Fragment of altarpiece painting by Rogier van der Weyden
The Magdalen Reading is one of three surviving fragments of a large mid-15th-century oil-on-panel altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The panel, originally oak, was completed some time between 1435 and 1438 and has been in the National Gallery, London since 1860. It shows a woman with the pale skin, high cheek bones and oval eyelids typical of the idealised portraits of noble women of the period. She is identifiable as the Magdalen from the jar of ointment placed in the foreground, which is her traditional attribute in Christian art. She is presented as completely absorbed in her reading, a model of the contemplative life, repentant and absolved of past sins. In Catholic tradition the Magdalen was conflated with both Mary of Bethany who anointed the feet of Jesus with oil and the unnamed "sinner" of . Iconography of the Magdalen commonly shows her with a book, in a moment of reflection, in tears, or with eyes averted.
The background of the painting had been overpainted with a thick layer of brown paint. A cleaning between 1955 and 1956 revealed the figure standing behind the Magdalene and the kneeling figure with its bare foot protruding in front of her, with a landscape visible through a window. The two partially seen figures are both cut off at the edges of the London panel. The figure above her has been identified as belonging to a fragment in the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, which shows the head of Saint Joseph, while another Lisbon fragment, showing what is believed to be Saint Catherine of Alexandria, is thought to be from the same larger work. The original altarpiece was a "sacra conversazione", known only through a drawing, "Virgin and Child with Saints", in Stockholm's Nationalmuseum, which followed a partial copy of the painting that probably dated from the late 16th century. The drawing shows that "The Magdalen" occupied the lower right-hand corner of the altarpiece. The Lisbon fragments are each a third of the size of "The Magdalen", which measures .
Although internationally successful in his lifetime, van der Weyden fell from view during the 17th century, and was not rediscovered until the early 19th century. "The Magdalen Reading" can first be traced to an 1811 sale. After passing through the hands of a number of dealers in the Netherlands, the panel was purchased by the National Gallery, London, in 1860 from a collector in Paris. It is described by art historian Lorne Campbell as "one of the great masterpieces of 15th-century art and among van der Weyden's most important early works."
Description.
Mary Magdalene as depicted in early Renaissance painting is a composite of various biblical figures. Here, she is based on Mary of Bethany, who is identified as the Magdalene in the Roman Catholic tradition. Mary of Bethany sat at Jesus' feet and "listened to His Word", and thus is seen as a contemplative figure. The counterpoint is Mary's sister Martha who, representative of the active life, wished that Mary would help her serve. Mary is shown by van der Weyden as youthful, sitting in quiet piety with her head tilted and eyes modestly averted from the viewer. She is absorbed in her reading of a holy book, the covers of which include a "chemise" of white cloth, a common form of protective binding. Four coloured cloth bookmarks are tied to a gold bar near the top of the spine. According to Lorne Campbell, the manuscript "looks rather like a 13th-century French Bible" and is "clearly a devotional text". It was rare for contemporary portraits to show women reading, and if the model herself could read then she was likely from a noble family.
Van der Weyden often linked form and meaning, and in this fragment the semicircular outline of the Magdalene reinforces her quiet detachment from her surroundings. She is seated on a red cushion and rests her back against a wooden sideboard. By her feet is her usual attribute of an alabaster jar; in the Gospels she brought spices to the tomb of Jesus. The view through the window is of a distant canal, with an archer atop the garden wall and a figure walking on the other side of the water, whose reflection shows in the water.
Van der Weyden's pose for the Magdalene is similar to a number of female religious figures painted by his master Robert Campin or his workshop. It closely resembles, in theme and tone, the figure of Saint Barbara in Campin's "Werl Altarpiece", and also the Virgin in an "Annunciation" attributed to Campin in Brussels. Typically for a van der Weyden, the Magdalen's face has an almost sculpted look, and the elements of her clothes are conveyed in minute detail. She wears a green robe; in medieval art the Magdalene is usually depicted naked (sometimes clad only in her long hair) or in richly coloured dress, typically red, blue or green, almost never in white. Her robe is tightly pulled below her bust by a blue sash, while the gold brocade of her underskirt is adorned by a jewelled hem. Art critic Charles Darwent observed that the Magdalen's past as a "fallen woman" is hinted at by the nap in the fur lining of her dress and the few strands of hair loose from her veil. Darwent wrote, "Even her fingers, absent-mindedly circled, suggest completeness. In her mix of purity and eroticism, van der Weyden's Magdalen feels whole; but she isn't." In the medieval period, fur symbolized female sexuality and was commonly associated with the Magdalene. Medieval historian Philip Crispin explains that artists such as Memling and Matsys often portrayed the Magdalen in furs and notes that she "is noticeably dressed in fur-lined garments in "The Magdalen Reading" by Rogier van der Weyden".
