This painting announces Kurelek’s new outlook following his formal conversion to Catholicism through a thick overlay of imagery.

More subdued in colour than his first self-portrait, the 1957 painting is also intended to be read as a statement of selfless humility and a pictorial vow against his earlier forays into dark fantasies. Beginning in the 1960s, Kurelek’s imagery would oscillate between that which celebrated the beauty of creation and those that relentlessly mined images of apocalyptic horror.