I just came across this bit of Ruskin and thought of your art, Kris – not specifically with regard to this picture of Sophia, but to the inspiration that drives all your art in this area. Here’s what he says (forgive him his one-sided gender-ness; he couldn’t help being a man of his time):

“And herein you see with what a deeply interesting function the modern painter of mythology is invested. He is to place, at the service of former imagination, the art which it had not; – and to realise for us, with a truth then impossible, the visions described by the wisest of men as embodying their most pious thoughts, and their most exalted doctrines: … bringing the resources of accomplished art to unveil the hidden splendour of old imagination.”

He was talking about people like Burne-Jones and G.F. Watts, but he could just as easily have been talking about you. The idea is the same.