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A Visual History of the Sacred Heart of Jesus For reasons I cannot all together explain, I have been drawn to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for most of my life.

There is no question that I have felt a perverse attraction to this dreadful symbol of a pierced bleeding heart circumscribed by sharp thorns, flames shooting from its top, stabbed with a cross. At the same time I have felt a tremendous challenge from this symbol in which Jesus exposes his heart and seems to say, “Here is my heart, I have nothing to hide. Can you say the same?”

In the late 17th c

entury the French Visitandine nun Marguerite-Marie Alacoque reported a series of powerful incantatory visions, during which Jesus showed her his heart. In her autobiography she wrote of the “inexplicable Secrets of the Sacred Heart.” I have never had a vision of the Sacred Heart yet I have at least a partial understanding of what she meant. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is a visual symbol. If its “Secrets” could be fully articulated in words it would become a relic; an impotent symbol with feeble power to persuade. This is why at the center of The Sacred Heart of Jesus: A Visual History there are 100 illustrations, chosen in the first instance for their visual impact. And this is why it is the central thesis of the book that the meaning of the Sacred Heart resides ultimately within renderings of it that speak “de corde tuo, ad cor tuum,” about your heart, to your heart. These illustrations range from some of the earliest art picturing the heart of Jesus from the 2nd century to 21st-century interpretations. Examples have been selected from a wide range of mediums including paintings; wood, copper, and steel engravings; stained-glass windows; sculptures; watercolors; pastels; mosaics; ceramics; collages; silk screens; photographs; lithographs; and holy cards. The book includes art from such traditional painters as Pompeo Batoni, Francisco Bayeu, Guiodoccio Cozzarelli, Lucas Cranach, Maurice Denis, Corrado Giaguinto, Odilon Redon, and James Tissot as well as contemporary visionary and outsider artists like Salvador Dali, Henry Darger, Daniel Martin Diaz, Alex Grey, Jeff Koons, Norbert Kox, Elizabeth McGrath, and Jacques Prévert. Yet there is much to be said about the Sacred Heart of Jesus from its earliest reference in the Gospels to modern structural analysis. Accompanying each piece of Sacred Heart art will be commentary on topics as far ranging as Medieval nuns, 17th-century printing techniques, revolutionary politics, deconstructing religious visions, and Bob Dylan, all with a hook that connects them to Jesus’ heart. The book also features the first-ever Sacred Heart of Jesus chronology, lists of every Sacred Heart church and school in the U.S. and Canada, and an extensive bibliography which includes every book on record about the Sacred Heart. The book is offered as one more Sacred Heart of Jesus image, multi-faceted yet incomplete, bold yet hesitant. Hopefully the images reproduced in this book, individually and then collectively, will inspire readers, or should I say viewers, to contemplate their willingness to reveal their own hearts without guile and to honor Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness. To me this image of a bloody wounded heart speaks wordlessly of Jesus’ passion, his challenge, his mercy, and the valley of tears through which we all must pass. Behold the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

06/15/2026

Sacred Heart and Mind
William Thomas Thompson
2008
acrylic on canvas
90.7 x 76.2 cm.
credit: Copyright © and courtesy of William Thomas Thompson

THE HEART AND MIND OF GOD

From the artist:

“This is my first attempt to paint the Sacred Heart by very special request. The Heart of God is the Mind of God. Heart is mentioned 930 times in the Holy Scriptures. It is hard for me to think of the Heart of God as an image rather than spirit. We are an image of God and seek after the Heart of God. It was the love of God for His created mankind that brought on Christ the Redeemer and his crucifixion. Christ had and has the perfect living heart. May we have the Heart of God every day of our lives in caring and in giving.

“God made us in his own image, and the Divine Christ appeared physically and visually in the form of a man. I have learned recently from a book recommended by a friend, The Hearts Code by Paul Pearsall, that a person's memory is more in the heart than in the mind. In this painting I patterned the heart after a valentine heart box and felt a strong urgency to connect the image of the head or brain, which creates the mind, to the heart by nerves and blood vessels.

“Another friend simultaneously asked me to paint the image of Malachi 4:2 ‘… unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.’ The Son of Righteousness has risen, and I celebrate that occasion and fact. His name is Yesu/Yahweh originally and always. My soul (my breath and my life) is invested in this truth. Painting art has become a ministry for me always.”

Copyright © 2026, Peter N. Nevraumont. All Rights Reserved.

