True or false: The haloes of William Hogarth (1697-1764)

Ever since Ronald Paulson in his comprehensive first edition of Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times proposed that the first picture of A Harlot's Progress was analogous to the meeting of the Virgin Mary and Saint Elizabeth, commentators, including me, have eagerly sought out as many religious correspondences in Hogarth's art as they could find. The discovery and interpretation of these correspondences has become an industry. The problem is that their identification and certainly their interpretation are frequently matters of doubt, dispute, and disagreement. It is claimed in this essay that Hogarth's mock-haloes provide if not certainty, then fairly objective evidence that something is going on in one or more of his pictures, whether it be satirical, sacrilegious or sincere. A false halo is defined as the head of a figure closely juxtaposed with or actually overlapping an oval, round, or rectangular object otherwise not associated with the figure concerned. This generally rules out the brims of hats or wigs unless they are close to but separated from their owners in an eye-catching way.