The Divine Mercy Jesus

A vision on a February night

The Divine Mercy image traces back to visions reported by Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who had joined the convent of Our Lady of Mercy in Warsaw in 1925. On the night of Sunday, February 22, 1931, she wrote that Jesus appeared to her as the "King of Divine Mercy," robed in white — the first of the visions she would go on to record in detail in her diary.

A painting made under close supervision

Kowalska's confessor, Father Michael Sopoćko, a professor of theology at the University of Vilnius, introduced her to Eugeniusz Kazimirowski, a Polish realist painter who taught art at the same university. At Sopoćko's request, Kazimirowski began painting the image on January 2, 1934, working under the direct supervision of both Kowalska and Sopoćko. Kowalska gave the painter specific instructions about the image's appearance and posture, describing them as instructions she had received from Christ himself.

Rays that recall the crucifixion

The painting's most distinctive feature — pale and red rays streaming from Christ's heart — is traditionally understood to represent the blood and water that flowed from his side at the crucifixion, a detail recorded in the Gospel of John. That image of mercy pouring outward from the wound became the visual center of the devotion built around it.

From a convent wall to worldwide veneration

After its completion, the Kazimirowski painting first hung privately in the Bernardine Sisters' convent near the church of St. Michael in Vilnius. Its first public exhibition came April 26-28, 1935, at the Church of the Gate of Dawn. Since then, numerous other versions have been painted by other artists, most notably a popular rendition by Adolf Hyła in Kraków, and the image is now venerated worldwide, central to the celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday observed across Roman Catholic and some Anglican churches.