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The Awakening Conscience by William Holman Hunt

Its inspiration was a verse from Proverbs: ‘As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart’. With his typical thoroughness, Hunt hired a room at Woodbine Villa, 7 Alpha Place, St John’s Wood, a 'maison de convenance’, to use as the setting. A gentleman has installed his mistress (known to be such because of her absence of a wedding ring) in a house for their meetings. As they play and sing to Thomas Moore’s Oft in the Stilly Night, she has a sudden spiritual revelation. Rising from her lover’s lap, she gazes into the sunlit garden beyond, which is reflected in the mirror behind her. The mirror image represents the woman’s lost innocence, but redemption, indicated by the ray of light in the foreground, is still possible. Intended to be 'read’, the painting is full of such symbolic elements. The cat toying with the broken-winged bird under the table symbolises the woman’s plight. A man’s discarded glove warns that the likely fate of a cast-off mistress was prostitution. A tangled skein of yarn on the floor symbolises the web in which the girl is entrapped. Indeed, as Ruskin wrote to the Times on 25 May 1854, 'the very hem of the poor girl’s dress, at which the painter has laboured so closely, thread by thread, has story in it, if we think how soon its pure whiteness may be soiled with dust and rain, her outcast feet failing in the street’. The frame, designed by Hunt, also contains various symbolic emblems; the bells and marigolds stand for warning and sorrow, the star is a sign of spiritual revelation. (cr: tate.org.uk)

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Carlo Crivelli, Saint George Slaying the Dragon, 1470. 

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Love transforms one into what one loves.

- Saint Catherine of Siena 

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Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad Te, Deus.

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Mother of the Savior

(Via Mary-MotherofGod.blogspot.com)

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Jesus Christ the Savior J. Kirk Richards

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Boris Kustodiev - Spring (1921)

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Communion of the Apostles, 1451-1452

Fra Angelico, 1395-1455

Basilica di San Marco, Florence, Italy

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Der gute Schaefer von Philippe de Champaigne Öl auf Leinwand Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France

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The Sacrificial Lamb by Josefa de Óbidos, 1670

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Haec nox est, in qua destructis vinculis mortis, Christus ab inferis victor ascendit.

This then is the night in which Christ broke the chains of death, and ascended a conquerer from hell. 

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THE SWEET JOYS OF MARY O Mary, help us comprehend the look of Love exchanged between your heart and the Heart of Jesus.

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The Morning of the Resurrection by Edward Burne-Jones, 1886

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Easter Procession

Boris Kustodiev

1915

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The Pilgrims of Emmaus Jean Restout⏤1735