Light of World. The Light of the World is an allegorical painting by the English Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt representing the figure of Jesus preparing to knock on an overgrown and long-unopened door, illustrating Revelation 3:20: Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me. According to Hunt: I painted the picture with what I thought, unworthy though I was, to be by Divine command, and not simply as a good Subject.
The door in the painting has no handle, and can therefore be opened only from the inside, representing the obstinately shut mind. Hunt, 50 years after painting it, felt he had to explain the symbolism.
The original is variously said to have been painted at night in a makeshift hut at Worcester Park Farm in Surrey and in the garden of the Oxford University Press while it is suggested that Hunt found the dawn light he needed outside Bethlehem on one of his visits to the Holy Land. In oil on canvas, it was begun around 1849/50, completed in 1853, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854 and is now in the side chapel at Keble College, Oxford.
The painting was donated to the college by the widow of Thomas Combe, Printer to the University of Oxford, Tractarian and a patron of the Pre-Raphaelites, in the year following his death in 1872 on the understanding that it would hang i
The door in the painting has no handle, and can therefore be opened only from the inside, representing the obstinately shut mind. Hunt, 50 years after painting it, felt he had to explain the symbolism.
The original is variously said to have been painted at night in a makeshift hut at Worcester Park Farm in Surrey and in the garden of the Oxford University Press while it is suggested that Hunt found the dawn light he needed outside Bethlehem on one of his visits to the Holy Land. In oil on canvas, it was begun around 1849/50, completed in 1853, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854 and is now in the side chapel at Keble College, Oxford.
The painting was donated to the college by the widow of Thomas Combe, Printer to the University of Oxford, Tractarian and a patron of the Pre-Raphaelites, in the year following his death in 1872 on the understanding that it would hang i
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