654. THE MAGDALEN.
Later School of Roger van der Weyden (Early Flemish: 1400-about 1464). See 664.
See also (p. xix)
Known for the Magdalen by the small vase at her feet—emblem, in all the religious painters, of the alabaster box of ointment—"the symbol at once of her conversion and her love." In these "reading Magdalens" she is represented as now reconciled to heaven, and magnificently attired—in reference to her former state of worldly prosperity. "It is difficult for us, in these days, to conceive the passionate admiration and devotion with which the Magdalen was regarded by her votaries in the Middle Ages. The imputed sinfulness of her life only brought her nearer to them. Those who did not dare to lift up their eyes to the more saintly models of purity and holiness,—the martyrs who had suffered in the cause of chastity,—took courage to invoke her intercession" (Mrs. Jameson: Sacred and Legendary Art, p. 205). Hence the numerous Magdalens to be met with in nearly every picture gallery; in art decidedly there has been "more joy over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine that need no repentance."
"This picture is undoubtedly by the unknown master who painted two remarkable panels formerly in the Abbey of Flémalle in Belgium, but now in the Städel Museum at Frankfort-on-Maine. They present respectively the standing figure of the Virgin with the Infant at her breast, and the figure of St. Veronica, as an elderly woman, holding before her the sacred napkin on which is the impression of our Lord's visage. These, and a third panel in the same museum, representing the Trinity, but, unlike the others, painted in monochrome, must have belonged to a large altar-piece in many compartments, of which it is quite possible the small picture above described may have formed one" (Official Catalogue). Mr. Claude Phillips, on the other hand, while admiring the delicate and exquisite colour of our picture and the enamel-like quality of its surface, sees in it no resemblance to the works described above (see Academy, Sept. 28, 1889).