06/05/2026

Sacred Heart (Red/Gold)
Jeff Koons
2007
high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating
3.6 x 2.2 x 1.2 m
1 of 5 versions
credit: Copyright © and courtesy of Jeff Koons

PURITY

Jeff Koons has been quoted as saying, “When somebody sees my work, the only thing that they see is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” By calling on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, he has definitely raised the stakes on how his art is to be perceived. He deemed his Puppy sculpture, a two-storey high, 44-ton topiary terrier, “a contemporary Sacred Heart of Jesus." Like the Sacred Heart of Jesus, this gargantuan sculpture is eager to be loved, but does it have the pure intent of the Sacred Heart?

Critics have accused Koons of pandering to big-moneyed collectors who are able to spend mega-millions for one of his chrome-plated balloon-animal sculptures or paintings of Popeye juxtaposed with photorealistically rendered bizarre inflatable toys, found objects, and n**e women, fabricated by a legion of studio assistants.

Legend has it that Van Gogh, who worked solo, sold only one painting during his lifetime, and that to his brother. Collectors and museums wait in line to buy the next Koons piece. Does that make Van Gogh a purer artist than Koons?

Strange iconic images keep bubbling out of Koons’ head. There doesn’t seem to be a filter between what he imagines and what he makes as art. There is purity in that.

Maybe one way to assess Koons’ art isn’t whether his work is over commercialized or how it stacks up against Van Gogh’s, or any other artist’s work, but simply to what degree does it or not convey the purity and power of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Copyright © 2026, Peter N. Nevraumont. All Rights Reserved.

05/28/2026

Crossfire Heart Attack
Norbert Kox
1999
acrylic and oil on canvas board
25.5 x 20.5 cm
credit: Copyright © and courtesy of Norbert Kox

INTERNAL WARFARE

From the artist:

“Crossfire Heart Attack is about the conscience attacking the heart. Crossfire refers to the bullets shot crisscross through the heart. The embossed bullet furrows form an X, which is the ancient Biblical Greek letter Chi, the initial of Christ. It is also fitting that his initial X (Chi) is pronounced ‘key.’ Christ is the key to the heart.

“The three roosters at the top of the painting symbolize St. Peter’s three denials of Christ before his conscience was pricked and he wept bitterly for his betrayal (see Luke 22:34, 54-62). The cross branding it’s way into the top of the heart, while kindling the fire of the Holy Spirit, symbolizes an acknowledgement, repentance, and recommitment to the Savior. Both the X and the + were ancient forms of the Hebrew letter Taw, which means ‘mark.’ So there is a double reference here to receiving God’s protective mark of salvation.

“The Hebrew letter cluster Mem-Lamed-Hey (MLH) read from right to left means ‘word,’ and reversed, Hey-Lamed-Mem (HLM) means ‘beating’ or ‘to smite/strike down.’ This symmetrical word is analogous to Yesu, Christ the ‘Word’ of God, who was ‘beaten’ and ‘smitten’ for our iniquities.

“The hands are holding the heart forward as if offering it in surrender for a renewed relationship with Christ. In essence the lesson within this piece is, if we are willing to admit our shortcomings and turn around, Yahweh-God is willing to forgive and regenerate us.”

Copyright © 2026, Peter N. Nevraumont. All Rights Reserved.

05/17/2026

Sacred Heart
Jos Sances
2007
glazed ceramic tile
60.96 x 60.96 cm.
credit: courtesy and © copyright Jos Sances

HOME SWEET HOME

From the artist:

“The Sacred Heart of Jesus embodies Christ’s worldly pain and suffering. It suggests Jesus’ empathy with our hardships. The heart is a symbolic vessel, holding love, compassion and misery. Depicted here the vessel is a home and an anguished family being cruelly evicted from that home.”

Copyright © 2026, Peter N. Nevraumont. All Rights Reserved.

05/13/2026

Sagrado corazon
Maria Manuela Marquez
2007
oil on fabric
80 cm x 80 cm
Credit: Copyright © Maria Manuela Marques

SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN

This painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was rendered by nine year old Colombian Maria Manuel Marques in 2007 on the occasion of her first communion.

Copyright © 2026, Peter N. Nevraumont. All Rights Reserved.

05/02/2026

Divina Misericordia from El Cuadernillo Prohibido
Riccardo Olvera Jiménez
2007
oil on canvas
28 x 22 cm
credit: courtesy of Riccardo Olvera Jiménez

TOO LONG IN EXILE

In The Imitation of Christ Thomas À Kempis attests,

It is good for us to encounter troubles and adversities from time to time, for trouble often compels a man to search his own heart. It reminds him that he is an exile here….

