In The Lamentation of the Dying Mary Magdalene, Melchior de la Mars places the saint on a kind of stage, poised between death and ecstasy. Her face captures a moment in which physical exhaustion and spiritual surrender are almost impossible to tell apart.

Within the charged visual language of the Counter-Reformation, her death becomes a carefully staged scene, meant to draw the viewer into a drama of emotion and identification. Four centuries on, it still has that effect. The expression on her face leaves a question hanging in the air: are we looking at suffering, redemption… or something quietly in between?