Der Flöhe fangende Frau

Georges de La Tour worked in Lorraine, a duchy that in the 1630s was being crossed by armies in the Thirty Years' War and struck by outbreaks of plague. By the single candle he loved to paint, he shows a young woman in a plain room, cracking a flea between her thumbnails, a small gesture against the filth of hard times. Who she is meant to be has never been settled. Some have read her as Mary Magdalene, others as a servant or an ordinary woman at night. The painting was not even recognised as La Tour's until 1955. The flame itself, half hidden behind her hand, throws a reddish light across her face and the chair beside her.