Vos reparate Deo.[298]
Rude and unattractive as is this specimen of ancient Art, I could not look at it without thinking how often it must have spoken hope and peace to the soul of the trembling sinner, in days when it hung, not in a picture-gallery to be criticised, but in a shrine to be worshipped. Around this figure, in the manner of the old altar-pieces, are six small square compartments containing scenes from her life.
The famous statue carved in wood by Donatello, in point of character may be referred to this class of subjects: she stands over her altar in the Baptistery at Florence, with clasped hands, the head raised in prayer; the form is very expressive of wasting grief and penance, but too meagre for beauty. ‘Egli, la volle specchio alle penitenti, non incitamento alla cupidizia degli sguardi, come avenne ad altri artisti,’ says Cicognara; and, allowing that beauty has been sacrificed to expression, he adds, ‘but if Donatello had done all, what would have remained for Canova?’ That which remained for Canova to do, he has done; he has made her as lovely as possible, and he has dramatised the sentiment: she is more the penitent than the patron saint. The display of the beautiful limbs is chastened by the humility of the attitude—half kneeling, half prostrate; by the expression of the drooping head—‘all sorrow’s softness charmed from its despair.’ Her eyes are fixed on the cross which lies extended on her knees; and she weeps—not so much her own past sins, as the sacrifice it has cost to redeem them. This is the prevailing sentiment, or, as the Germans would call it, the motive of the representation, to which I should feel inclined to object as deficient in dignity and severity, and bordering too much on the genre and dramatic style: but the execution is almost faultless. Very beautiful is another modern statue of the penitent Magdalene, executed in marble for the Count d’Espagnac, by M. Henri de Triqueti. She is half seated, half reclining on a fragment of rock, and pressing to her bosom a crown of thorns, at once the mourner and the penitent: the sorrow is not for herself alone.
92 Mary Magdalene (Lucas v. Leyden)
But, in her character of patron saint, Mary Magdalene was not always represented with the squalid or pathetic attributes of humiliation and penance. She became idealised as a noble dignified creature bearing no traces of sin or of sorrow on her beautiful face; her luxuriant hair bound in tresses round her head; her drapery rich and ample; the vase of ointment in her hand or at her feet, or borne by an angel near her. Not unfrequently she is attired with the utmost magnificence, either in reference to her former state of worldly prosperity, or rather, perhaps, that with the older painters, particularly those of the German school, it was a common custom to clothe all the ideal figures of female saints in rich habits. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries such representations of the Magdalene are usual both in Italian and German Art. A beautiful instance may be seen in a picture by Signorelli, in the Cathedral of Orvieto, where she is standing in a landscape, her head uncovered, and the rich golden hair partly braided, partly flowing over her shoulders; she wears a magnificent tunic embroidered with gold, over it a flowing mantle descending to her feet; she holds the vase with her left hand, and points to it with her right. If it were not for the saintly aureole encircling her head, this figure, and others similar to it, might be mistaken for Pandora. See, for example, the famous print by Lucas v. Leyden, where she stands on clouds with an embroidered coif and flowing mantle, holding the vase in her left hand, and lifting the cover with her right (in the sketch it is reversed): and in the half-length by Leonardo, or one of his school. The want of a religious sentiment gives such figures a very heathen and Pandora look, so that the aureole alone fixes the identity. This is not the case with a noble Magdalene by Dennis Calvert, in the Manfrini Palace at Venice. She is standing in a fine bold landscape; one hand sustains her ample crimson drapery, the other holds her vase; her fair hair falls in masses over her shoulders, and she looks down on her worshippers with a serious dignified compassion. This is one of the finest pictures of the later Bologna school, finer and truer in sentiment than any of the Caracci and Guido Magdalenes.
In this her wholly divine and ideal character of saint and intercessor, Mary Magdalene is often most beautifully introduced as standing near the throne of the Virgin, or as grouped with other saints. In two of the most famous pictures in the world she is thus represented. In the St. Cecilia of Raphael, she stands on the left, St. Paul being on the right of the principal figure; they are here significant of the conversion of the man through power, of the woman through love, from a state of reprobation to a state of reconcilement and grace. St. Paul leans in deep meditation on his sword. Mary Magdalene is habited in ample drapery of blue and violet, which she sustains with one hand, and bears the vase in the other. She looks out of the picture with a benign countenance and a particularly graceful turn of the head. Raphael’s original design for this picture (engraved by Marc Antonio) is, however, preferable in the sentiment given to the Magdalene: she does not look out of the picture, but she looks up: she also hears the divine music which has ravished St. Cecilia. In the picture she is either unconscious or inattentive.
In the not less celebrated St. Jerome of Correggio she is on the left of the Madonna, bending down with an expression of the deepest adoration to kiss the feet of the infant Christ, while an angel behind holds up the vase of ointment: thus recalling to our minds, and shadowing forth in the most poetical manner, that memorable act of love and homage rendered at the feet of the Saviour. Parmigiano has represented her, in a Madonna picture, as standing on one side, and the prophet Isaiah on the other. Lord Ashburton has a fine picture by Correggio, in which we have the same ideal representation: she is here grouped with St. Peter, St. Margaret, and St. Leonardo.