Martha blames her vain sister, Mary Magdalene

Martha Blames Her Vain Sister, Mary Magdalene, painted in 1621 and held at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, depicts the episode in which the virtuous, hard-working Martha reproaches her sister Mary for vanity — typically shown with cosmetics, a mirror, or jewels — before Mary's conversion and commitment to Christ's teachings. The subject was a popular moralising theme in the seventeenth century, particularly in Caravaggesque painting, because it allowed painters to juxtapose an admonishing figure with a beautiful, worldly one, creating an implicit moral lesson without entirely suppressing the visual pleasure of the vain sister's display. Caravaggio's treatment of Martha and Mary Magdalene had set the standard for the subject's emotional naturalism, and Vouet's 1621 version, from his Roman period, engages directly with that tradition. The Kunsthistorisches Museum holds a companion Judith canvas by Vouet from the same year, and the two works together suggest a coherent Roman-period group of half-length female figure paintings.

The two-figure composition organises the moral drama spatially: Martha's admonishing figure typically occupies one side, pointing or gesturing toward the viewer or toward Mary, while Mary's absorbed or interrupted vanity occupies the other. The mirror, cosmetics, or jewels provide textural richness and symbolic weight simultaneously. Vouet's Caravaggesque lighting models both figures with strong lateral illumination.