Sacred and legendary art, volume 1 (of 2): Containing legends of the angels and archangels, the evangelists, the Apostles, the doctors of the church, and St. Mary magdalene, as represented in the fine arts.Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Religion
Sacred and legendary art, volume 1 (of 2): Containing legends of the angels and archangels, the evangelists, the Apostles, the doctors of the church, and St. Mary magdalene, as represented in the fine arts.
Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Christian art and symbolism; Christian saints in art
But, in her character of patron saint, Mary Magdalene was not always
represented with the squalid or pathetic attributes of humiliation and
penance. She became idealised as a noble dignified creature bearing no
traces of sin or of sorrow on her beautiful face; her luxuriant hair
bound in tresses round her head; her drapery rich and ample; the vase
of ointment in her hand or at her feet, or borne by an angel near her.
Not unfrequently she is attired with the utmost magnificence, either
in reference to her former state of worldly prosperity, or rather,
perhaps, that with the older painters, particularly those of the
German school, it was a common custom to clothe all the ideal figures
of female saints in rich habits. In the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries such representations of the Magdalene are usual both in
Italian and German Art. A beautiful instance may be seen in a picture
by Signorelli, in the Cathedral of Orvieto, where she is standing
in a landscape, her head uncovered, and the rich golden hair partly
braided, partly flowing over her shoulders; she wears a magnificent
tunic embroidered with gold, over it a flowing mantle descending to her
feet; she holds the vase with her left hand, and points to it with her
right. If it were not for the saintly aureole encircling her head, this
figure, and others similar to it, might be mistaken for Pandora. See,
for example, the famous print by Lucas v. Leyden, where she stands on
clouds with an embroidered coif and flowing mantle, holding the vase in
her left hand, and lifting the cover with her right (in the sketch it
is reversed): and in the half-length by Leonardo, or one of his school.
The want of a religious sentiment gives such figures a very heathen
and _Pandora_ look, so that the aureole alone fixes the identity. This
is not the case with a noble Magdalene by Dennis Calvert, in the
Manfrini Palace at Venice. She is standing in a fine bold landscape;
one hand sustains her ample crimson drapery, the other holds her vase;
her fair hair falls in masses over her shoulders, and she looks down
on her worshippers with a serious dignified compassion. This is one of
the finest pictures of the later Bologna school, finer and truer in
sentiment than any of the Caracci and Guido Magdalenes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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