleries of international modern and contemporary work opened in the Vatican Museums in 1975, featuring the acquisition of work by artists including Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio Morandi, Giacomo Manzù, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland.

Restitution

Under Francis the papacy made some powerfully symbolic gestures around artistic and cultural restitution. In November 2022, Francis ordered the Vatican Museums to return three Parthenon marble fragments to Greece, which had been held in their collections since the 19th century.

The three sculptural fragments had been held by the Gregoriano Profano Museum, home to the Holy See’s collections of antiquities. They include part of the head of the horse pulling Athena’s chariot in the frieze on the west side of the Parthenon, and elements of the heads of a boy and a bearded man.

This gesture was freighted with diplomatic symbolism as it followed Francis’s 2021 visit to Athens. There he had visited Ieronymos II, the Orthodox Christian archbishop of Athens and head of the Greek Orthodox Church, and made a night-time visit to the Parthenon.

“History makes its weight felt, and here, today,” Francis said. “I feel the need to ask anew for the forgiveness of God and of our brothers and sisters for the mistakes committed by many Catholics.”

This is a developing story.