Martha und Maria Magdalena

Caravaggio painted this in Rome around 1598, and for the two women he used real Roman courtesans he knew, Fillide Melandroni and Anna Bianchini. It shows the moment Martha leans in to reproach her sister Mary, counting off on her fingers, urging her to give up her vain life. Mary rests one hand on a convex mirror, the old symbol of vanity, and turns a flower over in the other. The trick is the light. It rakes in from a window you cannot see and catches the mirror, so the vanity object becomes the very thing carrying the light of her conversion. Mary does not look into that mirror. Her eyes have already left it.