This page presents a collection of five images of Mary of Magdala. I’m drawn to them not so much for their religious message or meaning but more for the sensitivity of their representation of the feminine.
Table of Contents
1. Giovanni Savoldo – Mary Magdalene
This version with the (lunar) silver cape is from Google Arts and Culture. Another version (with more description) with a gold cape is also available.
Laurel Lowe, in her essay Redeeming Mary Magdalene, says of the painting (she’s referring to the version with the gold cape):
We notice right away that the background of the painting is divided into a light half and a dark half, and Mary Magdalene stands between them. Behind her to our right is the dark archway to Christ’s tomb. To our left we see the blue sky of a new day. The light of day tells us that Mary has already come out of the tomb, because according to scripture she arrived before the sun had risen.
Her jar of ointment is near her and well lit, a reminder that she came to the tomb for the sacred purpose of anointing Jesus’ dead body, a very different experience from the one she encounters, finding Christ alive in the garden. Although she seems to hold herself back as if a bit shy, Mary is not desperate or lost as she often is depicted.
She isn’t grasping for Christ, who must be standing before her. Rather, her shining cloak emphasizes that she is reflecting. Her garment shimmers with the newly risen sun, or the light of the new son of man. The gold color indicates the high value of that reflection.
(Laurel Lowe’s essay can be found in the book Wisdom has Built her House – Psychological Aspects of the Feminine.)
2. Angelo Bronzino – Pietà
Here Mary Magdalene wears her red cloak (associated with passion), and touches the thigh of Jesus in a sign of physical intimacy. There’s a vibrancy and even modernity about this loving trio, and I can only imagine how powerful this work would have been when originally unveiled.
(Mother Mary in contrast wears a more traditionally coloured cloak.)
3. Rodin – Christ & Mary Magdalene
The sculpture depicts Mary shouldering Jesus, perhaps bringing him down from the cross.
(Rodin also had in mind other associations, as described on Google Arts & Culture.)
4. Edwin Abbey – The Three Marys
Here is a poignant image of the three Marys at dawn before the resurrection. As Laurel Lowe says (in the essay mentioned above):
We get the sense that these women, “The three Marys,” have traveled far and been through much. Even though they are exhausted and may not realize consciously what is about to happen, this is a moment when something new is about to arise. The darkness begins to lighten of its own accord, right before the dawn of a new spiritual reality, even while the ego might be tired and unaware that a shift has taken place in the unconscious.
5. Taddeo Crivelli – Mary Magdalene Borne Aloft
A penitent Mary retreats to the wilderness for thirty years, neither eating nor drinking, naked except for her long hair.
She is lifted to the heavens at each canonical hour to hear the voices of angels. You can find more on Google Arts & Culture.
A Life of Soul
For me these powerful images of Mary Magdalene speak not only of the feminine but of a relationship with the muse, with psyche or the soul, with an imaginal figure to which we are in danger of losing connection.