A SINNER IN THE CITY: CONTEXTUALIZING THE MAGDALEN

 A SINNER IN THE CITY: CONTEXTUALIZING THE MAGDALEN MASTER VITA
PANEL C. 1280
by
Kristen LaTulipe
Dr. Noa Turel, CHAIR
Dr. Tanja Jones
Dr. Heather McPherson
A THESIS
Submitted to the graduate faculty of The University of Alabama at Birmingham and The
University of Alabama, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of
Arts
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
2014
COPYRIGHT BY
KRISTEN NICOLE LATULIPE
2014
ii A SINNER IN THE CITY
CONTEXTUALIZING THE MAGDALEN MASTER VITA PANEL C. 1280
Kristen LaTulipe
(ART HISTORY)
ABSTRACT
This thesis shows that the vita panel of Mary Magdalen, now exhibited in the
Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, was originally commissioned for a convertite house,
rather than a mendicant monastery, as had been hitherto suggested. Painted c. 1280 by the
Florentine painter known as the Magdalen Master, the work features a hair-clad Magdalen
flanked by eight scenes from her life and legend. There is no extant documentation regarding
the panel’s commission. This thesis offers the Florentine convertite house of Santa Maria
Maddalena as the likeliest original location for the Accademia Magdalen. Founded c. 1257,
this institution was among the first of many convertite houses to appear across Europe in the
wake of thirteenth-century prostitution reform, designed to shelter and convert prostitutes.
The investigation focuses on three main sources of evidence: the visual, the social, and the
historical. The visual aspect of the research shows that the iconography and structure of the
panel indicate female viewership, and specifically reflect an audience of convertite women.
The social facet examines the wider context of medieval religious reform in Europe and the
subsequent emergence of convertite foundations. This thesis is the first attempt at
reconstructing the history of artwork within the early convertite houses. Showing that the
Accademia Magdalen was likely created for such a setting, this study furthermore explores
the possibility that this vita panel was one of the first in a long tradition of Magdalen imagery
within convertite institutions, a tradition that persisted throughout the Renaissance. The
historical context of Florence during the years surrounding the creation of the panel also adds
iii to the mounting evidence for Santa Maria Maddalena as a likely commissioning institution
for the panel. During this time, the Angevin King, Charles I, was chief administrator of
justice in Florence when in 1279, his son discovered the remains of Mary Magdalen in
Provence, an event that quickly spread her cult to Naples and Florence via the ruling House
of Anjou. As the royal family was a known patron of Magdalen imagery and institutions, the
creation of the panel c. 1280 as well as details in its iconography strongly indicate Angevin
influence on the commission and further points to Santa Maria Maddalena as the most
plausible original institution for the Accademia Magdalen.
iv DEDICATION
For my mom and brother, Michelle and Rodney, for constant support and love, and for the
invaluable gift of knowing when to leave me alone. And for my grandmother, Tulie, for
instilling in me the drive to constantly challenge myself, never settling for less than I deserve.
v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my advisor and committee chair, Dr. Noa Turel, for her unwavering confidence
and support of my project, for the hours spent poring over my many thesis drafts, for her
brutal honesty, and for her true desire to help me become the best student I can be. I would
also like to thank Dr. Tanja Jones for sitting on my committee and taking the time to give me
precise and detailed feedback. I have worked very closely with Dr. Jones over the past two
years and her guidance and encouragement has made a truly lasting impression on my
development as a scholar and as a person. I would like to thank Dr. Heather McPherson for
bravely being a part of my thesis committee, as this topic is a far cry from her areas of
interest. Dr. McPherson has shown complete faith in my abilities from day one of my journey
as a graduate student, and for that I am beyond grateful. I would also like to mention Dr.
Maria Maurer, without whom this project would not have come into fruition. Dr. Maurer
introduced me to Italian vita panels, a debt that I will never be able to repay. I would also like
to thank Patrick Wallace, my rock, for being more than patient during this process.
