1500, Piero di Cosimo (Piero di Lorenzo Ubaldini), Mary Magdalene -- Palazzo Barberini (Rome)
From the museum label: Adopting a singularly meditative approach, the artist "portrays" Mary Magdalen as an elegant and sophisticated worshipper rather than as a penitent anchorite: not an ideal portrait perhaps, but certainly a model for one's daily domestic remorse and reading.
The long blond hair and the vase on the ledge remind us of the gesture of the woman who humbly anointed Christ's feet with costly spikenard during the supper at Bethany (John 12: 1-8), a perfect example of pure faith reflecting the purity of the image. This may not be the portrait of a specific person but it aspires to the role of "standard" portrait, a kind of mirror of virtue into which one looks not to feel smug about the way one is but rather to reflect on the way one should be. And if she is a sinner, her sins are consigned to the secret silence of an intimate prayer that it is not our place to judge.
1500, Piero di Cosimo (Piero di Lorenzo Ubaldini), Mary Magdalene -- Palazzo Barberini (Rome)
From the museum label: Adopting a singularly meditative approach, the artist "portrays" Mary Magdalen as an elegant and sophisticated worshipper rather than as a penitent anchorite: not an ideal portrait perhaps, but certainly a model for one's daily domestic remorse and reading.
The long blond hair and the vase on the ledge remind us of the gesture of the woman who humbly anointed Christ's feet with costly spikenard during the supper at Bethany (John 12: 1-8), a perfect example of pure faith reflecting the purity of the image. This may not be the portrait of a specific person but it aspires to the role of "standard" portrait, a kind of mirror of virtue into which one looks not to feel smug about the way one is but rather to reflect on the way one should be. And if she is a sinner, her sins are consigned to the secret silence of an intimate prayer that it is not our place to judge.