Let us now turn to those characteristic representations with which painting and sculpture have made us familiar, and for which both Scripture and legendary tradition have furnished the authority and the groundwork. These are so numerous and so infinitely varied that I find it necessary here, as in the case of St. Jerome, to arrange them under several heads.
The devotional representations may be divided into two classes. 1. Those which represent the Magdalene as patron saint. 2. Those which represent her penitence in the desert.
The historical subjects may also be divided into two classes. 1. Those scenes from Gospel story in which Mary Magdalene figures as a chief or conspicuous personage. 2. The scenes taken from her legendary life.
In all these subjects the accompanying attribute is the alabaster box of ointment; which has a double significance: it may be the perfume which she poured over the feet of the Saviour, or the balm and spices which she had prepared to anoint his body. Sometimes she carries it in her hand, sometimes it stands at her feet, or near her; frequently, in later pictures, it is borne by an attendant angel. The shape varies with the fancy of the artist; it is a small vase, a casket, a box, a cup with a cover; more or less ornamented, more or less graceful in form; but always there—the symbol at once of her conversion and her love, and so peculiar that it can leave no doubt of her identity.
Her drapery in the ancient pictures is usually red, to express the fervour of her love; in modern representations, and where she figures as penitent, it is either blue or violet; violet, the colour of mourning and penitence—blue, the colour of constancy. To express both the love and the sorrow, she sometimes wears a violet-coloured tunic and a red mantle. The luxuriant hair ought to be fair or golden. Dark-haired Magdalenes, as far as I can remember, belong exclusively to the Spanish school.
1. When exhibited to us as the patron saint of repentant sinners, Mary Magdalene is sometimes a thin wasted figure with long dishevelled hair, of a pale golden hue, falling over her shoulders almost to the ground; sometimes a skin or a piece of linen is tied round her loins, but not seldom her sole drapery is her long redundant hair. The most ancient single figure of this character to which I can refer is an old picture in the Byzantine manner, as old perhaps as the thirteenth century, and now in the Academy at Florence. She is standing as patroness, covered only by her long hair, which falls in dark brown masses to her feet: the colour, I imagine, was originally much lighter. She is a meagre, haggard, grim-looking figure, and holds in her hand a scroll, on which is inscribed in ancient Gothic letters—
Ne despectetis
Vos qui peccare soletis
Exemplo meo