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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/22\/arts\/design\/mary-magdalene-stadel-museum-germany.html?emc=edit_nn_20260926&nl=the-morning&segment_id=227102",
    "parsed_content": "AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTWas Mary Magdalene a Sinner or a Saint? Artists Weigh InA new exhibition at the St\u00e4del Museum in Frankfurt traces her shifting image over the centuries.Listen \u00b7 8:47 min Share full article\u201cMary Magdalene: Sin. Pray. Love,\u201d includes over 100 paintings, sculptures and works on paper from around 60 institutions across Europe and North America, including \u201cPenitent Magdalen in Meditation,\u201d by Georges de La Tour (1635-40).Credit...National Gallery of Art, WashingtonBy Sarah BahrSarah Bahr visited the St\u00e4del Museum in August and got a preview of the show.Sept. 22, 2026See more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google Mary Magdalene has undergone one of the greatest glow-downs in history.Today, the woman who was once best known as one of Jesus\u2019 most devoted followers is more often portrayed in pop culture as a reformed prostitute, a sinner so sunken that only Jesus could love her.\u201cIt\u2019s a very strange story. What has been made out of her has little to do, in the end, with what the Gospels really tell about her,\u201d said Bastian Eclercy, the head of Italian, French and Spanish paintings before 1800 at the St\u00e4del Museum in Frankfurt. Last week, the museum opened a large-scale exhibition on her, \u201cMary Magdalene: Sin. Pray. Love.\u201d in collaboration with the neighboring Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection, which houses about 3,000 sculptures dating from ancient Egypt to the early 19th century.ImageBastian Eclercy, right, the head of Italian, French and Spanish paintings before 1800 at the St\u00e4del Museum in Frankfurt, and Stefan Roller, the head of the medieval department at the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection, gazing at \u201cThe Penitent Mary Magdalene\u201d by Francesco Furini (1640-45)Credit...Ksenia Kuleshova for The New York TimesComprising more than 100 paintings, sculptures and works on paper from around 60 institutions across Europe and North America, with a focus on work by female artists, the show, which runs through Jan. 17, explores how Magdalene\u2019s image has changed over the years \u2014 and why.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe exhibition, which occupies more than 10,000 square feet of gallery space over two floors, is organized into 10 thematic sections and runs across the centuries, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It opens with a look at modern perceptions of Mary Magdalene before exploring how depictions of her have reflected changing ideas about women, faith and society over time.\u201cShe\u2019s become this composite figure who\u2019s half biblical, half fictional,\u201d Dr. Eclercy said in a video call in July from Frankfurt, where he is curating the show with Stefan Roller, the head of the medieval department at the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection.By the time the Counter-Reformation had taken hold in the late 16th century, Mary Magdalene, who was, according to the Gospels, the first witness to Jesus\u2019 resurrection (either on her own or with other women), had undergone a shift from venerated follower to penitent sinner.ImageIn the late 16th century, Mary Magdalene\u2019s image had shifted from a venerated follower of Jesus Christ to a penitent sinner. \u201cLa sfida (The Challenge)\u201d by Nieves Gonz\u00e1lez (2025).Credit...Ksenia Kuleshova for The New York TimesThe primary culprit for this change in interpretation was a sermon delivered by Pope Gregory the Great in Rome around A.D. 591, in which he conflated Magdalene with other biblical women, including the unnamed sinful woman who anointed Jesus\u2019 feet in the Gospel of Luke and another woman named Mary, Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIt took about 1,000 years for the change in Magdalene\u2019s image to be reflected in art, Dr. Eclercy said, because the emphasis on the sacrament of penance during the Counter-Reformation, which aimed to reaffirm traditional Catholic teachings, made her a role model for the contrite sinner.The Museums Special SectionRocky, Reconsidered: The sculpture is at the center of a show by the Philadelphia Museum of Art\u00a0that explores the meaning of monuments.Route 66 Turns 100: Exhibitions recall the history of the neon corridor that helped define the American road trip.A New Museum Comes With a D.J.: The space in Indianapolis, housed in a former dairy barn, aims to upend expectations of what an art museum can be.The Fisher Collection in a New Light: A Bay Area family made a deal with SFMOMA\u00a0that called for exhibitions of the collection\u2019s works every 10 years.More on Museums: Artists and institutions\u00a0are adapting to changing times.But Pope Gregory, Dr. Eclercy said, was mistaken in his assertion that Magdalene had once lived an immoral life.