But centuries ago, the hauntingly beautiful paintings of Georges de La Tour evoked an otherworldly luminescence that remains spellbinding to behold today. While La Tour’s chosen themes were recurrent within this time, his gently somber stylization is uniquely his own. The sense of agitation in the latter only highlights the ascetic calm of La Tour’s pair. La Tour’s La Madeleine penitent—in which a skull blocks the flame but bathes the figure in contemplative warmth—is worlds away from the neighboring painting La Madeleine en extase by Louis Finson. La Tour’s version is interiorized and restrained relative to the aggressive physicality of Finson’s subject.