7. ‘Mary Magdalene borne by angels above the summit of Mount Pilon,’ called also ‘The Assumption of the Magdalene,’ is a charming subject when treated in the right spirit. Unfortunately, we are oftener reminded of a Pandora, sustained by a group of Cupids, or a Venus rising out of the sea, than of the ecstatic trance of the reconciled penitent. It was very early a popular theme. In the treatment we find little variety. She is seen carried upwards very slightly draped, and often with no other veil than her redundant hair, flowing over her whole person. She is in the arms of four, five, or six angels. Sometimes one of the angels bears the alabaster box of ointment; far below is a wild mountainous landscape, with a hermit looking up at the vision, as it is related in the legend. The illustration is from a fine woodcut of Albert Dürer (96).
In a hymn to the Magdalene, by an old Provençal poet (Balthazar de la Burle) there is a passage describing her ascent in the arms of angels, which, from its vivid graphic naïveté, is worthy of being placed under this print of Albert Dürer:—
Ravengat lou jour los anges la portavan
Ben plus hault que lou roc.
Jamais per mauvais temps que fessa ne freddura,
Autre abit non avia que la sien cabellura,
Que como un mantel d’or tant eram bels e blonds
La couvria de la testa fin al bas des talons.
The fresco by Giulio Romano, in which she is reclining amid clouds, and sustained by six angels, while her head is raised and her arms extended with the most ecstatic expression, was cut from the walls of a chapel in the Trinità di Monte, at Rome, and is now in our National Gallery.
One of the finest pictures ever painted by Ribera is the Assumption of the Magdalene in the Louvre, both for beauty of expression and colour. She is here draped, and her drapery well managed. The Spanish painters never fell into the mistake of the Italians; they give us no Magdalenes which recall the idea of a Venus Meretrix. The rules of the Inquisition were here absolute, and held the painters in wholesome check, rendering such irreligious innovations inadmissible and unknown. In the Turin Gallery there is an Assumption of the Magdalene by Dennis Calvert, admirably painted, in which she is carried up by four Apollo-like angels, who, with their outstretched arms, form a sort of throne on which she is seated: she is herself most lovely, draped in the thin undress of a Venus; and the whole composition, at first view, brought to my fancy the idea of a Venus rising from the sea, throned in her shell and sustained by nymphs and cupids.