\u201cThere is no evidence that she was a prostitute,\u201d Dr. Eclercy said.Regardless, the sermon established canonical precedent from that point forward. (In 1969, the Vatican corrected the misinterpretations around Mary Magdalene in a prayer book, clarifying that Magdalene, Mary of Bethany and the unnamed sinner were three distinct women, and that the New Testament did not describe Magdalene as a prostitute.)It is difficult to say what Pope Gregory\u2019s motivation may have been in conflating Mary Magdalene with the sinful woman from Luke. His thinking, though, should be seen against the background of a patriarchal society that had difficulties with accepting the biblical assertion that it was a woman who had first seen the risen Christ, Dr. Eclercy said.\u201cProbably because of that reason, she was assigned another role,\u201d he added.\u201cBut it\u2019s important to realize that this role was not just a bad one,\u201d he continued. \u201cNot just, \u2018Oh, she was a prostitute.\u2019 This is one side of the medal. The other side is that, as a penitent sinner, she became this important role model.\u201dImageThe painting \u201cMary Magdalene: Abiding Lamentation\u201d (2018) by David LaChapelle and the statue \u201cWild Woman (Maria Magdalena)\u201d by Kiki Smith (1994).Credit...Ksenia Kuleshova for The New York TimesThe fallen woman archetype is the depiction most people are now most familiar with, though, thanks to the 1971 rock opera \u201cJesus Christ Superstar\u201d by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, in which the character of Mary Magdalene sings a yearning ballad called \u201cI Don\u2019t Know How to Love Him.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe author Dan Brown went a step further in his 2003 best-selling thriller novel \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d and contended that Magdalene was Jesus\u2019 wife \u2014 and the mother of his child, whom she was purportedly pregnant with at the time of the crucifixion.(There is no historical evidence to support that claim, Dr. Eclercy said, which stems from a noncanonical Gnostic text, known as the Gospel of Mary, that was likely written in the second century. Most modern scholars agree with his assessment.)\u201cNowhere does the Bible say she had romantic feelings for Jesus,\u201d he said. \u201cSomewhere in the apocryphal texts, it says Jesus kissed her on the mouth, but of course, in ancient culture, kissing somebody on the mouth is a very different thing.\u201cFragments of text were interpreted in a very modern but sensationalist manner to make them fit into movie stories,\u201d he added.Among the most well-known representations of Magdalene are three that are on view in the show in Frankfurt. In \u201cThe Repentant Magdalen\u201d (c. 1635-40), the painter Georges de La Tour shows her with a mirror \u2014 a symbol of vanity \u2014 and a skull \u2014 an emblem of mortality. In the woodcut \u201cThe Elevation of Saint Mary Magdalen\u201d (c. 1504-5), the artist Albrecht D\u00fcrer depicts her being carried to heaven by angels. Perhaps most dramatically, in \u201cNoli Me Tangere\u201d (c. 1581), the painter Lavinia Fontana depicts the encounter when Mary mistakes the resurrected Christ for a gardener. (The work\u2019s title, translated from the Latin phrase meaning \u201cDo Not Touch Me,\u201d references the words said by the risen Christ in the Gospel of John.)AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe La Tour painting, Dr. Eclercy said, melds the sinful and the penitent aspects of Magdalene\u2019s persona into an imagined scene of devotion.\u201cIt\u2019s what I call a synthetic image,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not going back to a real story, either in the Gospels or the legends. Various lines of tradition are coming together in this painting.\u201dMagdalene is often depicted with standard attributes that help identify her, including a skull \u2014 a memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death \u2014 and a cross, a reference to the fact that she was one of the few followers who remained near the cross during the crucifixion.Some artists, though, have taken an approach that is more realistic than reverential. This is particularly true of contemporary artists, who are no longer bound by having to work on commission and cater to the desires of the (often traditional) patrons funding their work.About 90 percent of the work in the contemporary section of the exhibition, made from 1994 to 2025, was created by female artists, Dr. Eclercy said. He noted that these artists \u2014 particularly in the last 30 or 40 years \u2014 have identified with Magdalene\u2019s strength and self-determination themselves, and have translated that into varied representations of her.For instance, in the 1995 paintings \u201cMagdalena (Newman\u2019s Zip)\u201d and \u201cMagdalena (Manet\u2019s Queen \/ Queen of Spades),\u201d the South African painter Marlene Dumas renders Magdalene, on one canvas, as a traditionally coded nude white woman with long, red hair, and then, on the other, as a Black woman with short hair. And in 2018, the American photographer David LaChapelle imagined Kim Kardashian as Magdalene, her hands covering her nipples as she cries glittering streams of tears, in the portrait \u201cMary Magdalene Abiding Lamentation.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThrough the centuries, Dr. Eclercy said, Magdalene has served as a blank canvas for artists to explore themes of salvation, beauty and grief.\u201cThere\u2019s not one Mary Magdalene in this show, but 10,\u201d he said.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
    "published_at": "2026-09-22T14:14:43+00:00",
    "author_name": "Sarah Bahr",
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