Every Mannerist worth his weight in papal commissions loves painting Mary Magdalene. Wake up, paint Mary Magdalene, repeat, that was the artist’s watchword of the Renaissance. And it’s not a Mary Magdalene painting if she’s not half-dressed and brimming with repentance. If there was one thing Mary Magdalene loved, it was repenting. Wake up, repent of something, repeat, that was her watchword, presumably, if centuries-later paintings are anything to go by.
In the Gospels themselves, Mary Magdalene doesn’t show up much until later on in Jesus’ ministry; he cured her of a number of vague ailments which were described as “the plagues of seven demons,” and she was the first person to visit his tomb after the Crucifixion. (Lovely side note – religious scholars have pointed out that although Jesus’ twelve male disciples fled in the hours following his death, Mary wasted no time in going to see his body. In the Bible, it’s Mary Magdalene who becomes the first to learn and tell others of the Resurrection – which means that in the hours between seeing the risen Christ and reaching the other disciples, Mary Magdalene was the entire church.)
Anyhow! By the time of the European Renaissance, Mary Magdalene was conflated with numerous other Marys in the New Testament, particularly with an unnamed prostitute who coated Jesus’ feet in expensive perfume and her own tears. And, if you have learned nothing else from this occasional series, it is that European Renaissance-era dudes loved nothing more than injecting sexy babes into their Biblical tableaux. So Mary Magdalene is often painted repenting of her numerous sins…sexily.
Sexiness and repentance, by the way, are two very difficult feelings to paint simultaneously in the same person. Guess which of the two usually won out?
This one’s a nice way to set the tone. Classic penitence. Her right sleeve has fallen off the shoulder, to remind you that she’s had sex, but she’s otherwise appropriately dressed. She’s reading a really long book, she’s looking at the sky, I think there’s a skull in the background. Somber, muted tones. Mournful expression. Repentance! Right? That’s the vibe you get from this, generally. She’s repenting, ready to rise on the stepping-stones of her dead self to higher things, and various related activities. Full marks.
Granted, in this picture she is both fully naked and sitting on people like they’re chairs, but then again, she is looking directly toward the swiftly-parting heavens with an expression of rapture. Her heart is in the right place, even if she is treating a pair of angels like Lady Godiva’s horse.
Now she is just asleep!
Repenting is exhausting work, guys! She’s a sleepy li’l penitent, that Mary Magdalene. She’ll repent as soon as she gets up.
This Mary has about eight minutes of repentance in her, and then she’s just killing time.
truly and heartily sorry, repent of all of my sins…how much longer is this thing
Sensual nude beach reclining! This is less “first female apostle of the church” and more “that girl from the Cycles Gladiator wine ads.”
The face is fine, and the prayer hands are even better, but I can’t get past the fact that her hair seems to grow in a lattice with breast-shaped holes.
Lest you all think I’m overreaching, every single one of these paintings is named The Penitent Magdalene, or some variation thereof. “Spiritualized regret” is the effect for which these painters are striving! Yet here, the Magdalene’s lips are curled in what is clearly an Elvis-like sneer of disgust!
Her expression here is a curious mix between just-falling-asleep, tears of passion and sorrow, and Paul Rudd’s expression when he has to pick up his plate in Wet Hot American Summer.
“I’ll read, but only if I can take my top off.”
I DON’T KNOW WHAT EXPRESSION THAT IS, BUT IT’S MY FAVORITE
Asleep at the watch again! I sometimes think all these painters must have her confused with the parable of the five wise and the five foolish virgins, and also a little bit with that part in the Garden where Jesus asks the disciples “Could you not stay awake with me for even a little while?” but it is CLEARLY LABELED The Penitent Magdalene, so I don’t know why sleep is such a prominent feature here. That’s clearly the bottle of perfume by her feet, the one she presumably used to anoint Jesus, which I suppose is sleepy work. After a long day of anointing and removing your ill-gotten jewels, there’s nothing like a long nap sitting perfectly upright in a wooden chair.
Mary-as-Sméagol! Mary is building a tent fort out of her own robes! Mary is having a cuddle! But Mary is not repenting.
This is Mary the SULLEN. Naked and sullen. Not repentant. This woman has never regretted a single thing she has done in her wonderful, naked life.
“Excuse me, I am reading.”
Shirtlessly, poutily relaxing on her favorite skull. Baroque painters were roughly as good as modern-day comic artists at depicting how the average lady likes to relax when she’s by herself.
A few points for looking at a skull, presumably to remind herself that life is stern and life is earnest, but her expression is less “Ah, I too must die someday, and must contemplate my many sins before I am called to appear before the Most High Judge” and more “UGH why did I even BUY this skull, it’s BROKEN and DEFECTIVE.”
