My point being that an artist who attempts to depict a religious subject will discover, perhaps faster than in any other way (due to the character of religious things), that a work of art depends, for its success, on an understanding of appropriateness, or seemliness, as it relates to tone; and on an openness to the ‘possible’ that may expose the artist to ridicule, insofar as that artist takes seriously the ‘miraculous’ (which audiences have learned to regard dubiously, even cynically). All of which arrives, I think, out of a capacity for awe.