Mary Magdalene
Frederick Sandys, 1858
This small oil-on-panel work shows Mary Magdalene before a patterned forest-green damask, which sets her figure sharply against the background. She holds an alabaster ointment jar, a traditional attribute linking her to the unnamed sinful woman who anointed Jesus' feet in the Gospel of Luke, though here the biblical story recedes behind the portrait itself. Like other Pre-Raphaelite painters, Sandys gave her a sensual look, and her sharp features recall Lizzie Siddal, although the model's identity is unknown. The picture has a notable backstory: Dante Gabriel Rossetti accused Sandys of plagiarism over a resemblance to one of his own works, yet some twenty years later Rossetti painted his own Magdalene, which came to look more like Sandys's. It is the only biblical figure Sandys ever painted, which makes it distinctive within his output. It later passed to Samuel Bancroft, a leading American collector of Pre-Raphaelite art, whose collection went to the Delaware Art Museum.
- Painter
- Frederick Sandys
- Date
- 1858
- Dimensions
- 13 × 11 cm
- Museum
- Delaware Art Museum, Delaware
- Movement
- Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
- Genre
- religious art
- Depicts
- waist-length hair, red hair, part, woman, Mary Magdalene