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... iii
DEDICATION .....................................................................................................................v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. vi
LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... viii
INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1
CHAPTER ONE ..................................................................................................................8
Luxuria and Cilicium: The Magdalen’s Duality as a Case for Female Viewership
CHAPTER TWO ...............................................................................................................25
Exemplum Perfecte Penitentie: The Magdalen as Mirror in Medieval Convertite
Institutions
CHAPTER THREE ...........................................................................................................39
The House of Anjou: The Accademia Magdalen and Dynastic Influence in Florence
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................47
NOTES
........................................................................................................................49
BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................62
IMAGES
........................................................................................................................68
vii LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
Page
1
Master of the Magdalen, Mary Magdalen Surrounded by Eight Scenes from her Life,
c. 1280, Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence ........................................................68
2
Apostolorum Apostola, miniature from the Gospel Book of Henry the Lion, 12th
century....................................................................................................................69
3
Andrea di Cione, Symbol of Hope, 1350................................................................70
4
Byzantine Master, Saint Catherine Icon, late 12th century ...................................71
5
The Magdalen Preaching, detail of Accademia Magdalen c. 1280 .......................72
6
The Pisan Master, vita panel of Saint Catherine, 1250 ..........................................73
7
Saint Catherine Disputing with Philosophers, detail of vita panel c. 1250 ...........74
8
Giotto di Bondone, Allegory of Chastity, c. 1320s ................................................75
9
Bonaventura Berlighieri, Saint Francis Altarpiece, 1235 .....................................76
10
Duccio di Buoninsegna, back panel of the Maestà altarpiece, 1308 .....................77
11
Umbrian artist, Saint Clare with Eight Scenes from her Life, 1283 ......................78
12
Donatello, Penitent Magdalen, c. 1430-55 ............................................................79
13
Master of the Franciscan Temperas, Madonna and Child, c. 1342 .......................80
14
Master of the Franciscan Temperas, Crucifixion, c. 1342 .....................................81
15
Francesco Botticini (attr.), Virgin and Child Enthroned, c. 1470..........................82
16
Sandro Botticelli, Holy Trinity, c. 1490 .................................................................83
viii 17
Giotto di Bondone, The Magdalen Receiving Holy Communion, c. 1320s ...........84
18
Giotto di Bondone, Blessing of Mary Magdalen, 1320s........................................85
19
Francesco da Sangallo, Penitent Magdalen, c. 1519 .............................................86
20
Mary Magdalen Receiving the Eucharist in her Desert Grotto, detail c. 1280 .....87
ix 1 INTRODUCTION
O quot denigravit iste carbo; id est Beata Magdalena quoniam peccato luxurie erat
denigrate… Unde dicitur Luca vii: Erat quaedam mulier in civitate… Sic talibus
non sufficit igne luxurie sue incendre laicos et pauperes nisi clericos et religiosos
comburant.1
(O how blackened that ember: that is, the Blessed Magdalen, blackened by the sin
of luxuria… Whence Luke 7 says: There was in the city a sinner… So it follows,
it did not suffice to inflame the fire of her lust within the laity and poor unless the
clerics and religious also burn.)
During the thirteenth century, clerics often employed the pre-conversion Magdalen in
sermons, such as the one in the excerpt above, delivered by Eudes de Châteauroux (c.
1190-1273), to illustrate and warn against the dangerous combination of lust and beauty.
These tirades from the pulpit were typical of late-medieval oration and functioned to
educate young women on the inherent weaknesses of their sex, as well as to promote the
chaste, penitential life of the Magdalen following her eremitical retreat into the
wilderness. The latter is the version of the Magdalen pictured on a vita panel, Mary
Magdalen Surrounded by Eight Scenes from her Life of c. 1280 (Figure 1), exhibited at
the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence (henceforward referred to as the Accademia
Magdalen).2 The monumental work features Mary Magdalen in the center painted against
an ethereal golden background. The saint is clad in a mantle of her own luxurious hair
and is flanked on either side by narrative scenes from her life as recounted in the Golden
Legend.3 In her left hand she proffers a scroll inscribed with a message of encouragement
to her viewers. In this thesis, I investigate the iconography and social context of the
Accademia Magdalen to show that the panel was likely created for the convertite
institution of Santa Maria Maddalena la Penitente in Florence, a place of refuge and
repentance for sinful women seeking redemption.
