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“What about the women?” she asked the professor, whereupon Campbell explained that the women were the hero’s mother, his protectress and the prize at the end of his quest.

The most urgent painting here is one of the Met’s very first purchases: Anthony van Dyck’s “Saint Rosalia,” vanquisher of a 17th-century epidemic, whom I’ve adopted as my Covid protectress.

Like a good huntsman, she was careful to preserve the young; she was “the protectress of dewy youth” everywhere.

At the onset of the Trojan War, for example, the Greek goddess Artemis, protectress of wild animals, the wilderness, and the moon, stilled the winds needed to propel the Greek fleet to Troy because Agamemnon, its commander, had killed a sacred deer.

Van Dyck — meeting the new demand, and not a little grateful himself — takes a half-finished self-portrait, slathers it with primer and paints the new protectress, floating gloriously over the illness-ravaged port town.