Keywords:
iconography, iconography scheme, altarpiece, Saint Mary Magdalene, alabaster vessel, renaissance portrait, Leonardeschi, «The Golden Legend», Rogier van der Weyden, Karlo Krivelli, legendarium, attribute
To cite this article
Bogomolova Y.Y.
Woman with an Alabaster Vessel. To the Iconography of Mary Magdalene. // Theory and History of Art.
2023.
N 1/2,
p.146–175
The article is devoted to establishing and depicting the development of the scheme in the iconography of the Christian Saint Mary Magdalene, where she is depicted as a separate figure with her main attribute — an alabaster vessel. With the development of iconographic creativity in Christian art and the spread of the cult of this holy form, the plot composition is affected and independence is gained in cult art.
Particular attention is paid to the process of secularization in cult art, as a result of which the detached and "non-local" prayer images begin to form in realistic transformations that reveal a portrait resemblance to patterns. As a result, there is a change in artistic means, and with them the nature of the image, and its semantics. In this regard, the portraits of the masters of the Northern and Italian images of the Renaissance are studied, in which Mary Magdalene finally acquires a secular character and turns into an allegorical portrait, typologically comprehensive in such a close portrait genre as the "portrait of a beauty".
Through the analysis of the comparative composition, the composition between substances, types of images in accordance with their purpose, the manufacturer as a book miniature, an altar polyptych and an easel painting.
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