Pieter
Cornelisz van Slingelandt
Holy Magdalene Penitent
1657
The
Louvre
The
museum's label suggests that the tree "symbolizes sin and the old world
before Christ." Just so. Instead of the customary
crucifix, we have a dead tree; instead of an ointment jar, a lightless
lamp fallen that has fallen on its side, its shape echoed in the
hourglass emptying beside it. In the half light between us and
the Magdalene, these all represent the false lights of the transient world from which
she has been rescued. If we imagine that the scourge in her hand
has done its work at the moment we are watching, we can think of her
luminous body as a reflex of her now exalted soul and an image of the
perfected body in which it is said all saints will be resurrected.
More of St. Mary Magdalene
Photographed at the
site by Richard Stracke