Mary Magdalene by Sebastiano del Piombo, church
of San Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice, 1510.
Sebastiano has captured a Mary Magdalene more true to the gospels than
the usual simpering, repentant, reclusive, passive, self-abasing Magdalene of
Church mythology; instead here she is portrayed as a bold and superior woman,
mysterious and powerful. ‘This face and
figure’, said the novelist Henry James, ‘are almost unique among the beautiful
things of Venice’. She is ‘a strange, a
dangerous’ woman, he said, ‘she walks like a goddess. ... This magnificent
creature is so strong and secure that she is gentle. ... But for all this there
are depths of possible disorder in her light-coloured eye’.
I am a writer, historian and biographer who lives in London, England. My books are published by Yale University Press, Profile Books, Harper Collins, The American University in Cairo Press, and others.
