Symbols in a Vermeer painting and a video report on a Moscow woman who pinned a snake with a dustpan

In Vermeer's painting, the woman's gaze is turned to a scene of the Crucifixion, with John the Evangelist embodying wisdom. She holds her hand to her heart, which attests to her longing for God. She props up a terrestrial globe with her foot, which shows that faith holds up the world. For all the significance of its various elements, the expression on the woman's face is tormented and forlorn, so that without an explanatory note you would hardly make out the religious feeling at all. Vermeer never sold this picture to the end of his days, or perhaps it simply never sold.

But in the video report I recalled, with due perseverance one can also find a heap of symbols. Incidentally, the Muscovite did crush the snake not with a rubbish bin after all but with a dustpan, forgive me, I had forgotten. Do watch this video: a lady, whether Vermeerian or Boschian, very picturesquely tells of a venomous "eastern" snake that must be caught before it hides, since afterwards you will never be rid of it. A most interesting and symbolic story. The report: https://life.ru/t/новости/935051/iadovitaia_zmieia_zapolzla_k_moskvichkie_po_trubam_iz_kvartiry_sosiediei

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Pope Leo XIV on the courage to do good, to forgive and to enter into dialogue

Orientalist Grigory Kozakov with relatives and children at a picnic near the village of Zhikharevka in 1903

Konstantin Ivanov's Cosmonautics Day poster, published in Moscow in 1977

Signs of violent death found on skulls from burials beside the royal tombs at Abydos