In that respect, Helnwein's Epiphany paintings, three large canvasses completed in the late '90s, are his most perfect work to date. The pictures each seem deeply familiar, traditional in their iconography, yet they remain persistently resistant to fixed interpretation. For example, Epiphany III (Presentation at the Temple) takes as its structure the anatomy lesson paintings -- spectators gathered around a cadaver -- popular in Holland during the 17th Century. Only these spectators aren't doctors. They appear, for at least some viewers, to be the leaders of the Nazi party (Göring and Goebbels and Hitler), faces mangled and bandaged over. And where there would ordinarily be a dismembered cadaver is a pretty little girl, lying peacefully on a table, the very picture of Aryan perfection, dead or maybe asleep. There are no saws or scalpels, nor is there anywhere an all-knowing Galen. The figures are gathered for no overt purpose, absent of any reason. If we take the men to be Nazis, we can speculate that, perhaps, as happened to Lady Macbeth, their self-mutilated ethics have been brought to the surface, that they're the true subjects of this dissection. Has there, then, been a reversal of roles? Has their underlying evil been exposed by this blameless girl, a stillborn ideal for whom humanity was sacrificed? Maybe. But the picture could as well be perceived as a memorial to the struggle the Nazis endured to foster a new nation, the little girl signifying the purity of their purpose even in the face of their failure.