“I’ll repent, fine, but I’m not giving up my brilliant gold cloak, or put on a shirt. Those are my terms.”
[Images via]
“I’ll read, but only if I can take my top off.”
Pretty sure I’ve used that one to get out of being a reader at mass.
To be fair, this is a pretty common response to church work in general.
mallory, that one is your favorite expression because it is most often to be found gracing the face of kristen stewart.
I was just going to point out the uncanny KStew resemblance!
EXACTLY. Thank you for pointing this out. It’s a rather stunning likeness.
It’s clearer in the painting than in the Stewart pic, but I would term this look “side-eye” after the Sofia Loren instance.
Number 4 is smugly remembering aaallll of her sins. “Daaamn, that was some good sinnin’ right there.”
“And I’m really sorry about that one time I – wait, am I really sorry, though? I had such a great time. Besides, it was only once…okay, okay, maybe twice. Okay, so I’m sorry about the second time I…”
a boy i was doing study-abroad-make-outs with spouted off for the whole semester about how mary magdalene was a prostitute, and as we were packing up, someone was like “who wants this tiny copy of the new testament??”
so i took it and went to the boy and made him read what was said about mary magdalene (namely that she was never actually identified as a prostitute in the bible, as mallory points out) and he looked kind of crushed afterwards.
i … am still pretty proud of this moment.
I was JUST EXPLAINING the conflation of the Magdalene with the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair and other women of the new testament to my roommate. Timely AND hilarious! Go the Toast!
They call her the Composite Mary!
That is both awesome and sounds like something you can buy at Lowe’s.
The Orthodox tradition agrees that they are different and that Magdalene was not the woman who washed the feet with the hair – hence the difference between the icon with the Elvis sneer and all the rest (the other, by the way, is held to be named Cassiani and has a hymn dedicated to her that is the high point of one of the services in Holy Week). However, it still holds that she had lived a “sinful life” (whatever that means) prior to her encounter with Jesus. She is also acknowledged as “Equal to the Apostles” (NB: not where it counts) and sometimes called the apostle to the apostles. She gets quite a lot of mention in the hymnography of the Paschal season. cf https://oca.org/saints/lives/2009/07/22/102070-my…
Correction to myself: despite the OCA site saying she led a “sinful life”, in general she’s not portrayed as a penitent and there are other traditions that emphatically say she did not lead a “sinful life”.
Thanks! New Magdalene info always appreciated.
ALWAYS, you say? I found this bit on the wikipedia on the Orthodox traditions about her which confirmed a vague almost memory of mine: “There is a tradition that Mary Magdalene led so chaste a life that the devil thought she might be the one who was to bear Christ into the world, and for that reason he sent the seven demons to trouble her.” This makes much more sense.
Brb writing an entire poetic cycle about this.
*sits alone in the byzantine catholic section pretty sure that it’s the same there too* My Mary repents nothing.
She is also acknowledged as “Equal to the Apostles” (NB: not where it counts)
And isn’t that what they say about all of us? Equal, only not really.
/disgruntled-Catholic
Mary Magdalene Info bomb:
Pope Gregory 1 codified the Mary Conflations in the late 6th century.
Gregory was an industrious dude, a negotiator, and prolific writer. He was named Pope to solidify a nascent RCC, in the general tumult of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Much of the modern RCC liturgy is his, and arguably he set the precedence for how Popes could wield the money and influence of the RCC for good (he instituted a famine relief program) or less good, as in his quote “Compassion should be shown first to the faithful and afterwards to the enemies of the church”.
It has been speculated that she was specifically conflated with The Harlot for political purposes. In the early centuries A.D. Mary (or Miriam) Magdalene was revered as an apostle, even above Peter by many. It is Peter upon whom the RCC traces its claim to The One True Church(TM). [Peter, perhaps inevitably, was kind of a dick about Mary and very jealous of her in Gospel accounts.]
Mary Magdalene was known to have retired to Greece, and with the divide between the Greek (Eastern) and Latin (Western) churches growing (though The Schism was centuries later), there was considerable pressure to solidify a Roman/Latin claim. Politically, putting the various Maries together into one narrative about a fallen woman finding redemption in Christ, was theologically eviscerating a major challenge to Peter’s apostolic position and solidifying the Western papal lineage as the One True & etc.
Also, the RCC was in the process of becoming more misogynist. Disempowering perhaps the most dynamic and powerful woman in the New Testament helped meet that end. Her gospel (and others that were inconvenient) had been previously expunged from the canonical gospels. The Church was holding celibacy out as an Ideal in order to be able to inherit and keep its clerics’ money, but also to appeal to an aesthetic movement in Europe in this time period (no doubt fueled by famine and plague). Gregory’s pronouncements fit in line with and defined what the RCC was becoming. James Caroll wrote wonderfully about this: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mar…
This is legit fascinating. Thank you!