Most commonly exile refers to military or political figures who are exiled from their homeland as punishment: Napoleon, Leon Trotsky. Artists on occasion have gone into self-exile. Think of Victor Hugo declaring Napoleon III a traitor to France, or Marlene Dietrich protesting against the Hi**er regime, or James Joyce, who would "not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use: silence, exile, and cunning."

Thomas À Kempis, however, is speaking to a deeper sense of exile. What he is telling us is that we humans have been exiled from our true home in the Kingdom of God to life here on Earth. In the Genesis myth God exiles Adam and Eve from the paradise of the Garden of Eden in which the pair were “naked…and not ashamed” into a world of sorrows and labor.

Isaiah 14:12–14 and Revelation 12:7–9 are the biblical sources for John Milton’s account in Paradise Lost of how a legion of angels led by Lucifer rebelled against God and the faithful angels, were defeated, and cast into the pit of hell. Another legend has it that there was a third band of angels who took neither side. We humans, according to this story, are these Neutral Angels exiled from heaven for our equivocation to toil on Earth until the Last Judgment.

Arguably the most unsettling social change in human history took place some 11,000 to 12,000 years ago. This is when at the end of the last Ice Age humans began to experiment with agriculturally based on life in rural villages—and soon enough in stratified towns and walled cities—representing an irreversible break with the past and the greatest revolution ever in the relationship between us and the world around us.

Before this profound rearrangement, all human populations—not just the scarce tribes hanging on today in remote corners of Australasia and Amazonia—were relatively small hunter-gatherer societies, living off nature’s bounty and by her rhythms. As we stepped into urban life, we stepped out of nature. No longer did we see ourselves as a part of nature, but rather embarked on a 12.000-year campaign to control her.

Whether exiled from heaven or our roots in nature, we have gnawing at us in some backroom of our brains the disquieting sense that we have become strangers in a strange land. “An uneasiness,” William James writes, “that there is SOMETHING WRONG ABOUT US as we naturally stand.”

Perhaps it is at least some solace that according to Marguerite-Marie Alacoque Jesus promised through contemplation of his Sacred Heart “people of the world…will secure…alleviation of their toils,…consolation in their sorrows,…and find a place of refuge during their entire life and particularly at the hour of their death.”

Copyright © 2026, Peter N. Nevraumont. All Rights Reserved.

04/22/2026

Christ
Alex Grey
1982-85
oil on linen
2.13 x 1.18 m.
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬credit: courtesy and copyright © Alex Grey

MIRRORING THE DIVINE

Christ is one of nineteen paintings in the Sacred Mirror series by Alex Grey (1953– ) currently on display at the CoSM Art Sanctuary in Wappingers Falls, New York. Each painting in the series presents a different life-sized figure of a human body, portraying the various human physical and energetic systems.

The Christ painting portraits Jesus as a spiritual master who realized and lived the mystic union of divinity and humanity. “The Word made flesh,” Christ serves as a direct channel for the love and healing energy of God. Here, Christ is shown resurrected, surrounded by golden light. A flaming infinity band of love encircles the Sacred Heart, and whirling six-pointed stars on either side of Jesus’ head refer to his Hebrew origins. The angel Gabriel (left) is holding a book on which a symbol of the Trinity appears, and Michael (right) exhibits the compassion that subdues evil but does not kill it.

According to Grey, the purpose of the Sacred Mirror paintings is to encourage the viewer to see him or herself and others as reflections of the divine.

Copyright © 2026, Peter N. Nevraumont. All Rights Reserved.

04/12/2026

Rossana Kelton
2001
airbrushed acrylics on denim
55.88 x 53.34 cm
credit: courtesy and copyright © Rossana Kelton

SAD-EYED JESUS

From the artist:

“As a practicing Catholic, I wanted to create a representation of the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to demonstrate my devotion to Jesus and the transformative power of love. Worshiping the Sacred Heart of Jesus has been a special tradition in my family since I was a child. I feel that the image is an excellent representation of the divine love that Jesus has for humanity. “

04/03/2026

The Sacred Heart of Jesus, detail from Crazy House: Further Adventures in Chicago, the sequel to In the Realms of the Unreal: The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelininian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion
Henry Darger
ca. 1940
carbon tracing, pencil and watercolor on paper
48 x 124 cm.
credit: copyright © Kiyoko Lerner; courtesy Edlin Gallery, New York

THE MOST FAMOUS “OUTSIDER” ARTIST IN THE WORLD

Combined Crazy House: Further Adventures in Chicago and In the Realms of the Unreal are a 25,000 page illustrated single-space typed novel, featuring hundreds of scroll-like pencil and watercolor paintings rendered largely by tracing, collage, or photo enlargement from popular magazines and children's books, of which this is one.

