The first thing that catches the eye in The Sense of Sight is the play of gazes: a richly dressed woman, her body twisted in a moment of poised attention, looks not at us but at her own reflection held aloft in a small mirror. Her glance is sharp, almost appraising, and the mirror’s angled surface returns her face with just enough distortion to remind us that sight is both a gift and a puzzle. Light pools on her bare shoulder and the gleaming folds of her golden skirt, drawing us into the scene’s lush textures and the subtle drama of self-regard.

The peacock feather in her hair, the elaborate jewelry, and the crimson drapery behind her all speak to a world of display and perception—where seeing and being seen are inseparable. Works like this, painted in the 1630s and attributed to Abraham Janssens, belong to a tradition of allegorical paintings that flourished in the Baroque era, when artists delighted in giving the five senses human form. Such images were often commissioned by wealthy collectors eager to display both their taste and their learning, filling their homes with reminders of the powers—and limits—of human experience. In this period, Antwerp painters like Janssens were especially skilled at combining classical references with the seductive realism of their age; the mirror here is not just a prop, but a symbol of knowledge, vanity, and the ever-present act of looking.

Though history has kept few traces of this particular canvas, its home today in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art lets us see, centuries later, how sight itself became a subject worthy of spectacle.