Alberto Manguel, commenting on the ways in which each viewer creates a different reading of the image before her:

The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen is at least two paintings: one shows a comforting interior and an ordinary domestic scene; another tells the story of a god born to a mortal woman, assuming in His human guise both the sexuality of the flesh and the knowledge of a certain end. This story threatens to be infinite, since every new reading adds other layers to its plot. Reading it today, we bring to the painting a wealth of curious details (the halo that travelled eastward, the ancestral images of mothering, the effects of nineteenth-century prudery) of which the artist could not have been aware; we ourselves, of course, can’t know what new chapters will be added to the story in future readings.

As long as there are others left to read, no reading can ever be final.