Few rituals are as ancient or as evocativeas the washing of feet. If the gesture is finished off with the loving flourishof a kiss, the action is elevated beyond mere humility into somethingpoignantly intimate. Yet it was more than just intense tenderness that vibratedfrom images captured this week of Pope Francis cleansing and blessing the solesof Christians and non-Christians at a refugee centre on the outskirts of Rome.The photos pose a challenge to cultural prejudices – prejudices that arebrought into powerful relief when the images are seen alongside an intriguingand little-known painting created in Palestine in 1925.

The custom of the washing of the feet isundertaken by the Pope each year on Holy Thursday (three days before Easter) inemulation of the actions of Christ, who performed the rite on his 12 apostlesat the Last Supper. Though observed annually, the ritual this year wasparticularly profound. Not only did the occasion mark the official inclusionfor the first time of women in the Papal ceremony, it occurred just 48 hoursafter so-called Islamic State took credit for a deadly terror attack inBrussels. In light of the horrific carnage, the Pope’s invitation to 12migrants, including three Muslims from Mali, Pakistan, and Syria, to receivethe rite, was an act of loving defiance aimed equally at those who perpetrateterror and those who fear the influx of refugees into Europe.

By capturing the exalted leader of one ofthe world’s largest religions crumpled prostrate before homeless strangers,this week’s photo defies our assumptions of social hierarchy. It also calls tomind countless portrayals in the history of art of Mary Magdalene anointingChrist's feet with perfume and tears and Christ himself washing the feet of hisapostles. Indeed nearly everyone from Giotto to Tintoretto, Fra Angelico toFord Maddox Brown, Rembrandt to Blake has tackled these subjects. But howeverbeautiful traditional depictions of the New Testament scenes may be (Blake’s is especiallylyrical), after centuries of staring and being stared at, their repetition ofan overly familiar religious story has worn our eyes down like wave-washedstones.

By contrast, a less well-known treatment ofthe subject by the British artist David Bomberg, Washing of the Feet (1925),jolts our gaze into fresh perspective. Bomberg’s depiction relies for itsunnerving effect on the unknowability of the two masked figures involved in theceremony. Blurred by prejudice and fear, our eyes could easily, if shamefully,mistake the hooded figures for present-day terror suspects. In fact, Bomberg’spainting captures an actual scene the artist witnessed first-hand in a12th-Century church in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem in 1925: the Bishopanointing the feet of the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The only figure behavingsuspiciously was the artist, who had sneaked uninvited into the church. Seenside-by-side, this week’s photo of Pope Francis and Bomberg’s paintingcall us to cleanse our souls of corrosive bias.