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This makes this a secular image of spirit rather than in which both painter and the audience are required to be part of any specific belief and its required dogma. It is not about Islam as much as it is about man and spirit. The caravan is transporting the Holy Carpet destined for the Ka'ba in the Great Mosque of Mecca. But we do not see it. In fact, but for the matchlock rifle in the hands of the walking figure to the far right, the picture is thoroughly timeless; it could easily be a pre Islamic scene from the ancient Near East. Free of religious chauvinism, Belly believed in a universal god for all of man. Pilgrims is a reflection of the desire to represent the perennial experience of belief and devotion. It is his success in capturing a universal spiritual feeling that makes Pilgrims look like the dawn of man, an allegory of man moving through time itself.
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This image is so powerful because of its genius of lighting. The group is back lit, casting shadows towards the viewer. From this perspective most of the caravan is actually in darkness.
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The visual result of this back lighting in the picture is that, as in nature, it highlights the outlines of physical forms in the scene while simultaneously obscuring their details and features. It is a phenomenon referred to as the "solar look" (french- contre-jour).
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The author points out to recall the sensation you get when staring at something with the sun in your eyes. Your vision becomes disorienting and yet entrancing, hiding what you are looking at and illuminating it at the same time. The genius of this painting makes use of this principal. Belly understood what Vermeer understood: that light is everything-light direction, light diffusion, the hour of the day, the condition of the sky. It is how light treats and manipulates, deceives and confuses, focuses on or disorients, attracts and flatters whatever it shines on that determines what color the eye believes it sees.