The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of woman. The moralizing, however, was mostly hypocritical.

You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity , thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.

It is worth noticing that in other non-European traditions - in Indian art, Persian art, African art, Pre Columbian art - nakedness is never supine in this way. And if, in these traditions, the theme of a work is sexual attraction, it is likely to show active sexual love as between two people, the woman as active as the man, the actions of each... See more