The Vivian Girls are the heroines of this epic who lead the Christian nation of Abbieannia in a rebellion against the satanic regime of child slavery imposed by the Galdelinians. At the point in this totally bizarre story where this drawing appears, the Vivian Girls and a male ally are intent on purifying a haunted house into which children disappear and are later found brutally murdered. The Sacred Heart plays a crucial role in this endeavor. As Violet, one of the leading Vivian Girls, explains,

“You asked me how a couple of Sacred Heart pictures made by our pure hands. Every one of us girls are experts in artistic work. But I don't mean sacred heart pictures we see always like those hanging in our home.”
“But that's the only kind there ever are made.” said they altogether again.
“True,” admitted Violet, “But this is my plan. One of us could go with Penrod to a bookstore, and buy a volume that shows the organic system inside of us human beings. And therefore ... “
“Draw that,” giggled James, “Violet is your upper story jangled out of tune?”
“No, no, wait until I explain. We can each make one sacred heart picture for every floor, but make the heart of natural form and beautify it and have each picture blessed.”

Darger’s outsider art masterpiece has been the subject of much scholarly analysis since the discovery of his work shortly before his death in 1973 by the landlords of the one room apartment in which he lived for forty-three years. A particular fascination has been his sexual psychology; not in this drawing, but in many of them, pubescent n**e Vivian Girls sport tiny pen*ses.

A Sacred Heart holy card after Batoni (see pages xx-xx) was one of the many images, mostly clipped from magazines, that decorated the walls of his apartment. Darger was a practicing Catholic, who, it is reported, attended mass every day.

Darger is buried in All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines, Illinois, in a plot called "The Old People of the Little Sisters of the Poor Plot." Darger's headstone is inscribed "Artist" and "Protector of Children."

Copyright © 2026, Peter N. Nevraumont. All Rights Reserved.

03/24/2026

Cœur Sacré de Jésus (Sacred Heart of Jesus)
Salvador Dali
1962
oil on canvas
86.5 x 61 cm

ANTENNAE OF THE (HUMAN) RACE

It’s probably not a particularly profitable exercise to judge artists’ work by the peculiarities of their private lives, though in the case of Salvador Dalí such an exercise makes fascinating reading. But what about their response to the political and social issues of the day? Is it as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Leo the Lion would have it “ars gratia artis,” or is there more to it than that?

When Hi**er came to power Dalí publicly praised the N**i regime, and he supported the Francisco Franco (1892–1975) dictatorship until the end. While Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) painted Guernica (1937), Dalí painted The Enigma of Hi**er (1939). (Is it fair to ask, after Kristallnacht, what was the enigma?)

Of course, there were other giants of the 20th century who were to one degree or another infected by N**i mythology.

Martin Heidegger (1889–1975), in his N**i uniform, whose Being and Nothingness is one of the great monuments of existential philosophy, was complicit in the dismissal of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), father of phenomenology, from his professorship at the University of Freiberg, because he was Jewish where Heidegger was Rector.

Ezra Pound, who in his virulent World War II broadcasts from Pisa went so far as to entertain a pogrom against “top” Jews, and whose magnificent Cantos is marred by numerous anti-Semitic passages.

Nobelist Knut Hamsun (1859–1952), Norway’s greatest novelist, who embraced the N**i imposed Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945) regime, met with both Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) and Adolf Hi**er (1889–1945), and also was unrepentant to the end; Ernest Hemingway (1891–1961) and his The Sun Also Rises unfortunate portrayal of Robert Cohn, but whose anti-Semitism, according to one critic, was “only skin deep”; the self-described “hebrophobe,” D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), whose standard biographer concludes Lawrence wasn’t anti-Semitic because “one of his closest lifelong friends was a Jew”; and finally T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), who lectured “reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.”

It was Pound who proclaimed “artists are the antennae of the race” (though there is a question if he meant the human race).

If so, how is it that these artists who created some of the last century’s most profound poetry, paintings, novels, and philosophy went haywire in response to one of the greatest moral crises Western Civilization has ever faced? The question remains whether a man’s artistic achievement should be separated from his morality and ideology?

Dali, a truly great artist whose personal life and politics were not particularly pleasant, painted a second Sacred Heart entitled Sometimes I Spit for Pleasure on the Portrait of My Mother.

Copyright © 2026, Peter N. Nevraumont. All Rights Reserved.

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