2 Located on the medieval street called Borgo Pinti in the San Pier Maggiore
district outside of the city walls of Florence, the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena
served to shelter and convert repentant prostitutes from about 1257.4 In 1321, the
institution came under the supervision of the Cistercian Order and was henceforward
known as Santa Maria Maddalena di Cestello. The foundation seems to have housed
repentant prostitutes until about 1442.5 Convertite institutions of this type began to
appear rapidly across Europe during the thirteenth century as a result of a broader
ecclesiastical campaign aimed at converting young prostitutes. I will present the convent
of the Santa Maria Maddalena as the likely original institution for the Accademia
Magdalen by examining the panel’s iconography in light of convertite concerns, as well
as by connecting the panel to the broader phenomenon of prostitution reform and
convertite houses across Europe. As further evidence, I will tie the panel and proposed
institution of Santa Maria Maddalena to the social and political context of thirteenthcentury Florence, specifically, to the ruling government during the years surrounding the
panel’s creation—the Angevin royal family.
The Angevins were the overlords of the county of Anjou (the present day Mainet-Loire region of west-central France) and rulers of both the Kingdom of Naples and of
Provence. In 1266, Charles I of Anjou (r.1266-1285) arrived in Florence on papal
instruction and served as chief administrator of civil and penal justice from 1267-1280.6
In 1279, his son, the future Charles II (r. 1289- 1309), miraculously uncovered the
remains of Mary Magdalen within the church of Saint-Maximin in Provence. The House
of Anjou accordingly adopted Mary Magdalen as their patron saint and her cult began to
rapidly grow in Provence.7 I propose that the discovery of Mary Magdalen’s remains in
3 Provence gave rise to the growing cult of the Magdalen in Florence by way of the
Angevin rulers in the city. As the cult of the Magdalen grew in the city, so did the
campaign aimed at converting young harlots. I contend that the Accademia Magdalen
was tied to the trend of prostitution reform and served to instruct a convertite audience in
Florence.
The first known documentation of Mary Magdalen Surrounded by Eight Scenes
from her Life dates from 1791, when Domenico Moreni and Vincenzio Follini identified
it in the inventory of the Florentine church of the Santissima Annunziata.8 Specifically,
the panel was located in a library vestibule within the church and reportedly in good
condition. The panel came to the Accademia from the Annunziata in 1810. 9 The
provenance of the work before 1791 and the circumstances surrounding its commission
are unknown. The Accademia Magdalen first gained art-historical attention in
Toskanische Maler rim XII Jahrhundert (1922) by the German scholar Oswald Sirén.10
Sirén compared the Accademia panel to a group of three Tuscan Madonnas of the same
style—a Madonna in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin, another in the Badia church
in Poppi, and the third found in the church of St. Michele in Rovezzano in Florence. He
proposed that these three Madonnas, as well as the Accademia Madgdalen, were all
executed by the same Florentine artist in the last half of the thirteenth century. Sirén notes
the artist’s stylistic continuity throughout all four works, citing the Master’s focus on the
contours and shadows of the wrinkles in drapery, emphasized with dark strokes. Sirén
goes on to explain that the painter’s stylized figures were likely influenced by the
Byzantine tradition but feature more naturalism and expression in their tilted heads and
the artist’s emphasis on curved shapes. Sirén asserts:
4 Die madonna zeigt in allen diesen drei dieselbe figur und ihre ähnlichkeit mit der
Magdalena des obenbeschriebenen Florentiner Bilds scheint uns unbestreitbar.11
(All three Madonnas have the same figure, and their similarity with the Magdalen
of the above-described Florentine image seems undeniable.)
He refers to the artist responsible for the group of paintings as the “Magdalena-Meister,”
the name by which he is known today. In the years following Sirén’s attribution, art
historians Richard Offner and George Richter provided additional studies with stylistic
and historical evidence to support Sirén’s proposal for the date and attribution of the
Accademia Magdalen.12
More recently, a host of studies have noted the Accademia Magdalen and
mentioned its iconographic and historical significance.13 Several scholars have offered
suggestions regarding the original commissioning institution of the work, as there is no
extant documentation. Magdalen LaRow proposed the possibility that the Accademia
Magdalen could have been created for a Dominican institution, while Joanna Cannon
indicated that friars of the Franciscan Third Order might be the type of group for which
the work was originally designed .14 Catherine Lusheck’s 1992 Master’s thesis is the only
study that is entirely dedicated to the Magdalen panel and its original institution.15 In her
thesis, Lusheck asserts that the Servite brothers of the Annunziata likely commissioned
the Accademia Magdalen. Lusheck argues that in addition to being first documented in
the Annunziata, the iconography and narrative scenes surrounding the saint reflect the
Servite concern with the vita activa and vita contemplativa.