But her haaaaaaaaaiiiiir. It is so beautiful in most of these. She’s too repentant for clothes, but not too repentant for conditioner.
(This one is my favorite because it’s, like, the Pedantic Magdalen and she is clearly looking up a citation: http://mfas3.s3.amazonaws.com/objects/SC149064.jp… )
Creepy creepy cloud faces.
“Go ‘way, Jay Mohr-like putti! I’m figuring out where I stand on the Arian controversy.”
It’s from wiping tears and perfume from Jesus’ feet with her hair. Really gives that deep conditioning treatment you need.
How beautiful on my hair are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of peace, also moisturizers, camomile extract and essential oils.
Has everyone seen this? http://www.cracked.com/article_20719_5-hilariousl…
This explains the hair-lattice.
Shirtlessly, poutily relaxing on her favorite skull. Baroque painters were roughly as good as modern-day comic artists at depicting how the average lady likes to relax when she’s by herself.
Well, I like relaxing naked, and I am fairly sure if I had a skull at home I would sit with it, sort of like I do my cats, so I’ll give them this one.
I have a painting of a skull and I like to relax under it, often partially or fully nude. So I feel you there. Maybe we’re neither of us the average lady and so we’ll never know how they relax.
I have a nearly-life-sized reproduction of #11 (“I’ll read, but only if I can take my top off”) in my living room — I blush to say, I didn’t realize it was Mary Magdalene for the longest time, I just got it because it was a great representation of how I spend many Sunday afternoons…
Well, blushing is the first step to repenting
I have a plush Yorick skull (from Ryan North’s To Be or Not To Be Kickstarter), and let me tell you, it is the BEST for relaxing on.
MM is mainly a painter’s excuse to paint long wavy red hair. I bet the one in the silver cloak has masses of badly painted hair under it, and the cloak was the artist’s way to save a ruined painting.
#12, how could anyone possibly feel repent-ful in an outfit like that? Her hair is completely repent-proof.
This is why I firmly believe that covered stein in her hand holds all her repentences for her.
That Mary Magdalene looks this good after a life of sin is not exactly an endorsement for virtue
Does that last one look sort of like a wide-eyed Angelina Jolie to anyone else?
Angelina Jolie crossed with a fair-haired Elsa Lanchester: https://garbolaughs.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/l…
Totally seeing Elsa there.
Um. . .what are the angels doing up there in #2? Seems like it might be distracting.
I feel like if I had a skull bookmark, it would become a cat toy, which is probably not the proper tone for penitence.
In a sexy sleepy penitence-off with fabulous auburn hair, who wins overall, the Mannerists or the Pre-Raphaelites?
I’m gonna go with Pre-Raphaelites, but largely because looking at too many Mannerist paintings makes me itch. In a bad way.
Ditto
Haha, I think in my high school AP art history notes, for Mannerism I had something like “oh God the NECK LADY” as my shorthand reference, since it’s still the immediate connection in my brain when I hear “Mannerist.”
https://www.google.com/search?q=mannerism+neck&am…
Ha, I knew exactly what painting you were talking about before I clicked the link. (Also from high school AP Art History).
The angels are clearly highly skilled at whatever it is they’re doing. Look at her eyes rolling!
No mention of the Mary Magdalene had sex with Jesus (and was also married to Jesus) theory?
That theory often gets floats as feminist scholarship (Mary as the beloved disciple); but I carry around the question of one of my New Testament professors, who asked: “Who benefits from this theory? Doesn’t a married Jesus further entrench heterosexuality into a postiion of power?”
Yeah, aside from the fact that there’s not really much contemporary evidence for it, I don’t like the idea of taking one of the most interesting single women from the New Testament and say “she was there because she was having sex with the main guy.”
Didn’t Jesus marry a nice Japanese girl and settle down in Towada? http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3781.html
I kinda like the idea that Jesus just liked hanging out with and talking to women. Even better if it involved moments of eye-talk conveying “uch, Simon Peter tonight, am I right?” “Seriously! What is his deal?”
I DON’T KNOW WHAT EXPRESSION THAT IS, BUT IT’S MY FAVORITE
NO REPENTANCE BEFORE COFFEE, DAMMIT.
“HERE’S YOUR GOD DAMN TEA AND IF I SPILL THIS ON MY NICE NEW CLOAK YOU’LL REGRET YOU WERE EVER BORN, CAPISCE?”
In that image she looks SO much like Julie Cooper from the OC. That fierce side eye.
