d'Espagnac, by M. Henri de Triqueti. She is half seated, half reclining on a fragment of rock, and pressing to her bosom a crown of thorns, at once the mourner and the penitent: the sorrow is not for herself alone.

Not

But, in her character of patron saint, Mary Magdalene was not always represented with the squalid or pathetic attributes of humiliation and penance. She became idealized as a noble dignified creature bearing no traces of sin or of sorrow on her beautiful face; her luxuriant hair bound in tresses round her head; her drapery rich and ample; the vase of ointment in her hand or at her feet, or borne by an angel near her. unfrequently she is attired with the utmost magnificence, either in reference to her former state of worldly prosperity, or rather, perhaps, that with the older painters, particularly those of the German school, it was a common custom to clothe all the ideal figures of female saints in rich habits. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries such representations of the Magdalene are usual both in Italian and German Art. A beautiful instance may be seen in a picture by Signorelli, at Orvieto, where she is standing in a landscape, her head uncovered, and the rich golden hair partly braided, partly flowing over her shoulders; she wears a magnificent tunic embroidered with gold, over it a flowing mantle descending to her feet; she holds the vase with her left hand, and points to it with her right. If it were not for the saintly aureole encircling her head, this figure, and others similar to it, might be mistaken for Pandora. See, for example, the famous print by Lucas v. Leyden, where she stands on clouds with an embroidered coif and flowing mantle, holding the vase in her left hand, and lifting the cover with her right; and in the half length by Leonardo, or one of his school. The want of a religious sentiment gives such figures a very heathen and Pandora look, so that the aureole alone fixes the identity. This is not the case with a noble Magdalene by Dennis Calvaert, in the Manfrini Palace at Venice. She is standing in a fine bold landscape; one hand sustains her ample crimson drapery, the other holds her vase; her fair hair falls in masses over her shoulders, and she looks down on her worshippers with a serious dignified compassion. This is one of the finest pictures of the later Bologna school, fiñer and truer in sentiment than any of the Caracci and Guido Magdalenes.

In

In this her wholly divine and ideal character of saint and intercessor, Mary Magdalene is often most beautifully introduced as standing near the throne of the Virgin, or as grouped with other saints. two of the most famous pictures in the world she is thus represented. In the St. Cecilia of Raphael, she stands on the left, St. Paul being on the right of the principal figure; they are here significant of the conversion of the man through power, of the woman through love, from a state of reprobation to a state of reconcilement and grace. St. Paul leans in deep medi

tation on his sword. Mary Magdalene is habited in ample drapery of blue and violet, which she sustains with one hand, and bears the vase in the other. She looks out of the picture with a benign countenance and a particularly graceful turn of the head. Raphael's original design for this picture (engraved by Marc Antonio) is, however, preferable in the sentiment given to the Magdalene: she does not look out of the picture, but she looks up: she also hears the divine music which has ravished St. Cecilia. In the picture she is either unconscious or inattentive.1

In the not less celebrated St. Jerome of Correggio [Parma Gall.], she is on the left of the Madonna, bending down with an expression of the deepest adoration to kiss the feet of the infant Christ, while an angel behind holds up the vase of

1 [For facsimiles of the original design and of the completed picture in the Bologna Gallery, see Müntz, Raphael, translated by Armstrong, p. 526.]

ointment: thus recalling to our minds, and shadowing forth in the most poetical manner, that memorable act of love and homage rendered at the feet of the Saviour. Parmigiano has represented her, in a Madonna picture, as standing on one side, and the prophet Isaiah on the other. Lord Ashburton has a fine picture by Correggio, in which we have the same ideal representation: she is here grouped with St. Peter, St. Margaret, and St. Leonardo.

There are two classes of subjects in which Mary Magdalene is richly habited, and which must be carefully distinguished; those above described, in which she figures as patron saint, and those which represent her before her conversion, as the votary of luxury and pleasure. In the same manner we must be careful to distinguish those figures of the penitent Magdalene which are wholly devotional in character and intention, and which have been described in the first class, from those which represent her in the act of doing penance, and which are rather dramatic and sentimental than devotional.

2. The penance of the Magdalene is a subject which has become, like the penance of St. Jerome, a symbol of Christian penitence, but still more endeared to the popular imagination by more affecting and attractive associations, and even more eminently picturesque, so tempting to the artists, that by their own predilection for it they have assisted in making it universal. In the display of luxuriant female forms, shadowed (not hidden) by redundant fair hair, and flung in all the abandon of solitude, amid the depth of leafy recesses, or relieved by the dark umbrageous rocks; in the association of love and beauty with the symbols of death and sorrow and utter humiliation; the painters had ample scope, ample material, for the exercise of their imagination, and the display of their skill: and what has been the result? They have abused these capabilities even to license; they have exhausted the resources of Art in the attempt to vary the delineation; and yet how seldom has the ideal of this most exquisite subject been-I will not say realized- but even approached? We have Magdalenes who look as if they never could have sinned, and others who look as if they never could have repented; we have Venetian Magdalenes with the air of courtesans, and Florentine Magdalenes with the air of