 The three objects on the bedside cabinet represent the Virgin 's purity : the water flask , the candleholder , and the ropewick light . The light passing through the glass of the womb @-@ shaped flask symbolizes her flesh , pierced by divine light , its clear and undisturbed water represents her purity at the moment of conception , a device also found in the earlier paintings as a metaphor of the Virgin 's sanctity . The flask shows a reflection of the window 's crossbar as a cross , a symbol of the Crucifixion , another small detail in which Memling " lays one translucent symbolic form upon another " . 
