The women in The Punishment of Lust are suggested to have aborted or lost their children, and although this would have been a sin in Segantini's eyes, he has still treated them sympathetically and, as the poem Nirvana does, hints that they could be redeemed; they are suspended in a dream-like state and, though stark, the landscape is not unpleasant – Segantini regarded the mountains as his spiritual home – and the inclusion of withered trees symbolises a possible return to life in a new spring.[4]