Mary Magdalene
In Johann Liss’s the Temptation of the Magdalene, Mary is confronted by a choice; a life of bejewelled wealth and sin, as embodied by the woman holding gold vessels on her right, or a sacred moral one, as represented by the angel on her left holding a palm branch. She looks out from the painting with a sensuous agony at the decision before her. Her elegant dress of rich red, blue and vibrant white, exposes almost all of her breasts, a point highlighted by the focus of light on this region. Taken with the richness of her dress, Mary appears to us not as a woman of religious devotion, but licentious, even lustful.
Why Mary Magdalene?
What might be the reason for portraying the saint in such an overtly sexualised way, and what can this tell us about popular opinions of her in the time of Liss’s painting?
Despite the Magdalene’s eminence amongst the New Testament women for her emotional and spiritual closeness to Christ, as well as scant Biblical evidence, the Magdalene was evoked as a symbol of prostitution throghout history. This likely stems from a decree by the 6th century Pope Gregory the Great that wrongly conflates Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany, the latter widely accepted as having been a prostitute.
Artists like Liss drew on contemporary textual sources which dramatise her early life as a prostitute. Pietro Aretino’s Humanita Di Christo describes the Magdalene as "incapable of dressing modestly and wearing gowns of golden linen", and Lewis Wager’s Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene specifically mentions the exposure of breasts; “her white pappes make men’s noses bleed”.
The ‘Temptation’ of Mary Magdalene in Liss’s picture therefore evokes the Magdalene's choice between continuing a life of sexual sin and material decadence, or turning towards Jesus and God.
The Reformed Magdalene
The front-page to Maestro Andrea's broadsheet from 1530 shows a “Cortigiana di Roma” (Roman Courtesan/Prostitute) being taken to the Ospedale degli Incurabili (Hospital of the Incurable) in a wheelbarrow after having been immobilised by her syphilis, the boils of which are attracting flies. Counter-Reformation Rome suffered greatly from syphilis; some estimates suggest as much as one quarter of the entire male population suffered from syphilis. Lay and religious authorities both attributed the spread of the disease to the unchecked growth of prostitution.
On the front-cover of this 1611 chapbook by Marco Rossiglio entitled La Conversione di Santa Maria (The Conversion of Saint Mary), Mary poses in contrapposto, nude save for her long hair. The content of Rossiglio’s chapbook was a small play in which the Magdalene, repenting for her youth spent as a wealthy and luxuriously dressed prostitute, converts to Christianity and ascends to heaven. The message to vulnerable young women and prostitutes was clear: repent, and you shall be saved.
The enduring strength of the Magdalene as an icon for reform of and deterrent from prostitution is attested to by by the fact that, second only to the Virgin Mary, the Magdalene was the most commonly depicted female Biblical figure in chapbooks.