Tucked away in a small side chapel of Sant’ Agostino in Rome, Caravaggio’s painting of these two pilgrims with Our Lady of Loreto (1603-05) certainly does not seem shocking.

But Caravaggio’s painting stirred up controversy among religious art critics. The controversy focused on the bare feet of the pilgrims, the infant Jesus, and the Virgin Mary. We may quickly gloss over these details, but the road-weary pilgrims’ dirty feet were, at the time, shocking and unprecedented. Religious art was intended to depict an ideal reality, not the dirt and grime of real life!

But we get a sense of exhaustion and road-weariness from the pilgrims and their dirty feet. The pilgrims in Caravaggio’s painting are arriving at the popular pilgrimage destination of Loreto. The Holy House at Loreto was honored as the original house of the Holy Family in Nazareth, moved to Loreto by angels. Local lore said that Mary herself would appear to pilgrims sometimes inside the house.

The painting’s composition highlights the intimacy of the Mother of God and the pilgrims: Caravaggio paints the lines of the door frame to connect Mary with the pilgrim kneeling in the foreground. Caravaggio seeks to demonstrate a deep connection between Mary and the pilgrims who come to pray with her. Mary and Jesus appear like an ordinary mother and child. In fact, the only indication that they are sacred figures and not an ordinary mother and child are their halos—and the adoration of the pilgrims.

The pilgrims are angled so that the man’s feet are nearly in our face! In positioning the figures in this way, Caravaggio breaks into our space, including us in the pilgrims’ prayer before Mary. We, too, are pilgrims on a long journey. At the end of our journey, we, too, will kneel with these pilgrims at the feet of the Madonna. As we set out on our journey, what intentions do we bring before Mary’s feet today?