High society in Dostoyevsky’s 18th century St. Petersburg was fraught with corruption, decadence, and intrigue, with Prince Myshkin at the center as the Christ figure. Although ill and perceived as naive or stupid, Prince Myshkin’s antics and refreshing sincerity attract members of both nobility and the working class. I depicted him with a halo, as a light figure rising above the darkness of the city of St. Petersburg, but still under the judgmental eyes of polite society. Portraying a saintly Prince Myshkin contradicts the novel’s title—sometimes the people we perceive as the sickest or the least sane may be the most enlightened.
