Almost everyone comes in and runs to the grand staircase, towards the Chapter Hall and the Crucifixion. But on the ground floor, at the far end of the Sala Terrena, two canvases more than four metres tall keep an almost solitary watch: a woman absorbed in reading beside a stream, and one meditating, seated in a bare landscape. They call them the two Marys: St Mary Magdalene and St Mary of Egypt, the penitents of the desert.