The Accademia Magdalen may well have been a mendicant commission as
hitherto suggested. However, I contend that the panel was meant to serve an audience of
female converts rather than male clerics. Convents such as Santa Maria Maddalena often
5 employed male guardians, usually mendicant friars, to supervise the women inside.16 It is
therefore possible that a mendicant friar commissioned the Accademia Magdalen for the
penitent women at Santa Maria Maddalena.
In the first chapter, I show how the iconography and structure of the Accademia
Magdalen suggests an audience of penitent females rather than male clerics. I begin by
examining the Magdalen’s transformation from Apostle of the Apostles into the penitent
saint displayed on the Accademia Magdalen. As Mary Magdalen developed into a former
prostitute who regained God’s favor through penance, she was naturally the most
appropriate model for the convertite to imitate. I examine several iconographic features
of the panel, such as the inclusion of tower imagery and the scroll proffered by the saint,
to show that these details reflect contemporary convertite concerns of penance, chastity,
and the Eucharist. Additionally, employing contemporary vita panels and altarpieces as
supporting evidence, I argue that the unusual organization of the vita scenes forces
contemplation of the saint’s physical body and mantle of hair through continual crossing
of the figure. This artistic device points to a female audience and served dual purposes: to
remind the proposed convertite viewer of her former life of sin, but also to instruct her on
the path to perfect penance. These visual details point to an audience of female viewers,
specifically, those residing within a convent for repentant prostitutes.
In chapter two, I will consider the wider phenomenon of thirteenth-century
prostitution reform and the resulting emergence of convertite houses. I suggest that
examination of extant documents and convertite literature indicates that these houses for
converts, most dedicated to the Magdalen, employed imagery of the hair-clad prostitute
saint as a visual guide to salvation.17 Further investigation reveals that the Accademia
6 Magdalen, one of the first known examples of the hairy Magdalen,18 and, as I propose,
one of the earliest surviving convertite commissions, possibly served as a catalyst for
future convertite imagery, both in subject matter and in iconography. In her doctoral
dissertation, historian Katherine Jansen assimilated a rough overview of the development
of houses for penitent women throughout Europe. Jansen, however, does not address the
art within these institutions. In Rachel Geschwind’s art-historical study of Magdalen
imagery and its association to prostitution reform in Venice and Rome c. 1500-1700, she
implies an earlier tradition of Magdalen iconography on which her dissertation is built.19
Geschwind focuses more on the influence of the hairy Magdalen type throughout
prostitution reform in early modern Venice and Rome, but less on this Magdalen type as
it developed in early convertite settings. Although certain convertite works are mentioned
separately in many sources, this thesis is the first attempt at investigating the visual
culture within these early foundations. It is my aim to trace the beginning of this
tradition and lay the groundwork for future studies of the influence of the hairy Magdalen
and the use of this type within medieval convertite houses.
In chapter three, I will situate the Accademia Magdalen within the political
context of thirteenth-century Florence. As Sirén places the approximate date of the
panel’s creation at c. 1280, I examine the specific events that occurred in the surrounding
years. In 1279, the Magdalen’s remains were unearthed in Provence by an Angevin
prince whose father was serving as chief administrator of justice in Florence. This event
not only tied the royal family to Mary Magdalen, but also brought the saint’s cult to
Angevin territories in Italy, including the city of Florence. I investigate fourteenthcentury Angevin patronage of Magdalen imagery and convertite institutions via King
7 Charles II and King Robert in Naples and Provence as evidence for a pattern that shows
the earlier commission of the Accademia Magdalen was in all likelihood similarly
designated for a convertite house, Santa Maria Maddalena. Furthermore, as I show, the
iconography of the Accademia Magdalen reflects the Angevin presence in the city, and
quite possibly direct influence on the panel itself. The possible involvement of King
Charles I in the panel’s creation and the family’s documented patronage of later
convertite institutions adds to the mounting evidence that the Accademia Magdalen was
likely created for the Santa Maria Maddalena la Penitente in Florence.
