The hermeneutic of great art - "The Magdalen Reading"

Yesterday Ruth asked about the picture of Jesus and Mary. No idea where it came from or who created it. This one I didn't know either till a friend gave me a postcard print of it. "The Magdalen Reading" painted by Rogier van der Weyden (1399-1464), is one panel from and altarpiece probably six times the size. Late medieval art is one of the treasure stores of biblical reflection and theological imagination. When all the exegesis is done, and all the hermeneutical suspicions are counted, and we are quite sure we have sufficiently de-cluttered the text of distorting presuppositions and power-laden superimposed agendas, there is still something powerfully persuasive about great art expressing a not so naive piety.

Here the idea is expressed that Mary Magdalen was so transformatively changed by Jesus, that it is she who is not wearing red, (except the colour of the seat cushion as a reminder); instead she is wearing green and a bejewelled underdress, her clothes telling the recovered richness of life. The alabaster jar is the symbol of a love once poured out, of one who loved much because she was forgiven much - and there it is again, miraculously unbroken but ready to hand.

And she is reading; the third person singular feminine is not to be overlooked - she is reading. Female literacy was rare except in privileged circles - Van der Weyden was painting around the same time Julian of Norwich claimed to be unlettered, a disclaimer her own work disproves. Mary Magdalen reading one of the Gospels, modestly but beautifully dressed, beside her an alabaster jar, and off-stage in red, the foot of John the Evangelist whose Gospel captured the grief of Mary and her last encounter with Jesus on Easter morning. Forget the hermeneutic of suspicion and engage the hermeneutic of great art; trust the exegesis that flows from devotional imagination, and contemplate sympathetically a way of telling truth that is itself transformative.

Comments

[Jason Goroncy]

Lovely post Jim.

BTW: A close up of this image also appears on the cover of my copy of The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin by Randall C. Zachmann. It's by far one of the best studies I've read on Luther and Calvin, taking the reader on a rich journey to the very centre of their respective theologies. Are you familiar with that book.

[Peter Andrees]

Yeah, thanks for the explanation of the picture. It is hard to figure out the interesting background just from taking a view. I think it is absolutly right to emphasize the intention of the painter to show her reading...