Mary Magdalene

The story of Mary Magdalene is over 2,000 years old, yet it still has the power to captivate – even recent pop icons have fallen under her spell.

The stories that have grown up around Mary Magdalene over the centuries still shape how we see this intriguing female figure in Christianity today.

Mary Magdalene is usually portrayed as young, blonde, and with flawless features. In fact, no sources provide any information about her age or appearance. However, her name alone suggests something interesting.

Jesus initially referred to his twelve male disciples as “apostles”, which means “messengers” or “envoys”. Yet after his resurrection, he chose to appear to Mary Magdalene before anyone else. She was to proclaim the “Good News”, and as the first one to bear tidings of the new faith, she later became known as the “apostle of the apostles”.

This small, finely carved ivory plaque depicting Mary Magdalene is striking. In the Early Middle Ages, such imagery was primarily found on precious objects, such as reliquaries containing the remains of saints, in illuminated manuscripts, or on other liturgical items.

However, it was the late-medieval church interior that brought these elements together in an orchestrated whole: devotional images, sculptures, and reliefs made the saints’ presence visually tangible throughout the space, emphasising the special significance of Mary Magdalene as an apostle.

Artistic depictions of Mary Magdalene are based on various sources. In the Bible, however, only the following is reported: after Jesus casts seven demons out of her, Mary Magdalene supports him as a faithful disciple. In the crucial hours, she proves to be a courageous witness, watching the crucifixion from afar – while the male disciples flee in fear – and becoming the first to stand before the empty tomb.

As a key achievement, Pope Gregory the Great offered new interpretations of scripture. By doing so, he exerted a profound influence on the lives of subsequent Christians: he promoted penance as the central path to securing salvation in a turbulent era fraught with war, pestilence, and fear. By merging her with the nameless sinner and Mary of Bethany, he establishes Mary Magdalene in a new role – as a model for the sinful and repentant human being.

A woman kneels before Jesus and reaches for his foot. Meanwhile, the apostles are seated around a laid table, engaged in lively conversation. The two panels of a disassembled Magdalene altarpiece, created around 1500, appear very similar. However, the details reveal two different biblical scenes.

In the centuries that followed, artists repeatedly returned to the motif of the kneeling, anointing, and repentant Mary Magdalene. From then on, her religious role also came to include the forgiveness of her sins.

According to these legends, following Christ’s resurrection, Mary Magdalene is set adrift on a rudderless ship on account of her faith – but divine guidance brings it safely to the south of France. There, Mary Magdalene converts the pagan princely couple of Marseille to Christianity before retreating to a cave for 30 years of prayer. During this time, angels regularly carry her into heaven to receive the last rites.

Most of the episodes are drawn from a 13th-century “legendary” or collection of saints lives, the Legenda Aurea or “Golden Legend”. Compiled by the Dominican friar and Archbishop of Genoa, Jacobus de Voragine (1228/29–1298), it was one of the most influential religious texts of the Middle Ages.

Three particularly striking panels provide insight into further episodes from the life of the saint in the south of France.

In the collective memory, the saint is firmly associated with Provence in the south of France: Mary Magdalene is henceforth regarded as the direct founder of Christianity in France. A small monastery in Vézelay, in central France, fuels the cult of Mary Magdalene even further by claiming to be in possession of her remains.

The colour of love – and of blood: Girolamo di Benvenuto (1470–1524) shows Mary Magdalene in a bright-red dress in close proximity to the crucified Christ, thus placing her at the centre of the Passion scenes. The three consecutive episodes – set in a unified landscape – reveal far more about Mary Magdalene than the Gospels do.

Downcast eyes, slumped shoulders and flushed cheeks: anyone attending church can identify with a Mary Magdalene like this – especially in the face of deep sorrow.

The human body reclaimed the attention of artists and scholars. The discovery of classical sculptures and texts in the 15th century initiated a cultural shift in Italy. Mary Magdalene was reimagined – clad only in her long hair.

The motif enjoyed great popularity – not only within church walls. Dürer catered to public demand by producing it as a woodcut. Inexpensive and produced in large editions, such prints reached a wide audience. About a century later, Giovanni Lanfranco (1582–1647) painted a very different vision of Mary Magdalene borne aloft.

Far removed from ideal beauty and divine perfection: stringy hair, sallow skin, and a belly swollen from hunger and malnutrition convey the hermit’s self-imposed hardships with striking realism.

The painting by Claude Lorrain (1600/05–1682) is a landscape painter’s take on the biblical subject. The empty rock-hewn tomb, guarded by an angel, is set in a light-suffused open landscape, far from the city walls, at the foot of a hill, identified as Golgotha by three pale crosses on its summit.

Mary Magdalene was the first to encounter the risen Christ. The painting, commissioned by the Roman Cardinal Fabrizio Spada (1643–1717), shows this significant moment visualised on the left-hand side of the canvas.

A saint – more human and relatable than ever: free from any episodic narrative, intimate individual portraits bring Mary Magdalene into focus. Even today, celebrities present themselves in the role of the saint.

An icon set against a celestial blue background – it is only details such as the glistening silver tears, long hair and, of course, the overt nudity that suggest who we’re looking at here is Mary Magdalene.