Employing both visual and historical evidence, I will substantiate my hypothesis
that the Accademia Magdalen was likely created for the convertite institution of Santa
Maria Maddalena. Although possibly linked to a mendicant patron or guarding, I suggest
that the Accademia Magdalen was likely created for an audience of women. Through
examination of the panel’s iconography and structure, combined with investigation of
broader religious movements of the thirteenth-century and the political context of
Florence, I make a case for Santa Maria Maddalena, one of the earliest known convertite
houses and the first establishment in the city dedicated to the Mary Magdalen, as the
likelier original location for the panel, rather than the all-male mendicant institutions that
scholars have previously put forth.
8 CHAPTER ONE
Luxuria and Cilicium
The Magdalen’s Duality as a Case for Female Viewership
In a medieval sermon on Mary Magdalen’s act of penance at the Lord’s feet, the
Franciscan preacher Iohannes de Castello exhorted: “Venit in convivio ut que publice
peccaverat publice peniteret.” (She came into the banquet so that she who had sinned
publicly might do public penance.)20 Throughout the Late Middle Ages, clerics and laity
alike viewed Mary Magdalen as a former prostitute, guilty of the sins of vanity, as well as
a holy virgin, her purity restored upon completion of penance. The Magdalen’s dual
embodiment of sinfulness and successful penitence prompted promoters of prostitution
reform to adopt Mary Magdalen as the ideal model of redemption and penitence for
young sinners.21
In this chapter, I examine the structure and iconography of the Accademia
Magdalen, hypothesizing that it was initially created for an audience of repentant
prostitutes at the convertite institution of Santa Maria Maddalena la Penitente in Florence
rather than the all-male mendicant foundations suggested by LaRow, Cannon, and
Lusheck. The Accademia Magdalen may have been a mendicant commission, but
mendicant orders and convertite houses were not mutually exclusive institutions, as I will
discuss further in the next chapter. Regardless of the exact circumstances surrounding the
panel’s commission, the visual evidence explored in this chapter shows that the panel’s
iconography was likely intended for female viewership rather than an audience of
mendicant men. I will first explore the Magdalen’s transformation from intimate friend of
Christ to redeemed prostitute as evidence that the Magdalen was the most appropriate
9 saint for a converted prostitute to imitate. I will then examine the artistic devices and dual
iconography of the Accademia Magdalen and show that the imagery is reflective of the
contemporary convertite concerns regarding chastity, penance, and receiving the
Eucharist.
The Accademia Magdalen is the earliest surviving painted cycle of the saint’s life
as well as the earliest to meld her biblical and non-biblical hagiographies.22 A stained
glass cycle of Mary Magdalen, dated 1220, precedes the Accademia Magdalen by a halfcentury. Located in the Chapel of the Holy Cross in the Bourges Cathedral, this narrative
cycle only reflects the Mary Magdalen’s biblical references, but implies her link with the
desert saint and former prostitute, Mary of Egypt, by placing their two vita cycles side by
side. The Accademia Magdalen, by contrast, includes scenes from her biblical life as well
as her circulating legend. Furthermore, the panel presents a hair-clad, penitent Magdalen,
visually revealing the Magdalen’s conflation with Mary the Egyptian. The Accademia
Magdalen features a near life-sized Mary Magdalen clothed in nothing but her long
tresses. The saint’s figure lays flat against a glittering gold background, recalling the
design of a Byzantine icon. She exudes youth through the rosy tinting on her cheeks, yet
her face remains expressionless and her gaze is focused outward, directly at the viewer.
