This narrative work formally allies two recurring subjects in Peter Besharo’s visual vocabulary: a winged angel in a tarboosh and a helmeted space figure in liturgical vestments. Radiant light, enhanced by a flame and a rising sun emerging from a blue brick structure, illuminates the main figures. Commanding the scene from above are two all-seeing eyes, one of which features two irises and pupils.

Besharo, who painted approximately seventy visionary landscapes during his career, was a Syrian-Lebanese immigrant who came to America around 1910; by 1913 he was peddling dry goods at mining camps around Leechburg, Pennsylvania, and by 1923 he was supporting himself as a housepainter. He lived in a room at the Penn-Lee Hotel in Leechburg and rented studio space around the corner. He was the town’s lone Christian Maronite; he fervently believed that sympathetic church leaders could bring about universal peace.