The artworks that inspired eight of the most stunning Met Gala looks

From Heidi Klum as a veiled Vestal virgin to singer Ciara as a gold-encrusted bust of Nefertiti, here is the art behind the fashion at the Met Gala.

Fashion is Art was the theme for this year's Met Gala, which falls annually on the first Monday of May. The event marks the opening of the latest exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute – and is a chance for celebrities on the Anna Wintour-approved guestlist to scale the Met steps in the most glamorous, fantastical, exuberant, fun, daft and occasionally highbrow outfits that they and their styling teams can get their hands on.

This year's theme came with the memo that it was a moment for attendees to "express their own relationship to fashion as an embodied art form and celebrate the countless depictions of the dressed body throughout art history". Here are eight of the outfits that were inspired by works of art.

Rosé / The Birds by Georges Braque (1952–53)

The singer Rosé, the New Zealand-born member of the South Korean pop group Blackpink, wore a largely unassuming black, strapless dress – the work of Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello – but it was inspiration from the art world that made it soar. Riffing on the depictions of birds in the work of French 20th-Century painter Georges Braque, the look featured a brick-sized bird brooch.

Rosé had worked with her stylist, or "image architect" as he likes to be known, Law Roach, on the look that was also inspired by the Saint Laurent collections of spring 1998 and spring 2002 couture. As she told Vogue: "We landed on this very classic Saint Laurent look, and as we were studying, I learned that YSL has repeatedly used this bird design."

Lena Dunham / Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi (c 1612-1620)

The Girls creator, who recently debuted her memoir, Famesick, was back on the Met Gala red carpet for the first time since 2019, wearing a dramatic all-red Valentino look by Alessandro Michele. The asymmetrical red silk, sequinned dress bedecked with crow's feathers had been inspired by one specific aspect of the painting Judith Slaying Holofernes: the blood.  

Speaking to Vogue, Dunham explains that she shared the idea to use that painting as inspiration with Alessandro, "but because his brain works in the most magical ways, rather than leaning into the Renaissance garments or the swords or any of it, he was attracted to a particular blood spatter on the neck of Holofernes."

Painted circa 1620 by the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, who became  the first woman to enter the Academy of Art and Design in Florence, it now hangs in Florence's Uffizi gallery.

Julianne Moore / Madame X by John Singer Sargent (1883-84)

It might have been custom Bottega Veneta who made it, but it's the US artist John Singer Sargent whose work was the genesis of Julianne Moore's elegant black dress with one strap slipping down. The look alluded to Sargent's portrait of........

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