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28.10.2019

𝙰𝚞𝚐𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝟹, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟽 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙳𝚒𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝙾𝚏 𝙵𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚣 𝙺𝚊𝚏𝚔𝚊, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟺-𝟷𝟿𝟸𝟹

—On Love, Marina Tsvetaeva

Iconography in Paintings

Mary Magdalene’s hair

“No figure in the Christian Pantheon except Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and John the Baptist has inspired, provoked, or confounded the imagination of painters more than the Magdalene”

Robert Kiely

Through history, Mary Magdalene has always been depicted in arts, distictively from other female figures of the Bible, with long, lustrous, loose hair, sometimes using it to cover her nakedness.

This singularity is due to the interpretation that she was a prostitute, as in those times, the only women who wore their hair loose, and especially long, in public were prostitutes, as it was considered scandalous and the others used to always hide it beneath headdresses or scarves.

Also, in the Bible, the detail of this character wearing her hair this particular way is specified when she washed Jesus feet with the tears from her sins, and then proceeded to dry them with her hair.

Alfred Stevens, Maria Magdalena, 1887

Barbieri Giovanni Francesco, il Guercino, Santa Maria Maddalena, 1637

Tintoretto, Maria Penitente, 1598-1602

Carlo Crivelli, Maria Magdalena, 1480

El Greco, Magdalena Penitente, 1576-1578

George Romney, Lady Hamilton as Magdalene, 1792

Tizziano, Maddalena Penitente, 1533

Ugolino and His Sons (1865 - 1867)