Ok, but does Mary #6 KNOW that her menstrual rag is trying to escape? I am so concerned for her on this subject.
Re: #2 — so, is face-sitting a form of repetence now? Because I will GET RIGHT ON atoning for my sins!!
i left the wet towel on the bedroom floor
i did it
i’m sorry
also i used the last of the milk this morning?
i’m really sorry
guess it’s penitence time!
what? oh, no, that’s ok, don’t even worr–
NO YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND
I HAVE SINNED
🙂
Biblical Pottery Barn sure did sell a lot of skulls.
The Mannerist hand on the K.Stew-Magdalene is just terrifying. THAT, people. THAT’s what Mannerist means.
Mannerism is THE WOOOOOOOORST.
Mary the Sullen contains a lot of my fandom re: PJ Harvey somehow. Oh, and welcome back, Mallory! Yay.
This woman has never regretted a single thing she has done in her wonderful, naked life.
Put this on my tombstone, please.
Ooooh, mine too!
Thirdsies.
Yep.
Mary the Sullen reminds me of the dead eyes, no shirt Sappho. They should get together and have a lot of moody, sullen sex.
I would read that fanfic.
And why is #2 wearing a pair of black Spanx? You know, the long panty girdle version.
Mallory! So glad you’re back! This is a fabulous post.
YOUR FAVORITE IS ALSO MY FAVORITE
Also I love what you say about the hair-lattice with breast holes, and the one with her lounging naked on a skull, and the one where she’s SULLEN. You speak shining truth.
Baroque painters were roughly as good as modern-day comic artists at depicting how the average lady likes to relax when she’s by herself.
oh man I heard this immediately as two monk dialogue
“So, what do women do when we aren’t around? Like when they’re by themselves and have nothing to do?”
“Sit around shirtless”
“Oh yeah def”
“And they’re probably leaning against or touching a skull in some way. That’d be cool.”
Mary Magdalene apparently popularized the codex just so she could repent half nakedly in front of it. Fuck you, St. Jerome.
The Toast kept being awesome these past few days
BUT MALLORY IS BACK.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT EXPRESSION THAT IS, BUT IT’S MY FAVORITE
I think it’s called the Kristen Stewart.
I came to the comment thread to say THAT VERY THING. Obv Mallory prefers it.
Sensual nude beach reclining! This is less “first female apostle of the church” and more “that girl from the Cycles Gladiator wine ads.”
What is that picture and how on earth is it advertising wine?
I’m intrigued by how many of these artists managed to turn the Penitent Magdalene into a Magdalene who’s fully aware of the bullshit patriarchal mold history has forced her into, and is stubbornly refusing to repent of a single solitary thing. At least that’s the impression I get from Mary the Sullen and Our Lady of the Resting Bitch Face up there. “I see you trying to paint my repentance from my supposed wicked, licentious life, bro, and I’m not having any of it.”
I think it’s a Women Listening To Men thing. ‘yeah, that’s what a woman looks like when she’s sorry, right? that’s her sorry face, you tell them they need to be sorry and then their faces go like that, yep, see it all the time’
“Man, so many women around here have Resting Penitence Face. I’m glad they regret their manifold sins and wickedness.”
Topless Reading Mary looks like Laura Dern.
Shirtlessly, poutily relaxing on her favorite skull. Baroque painters were roughly as good as modern-day comic artists at depicting how the average lady likes to relax when she’s by herself.
if we grant that that bijoux silver urn thing contains either twiglets or gin then that is EXACTLY how I like to relax when I’m by myself
although
which skull is my ‘favourite’ skull depends on what man has pissed me off most that day
to reiterate a previous comment on one of Mallory’s theology posts: “this is catnip for M.Divs”. HEART SHAPED EYEBALLS!
“UGH why did I even BUY this skull, it’s BROKEN and DEFECTIVE” Mary has the best expression of the lot. She’s looking at it like she’s expecting it to talk to her, but not expecting much by way of scintillating conversation.
I also really like Sleepy Li’l Penitent Mary for some reason. Even though that looks like a very uncomfortable place to have a nap.
That is a classic stink-eye.
Well, blushing is the first step to repenting
Exactly what I was thinking. EXACTLY.
Dear Mallory Ortberg,
You are my favourite thing on the internet. Never stop being awesome.
This is completely unrelated to the article, but I just wanted to point out that the description of that Wet Hot American Summer video is, in its entirety: “Paul Rudd make funny clean up”.
The ones where it looks like she’s sleeping: according to legend, in her old age, she went into a trance seven times a day and heard the angel choirs. So that’s what those are.
Love the last one with the eye roll. I’d caption it two ways, either
“Christ, what now, Lord” or “Are you there, God? It’s me, Magdalen”