Spinello Aretino
St. Mary Magdalene
1395-1400
Tempera on canvas, gold ground, 69½ x 47¼ in. (176.5 x 120 cm.)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 13.175. Gift of the family of Francis M. Bacon, 1914.
The alabaster jar in St. Mary Magdalene's right hand is her attribute. The crucifix in her left hand refers to her life as a contemplative. The angel musicians refer to the angelic song that served as her sole nourishment for the thirty years she spent in her desert cell.
The hooded figures in the foreground are members of the Confraternity of the Holy Sepulcher, which commissioned this canvas for use in their processions. The two nearest the viewer have Mary Magdalene's jar embroidered on their sleeves. In medieval writings and images she and the jar were associated with the preparation of Christ's body for placement in the sepulcher.1
Read more about images of St. Mary Magdalene.
1 "A Processional Banner by Spinello Aretino," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin IX, ii, (Feb. 1914), 43-46 (Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3253968).
Photographed at the museum by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.