The special exhibition Divinely Inspired: Images of Mystics and Mendicants will be on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum through March 28.

The exhibition will introduce a remarkable group of pious, profound, and sometimes eccentric personalities from diverse cultural and religious traditions through paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and devotional paraphernalia created between the 15th and 20th centuries from the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, and America.

Topics including the commonality of many mystical traditions, stages along the spiritual path, the great poet-teachers, mystical allegory, and the Western perception of these personages and their practices.

"Divinely Inspired" was organized by Rochelle Kessler, assistant curator of Islamic and later Indian art.

A late 19th-century albumin print called Whirling Dervishes, Damascus, produced by the French photographic firm La Maison Bonfils, depicts a young novice from the Mevlevi Sufi order gazing reverently down at his teacher. Most of the mystical teachings depicted in the exhibition emphasize the need for a spiritual guide, one who has already traveled the path and can advise and apprise the seeker of the signposts, pitfalls, and temptations that lie ahead.

On Sunday, Feb. 28, Rochelle Kessler will deliver a gallery talk on the exhibition. Gallery talks are free to the public with the price of Art Museums' admission.

Admission is free all day on Wednesdays and on Saturday mornings.