The level of detail used in portraying the Magdalene has been described by Campbell as "far exceed[ing]" van Eyck. Her lips are painted with a shades of vermilion, white and red which are mixed into each other to give a transparent look at the edges. The fur lining of her dress is painted in a range of greys running from almost pure white to pure black. Rogier gave the fur a textured look by painting stripes parallel to the line of the dress and then feathering the paint before it dried. The gold on the cloth is rendered with a variety of impasto, grid and dots of varying colour and size.
Many of the objects around her are also closely detailed, in particular the wooden floor and nails, the folds of the Magdalene's dress, the costume of the figures in the exterior and the beads of Joseph's rosary. The effect of falling light is closely studied; Joseph's crystal rosary beads have bright highlights, while subtle delineations of light and shade can be seen in the sideboard's tracery and in the clasps of her book. Mary is absorbed in her reading and seemingly unaware of her surroundings. Van der Weyden has given her a quiet dignity although he is generally seen as the more emotional of the master Netherlandish painters of the era, in particular when contrasted with Jan van Eyck.
Lorne Campbell describes the tiny figure of the woman seen through the window and her reflection in the water as "small miracles of painting", and says that "the attention to detail far exceeds that of Jan van Eyck and the skill of execution is astounding". He notes that these tiny details would have been impossible for a viewer to observe when the altarpiece was in its intended position. Other areas of the panel, however, have been described as dull and uninspired. One critic wrote that the areas of the floor and most of the cupboard behind her seem unfinished and "much too narrow and papery in effect". A number of objects placed on the cupboard are now barely visible save for their bases. The object on the right seated on legs alongside a box is likely a small pitcher, possibly a reliquary. A moulding to the left of the cupboard may represent a doorway.
Altarpiece fragment.
"Virgin and Child with Saints", a drawing in Stockholm's Nationalmuseum, is believed to be a study of a portion of the original altarpiece by a follower of van der Weyden, who possibly may have been the Master of the Coburger Rundblätter. The drawing has a loosely sketched background and shows, from left to right: an unidentified bishop saint with mitre and crosier making a blessing gesture; a narrow gap with a few wavy vertical lines suggesting a start at the outline of a further kneeling figure; a barefoot bearded figure in a rough robe identified as Saint John the Baptist; a seated Virgin holding on her lap the Christ Child who leans to the right, looking at a book; and holding the book, a kneeling beardless male identified as John the Evangelist. The drawing stops at the end of John's robe, at about the point on the London panel where Joseph's walking stick meets John and the Magdalene's robes. This suggests that the Magdalene panel was the first to be cut from the larger work.
At an unknown point before 1811, the original altarpiece was broken into at least three pieces, possibly due to damage, although "The Magdalen" fragment is in good condition. The black overpaint was likely added after the early 17th century when Netherlandish painting had fallen from favour and was unfashionable. Campbell believes that after the removal of the background detail "it looked sufficiently like a genre piece to hang in a well-known collection of Dutch seventeenth-century paintings". From the size of three surviving panels in relation to the drawing, it is estimated that the original was at least 1 m high by 1.5 m wide; the bishop and the Magdalene seem to clearly mark the horizontal extremities, but the extent of the picture above and below the surviving elements and the drawing cannot be judged. This size is comparable with smaller altarpieces of the period. The background was overpainted with a thick layer of black/brown pigment until it was cleaned in 1955; it was only after the layer's removal that it was linked to the upper body and head of Joseph from the Lisbon piece. These two works were not recorded in inventory until 1907, when they appear in the collection of Léo Lardus in Suresnes, France.
The London panel shows much of the clothing of two other figures from the original altarpiece. To the left of the Magdalene is the red robe of what appears to be a kneeling figure. The figure and robe, and less precisely the background, match a kneeling Saint John the Evangelist. Behind the Magdalen is a standing figure in blue and red robes, with linear rosary beads in one hand and a walking stick in the other. A panel at the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon shows the head of a figure believed to be the Saint Joseph; the background and clothes match with those of the figure behind the Magdalen on the London panel.
There is a further small panel in Lisbon of a female head, richly or royally dressed, which first appeared in 1907 with the Joseph panel when it was recorded in the inventory of Leo Nardus at Suresnes. The figure may represent Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and from both the angle of her cloth and the fact that the river behind her would be parallel to that in the exterior of the London panel it can be assumed that she was kneeling. In the Stockholm drawing she is omitted, or only traces of her dress shown. The Joseph panel has a sliver of a view through a window to an exterior scene; if the other female is presumed to be kneeling, the trees above the waterway aligns with those in the London panel. Some art historians, including Martin Davies and John Ward, have been slow to allow the Catherine panel as part of the altarpiece, though it is undoubtedly by van der Weyden or a near-contemporary follower. Evidence against this link includes the fact that the moulding of the window to the left of the Gulbenkian female saint is plain, while that next to Saint Joseph is chamfered. Such an inconsistency in a single van der Weyden work is unusual. The panels are of