aureole

Eve’s long, spiraling strands of hair blow out into a radiant aureole behind her shapely body, as if it were a starburst halo framing a divinity.

Using her bare breasts as paintbrushes, Berlin, beginning in the ’70s, made “tit prints,” in which her pigment-laden aureoles produced forms that resemble balloons and angelfish.

Like his crossed legs, Cannon’s head and upper torso are framed in flickering swipes of green, as if this is a depiction of a holy man surrounded by an incandescent aureole.

And everything is framed by an aureole of crisp fern leaves reaching to the canvas’s edges — a many-pointed crown.

They now form a feathered aureole framing the extraordinary figure of a nude black man who sits, tensely perched on a pillow, legs spread wide.