The Magdalen’s right hand is lifted, palm facing outward in a gesture of oration. In her
left hand she holds an open scroll inscribed with a message of hope for her audience: “Ne
desperetis vos qui peccare soletis, exemploque meo vos reparate deo.”(Do not despair,
you who are hardened sinners. Learn from me and make reparation before God).23
The iconographic tradition of the Magdalen proffering a banner is present in
earlier example from the twelfth century Apostolorum Apostola from the Gospel Book of
10 Henry the Lion (Figure 2). The apostles exhibit a banner that reads, “Dic nobis, Maria,
quid vidisti in via?” (Tell us, Mary, what did you see on the way?) The apostola
apostolorum answers, “Sepulcrum viventis et gloriam resurgentis” (I saw the sepulcher of
the living Christ and the glory of the risen one).24 The message of the Accademia
Magdalen, however, seems to have changed as the saint’s iconography transformed as
well. The Magdalen represented on the Accademia panel no longer recalls the apostola
apostolorum delivering the news of Christ’s resurrection. She has instead evolved into a
shameful harlot on a penitential journey to overcome her past indiscretions. This somber
Magdalen presents a scroll inscribed with a message of encouragement, an epistle that
appears in later Magdalen images from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as
Andrea di Cione’s Symbol of Hope c. 1350 (Figure 3), among others.25
The scenes on either side of the hairy Accademia Magdalen illustrate her vita as
recounted in the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine, Dominican Archbishop of
Genoa a (b. 1230).26 In this 1260 publication, Voragine assimilated biblical references
and circulating hagiographies to create a cogent narrative for Mary Magdalen.27
Following the Passion and the appearance of the risen Christ to the apostola apostolorum,
Voragine describes Mary Magdalen’s eremitical retreat into the wilderness:
…Marie Magdalena post domini adscensionem pro ardore caritatis Christi et
taedio, quod habebat, nunquam hominem videre volebat… in desertum abiit et
triginta ibi annis incongita mansit, ubi, ut ait, qualibet die septem horis canonicis
ab angelo in cocla elevabatur. 28
(… After the ascension [of Christ], Mary Magdalen, out of her affectionate love
for Christ and her weariness, wishing to remain unseen by man… lived unknown
in the wilderness for thirty years, where, everyday at the seven canonical hours
she was carried aloft by angels.)
11 This influential account of Mary Magdalen’s journey remains the authoritative version of
the saint’s vita and is depicted on the Accademia Magdalen in eight episodes. In narrative
order from right to left across the panel, these scenes are: Mary Magdalen in the House of
the Pharisee, The Raising of Lazarus, Noli me tangere, The Magdalen Preaching, The
Ascension of the Magdalen, Mary Magdalen Receiving Communion in her Desert Grotto,
Mary Magdalen Receiving Communion from Bishop Maximin, and The Magdalen’s
Burial.
Scholarship on this vita panel type, a central holy figure surrounded by scenes
from their life, is extensive.29 The form was first thought to be an Italian invention until a
collection of earlier thirteenth-century Byzantine examples was found at the Monastery
of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai in the 1960s.30 Following that discovery, scholars such
as Nancy Ševčenko and James Stubblebeine have made the link between the Byzantine
and Italian form clear, concluding that the Italian artists appropriated the small Eastern
form and monumentalized it for use as an altarpiece.31 In his seminal study of the
emergence of the Italian altarpiece, Klaus Krüger turns to vita panels for important
evidence.32 According to Krüger, in their early stage, vita panels functioned similarly to
their Eastern counterparts, placed on the high altar during the saint’s feast day. However,
in the later phase of their development, Krüger proposes that the Italian panels were
placed on side altars in connection with the saint’s relics, becoming a permanent part of
the saint’s shrine and stationary objects. The Italian vita panel remained similar in style to
its Byzantine prototype (Figure 4), which featured a saint in the center, in this case
Catherine of Alexandria, surrounded on all sides by scenes from her life. In the Italian
12 panels, however, the narrative scenes became confined to the left and right of the holy
person in the center instead of on all four sides.33
Although Mary Magdalen did not begin her saintly journey as an ex-prostitute,
over thirteen centuries of reinterpretations of the sources, she was eventually transformed
into the penitent sinner painted against the gold background of the Accademia Magdalen.
