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I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He w ill pound your head, and you will bite his heel.
The painting at left by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, circa 1605, takes this verse from Hebrew Scriptures and places it in a Christian context, in which Jesus is construed as the new Adam. The uncircumcized boy is Jesus. Crushing the snake with him is his mother, Mary, and the wizened lady watching this is Mary's mother Anne. The painting now at the Galleria Borghese in Rome was controversial in several ways: Mary's low-cut dress, Jesus's uncircumcised penis; the withered face of Anne, to whom this was supposed to be a tribute. But the point of the enmity between the snake and the woman and her offspring is dramatically illustrated.
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