Face to face with the viewer. The first half of the 16th century sees the emergence of images that put Mary Magdalene centre stage. In the absence of narrative content, they rely solely on symbols such as the ointment jar, skull, or loosely falling long blonde hair to allude to the saint’s identity. The overt display of her physicality, beauty, and sensuality may strike many a modern viewer as erotic.

It is one of the earliest and, at the same time, most memorable portraits of the saint: no Mary Magdalene before her had turned to face the viewer with quite as much intentionality.

This need for physical closeness also recalls the saint’s face-to-face encounter with the risen Christ. A subject that Laurent de La Hyre (1606–1656) translated into a striking painting.

Mary Magdalene wants to touch Christ – but he gently draws back: she must not touch him, let alone hold on to him, the Gospel of John tells us. Artists such as La Hyre, however, expanded on this moment and showed Christ, in a controlled gesture, placing his hand lightly on her forehead.

Titian’s workshop produced no fewer than around 25 paintings of Mary Magdalene. This version was painted after the Catholic Church, in the wake of the Council of Trent, imposed rules to regulate artistic production: art was to instruct and promote piety and moral rectitude. Moreover, the representation of saints was to avoid excessive nudity and eroticism.

Painted around a century after Titian’s work from the 1530s, Francesco Furini’s (1603–1646) Mary Magdalene comes across as similarly soulful and approachable. The Florentine painter and priest cannot quite resist investing her with a modicum of sensuality.

The number of works showing Mary Magdalene as a recluse in the wilderness is beyond count. The motif of the converted sinner doing penance enjoyed great popularity, particularly in the late 16th and early 17th century. In the wake of the Counter-Reformation (the Catholic response to the Reformation) the sacrament of penance, and, with it, images of the penitent woman, assumed renewed significance within the Catholic Church.

This painting is a provocation! While Guido Cagnacci (1601–1663) employs the visual components associated with the iconography of Mary Magdalene, their combination produces a scandalously erotic effect.

Today, the depiction with closed eyes, head tilted back, and exposed upper body appears highly erotic. In the 17th century, however, this physical abandon visualizes the experience of religious ecstasy: from the perspective of the Catholic Church, it is precisely this state that expresses the mystical encounter between God and humanity—which served, not least, to clearly distinguish itself from Protestantism, with its primary focus on the sober interpretation of biblical scripture.

What might a modern Mary Magdalene look like? Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898) chooses not to dramatise or idealise her. In the tranquillity of her solitary retreat, his hermit is completely at one with herself.

Mary Magdalene’s significance showed no sign of fading – even after the French Revolution, when a clearer separation of church and state takes effect. In the effort to mitigate the effects of this secularization and renew the Catholic faith, the saint serves as a key figure: thanks to her legendary conversion of the princely couple of Marseille, she was and is regarded as the mother of Christian France. And her role again inspired artists, at a time when France was the centre of the art world.

Jean Béraud (1848–1935) offers an artistic – and decidedly critical – commentary on a society divided by questions of faith. The painter stages the Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee – at which, according to the Gospel of Luke, the sinner appeared before Jesus – as a contemporary bourgeois dinner party. Gathered around Simon’s table are representatives of France’s political, scientific, and artistic elite, who observe the events with barely concealed indifference.

Provocative artist: Félicien Rops (1833–1898) cultivated an adversarial relationship with the Catholic Church. His delight in blasphemous imagery is exemplified by his depiction of Mary Magdalene before Christ’s cross.

Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901) was another artist who challenged traditional conventions. In his painting, it is not the Virgin Mary who weeps over the dead Christ, but Mary Magdalene!

The saint is unable to hide her overwhelming grief. The painter places her very close to the dead man, so that her gossamer black veil partially envelops his body, brushing lightly against his skin.

At a time when religious art was becoming increasingly rare, Beckmann’s narrative painting recalls and connects with a tradition of religious images going back many centuries – while still leaving room to reflect on human existential vulnerability.

Loyal, beautiful, sinful – long-standing stereotypes and characterisations that are often voiced without a second thought. At the end of the 20th century, however, Mary Magdalene was reclaimed as a powerful archetype of female self-empowerment.

The Spanish artist Nieves González (b. 1996) presents the saint as a young woman with blond hair.

The vibrant red of the voluminous modern puffer coat is traditionally the colour of love, passion, and seduction – but here it comes across as a signal of female assertiveness. Using bold colours and deep shadows, González draws on the visual idiom of Spanish Baroque painting and translates it to the present day.

For 2000 years, the religious and cultural construct that is Mary Magdalene has served as a role model and as a convenient theatrical scrim onto which society, the Church, politics, and the arts have projected their own shifting ideas. Her relevance remains undiminished to this day. Urgent questions of our time are closely linked to how we choose to perceive her: what roles are socially and culturally assigned to women, and what roles are they denied? What does it mean to break free from preconceived patterns and expectations?

Female figures, standing tall – each different, each unique, each of them titled Magdalena. However, Marlene Dumas (b. 1953) dispenses with the usual attributes of the saint. Instead, her images challenge our clichés of ideal female beauty and question traditional notions of female existence.

Three-metre-tall paintings: Marlene Dumas’s paintings of Mary Magdalene only really come into their own when seen “in the flesh” in the galleries of the exhibition.