Mary Magdalen is mentioned by name eight times in the Gospel accounts.34 These brief,
sometimes contradictory, citations invited interpretation and elaboration from medieval
clerics. Three disciples name her as having been present at the Crucifixion, and Mark and
Luke name her as being “cured of seven devils,” and all four Gospel writers place her at
the tomb of Jesus the morning after his burial. Only John, however, names her as the first
person to see the risen Lord and even have a conversation with him, during which Christ
gives her the responsibility of spreading the Good News of his resurrection to the
world.35 From these fleeting accounts, four significant facts about Mary Magdalen’s life
can be ascertained: she was one of Christ’s female followers, was present at the
Crucifixion, witnessed the Resurrection, and according to John, was charged with
ministering the Christian message and spreading the Good News of Christ’s
Resurrection.36 However clear the above facts may seem, they have been muddled and
obscured throughout history. Her scriptural account became confused with other women
in the bible, namely the unidentified sinner in Luke chapter seven, as well as Mary of
Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus.37
In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) spoke on behalf of
the Church to eliminate confusion among the laity regarding Mary Magdalen’s lustful
ways before her conversion.38 In Homily XXXIII, he established the idea of the
13 “composite” Magdalen, asserting that Mary Magdalen was in fact Luke’s unnamed
female sinner who washed Christ’s feet with her hair, as well as Mary of Bethany, and
also Mary of Magdala, from whom seven devils were cast out. Pope Gregory explained:
Hanc vero quam Lucas peccatricem mulierem, Joannes Mariam nominat, illam
esse Mariam credimus, de qua Marcus septem daemonia ejecta fuisse testatur.39
(It is certain that she who Luke called a sinner, who John called Mary, she is the
same, we believe, from which Mark witnessed the flight of seven devils.)
Pope Gregory boldly fused three different women from the bible to form one figure,
Mary Magdalen, whom he called a shameful sinner, having taken part in forbidden acts.
The union of Mary Magdalen with Luke’s female sinner indicated that the unspecified
sins of the Magdalen were sexual in nature, as medieval clerics viewed fornication as a
distinctly female sin.40 The transformation of Mary Magdalen from her biblical role of
Apostle of the Apostles to redeemed prostitute was thus complete.
I suggest that the repentant harlot pictured on the Accademia Magdalen was a
fitting example for the fallen women within a convertite institution to follow. In addition
to employing the Magdalen and her vita as a literal model to imitate, the structure and
iconography reflect several other concerns of the medieval convertite women, chief
amongst was the concern with reclaiming virginity. This concern was a result of medieval
gender theology, which regarded female sexuality as distinctly different than that of men.
This has roots in the tenets of medieval science, which dictated that the cold and wet
humors of women (in contrast with the hot and dry humors of men) led women to possess
insatiable sexual appetites.41 Dominican friar Hugh of Saint-Cher (d. 1263) identified
avarice as the sin of men and fornication as the sin to which women were most inclined.
Saint-Cher proclaimed,
14 Et quamvis multa peccata sint in utroque sexu: tamen avarita praecipue abundant
in viris, fornicatio in mulieribus.42
(And although there are a number of sins in both sexes: still, avarice abounds
among men, fornication among women.)
This sexual difference dictated that medieval women were easily seduced, predisposed
toward sexual sin and temptation, and always ready for intercourse.43 A woman’s chastity
was also suspect, as it was believed that promiscuity led to sterility, while virginity
yielded a wealth of healthy fruit.44 In addition, according to the Parable of the Sower
(Matthew 13: 18-23), which was often expounded by medieval clerics, only virgins were
to receive the hundredfold fruit of blessedness in heaven, while widows received
sixtyfold and married women received thirtyfold.45 Because sexual indiscretion was a sin
mostly attributed to women, losing one’s virginity seemed to weigh more heavily on
medieval women than men, and surely weighed most heavily on the convertite women,
who took the veil in order to atone for their indiscriminate sexuality.
The epistle inscribed on the Magdalen’s scroll, “Do not despair, you who are
hardened sinners. Learn from me and make reparation before God,” is a clear message of
encouragement, and, I contend, is most suitable for a convertite audience. “Do not
despair” is a message of hope aimed directly at reformed prostitutes mourning the loss of
their virginity. Medieval preachers offered the example of the Magdalen as a way to
overcome this loss, as she was considered to hold a special place in the chorus of Virgins
in heaven, only second to the Virgin Mary herself.46 Friar Ludovicus, a medieval
Franciscan preacher, clarified this idea during a Magdalen sermon:
Non est mirum quantus prae aliis honoretur in celis que prae aliis honorabatur in
terris. In terris ipsa fuit apostolorum apostola … Ecclesia etiam sancta in letaniis
eam praeponere consuevit omnibus virginibus. 47
15 (It is not surprising how much [Mary Magdalen] was honored before all the others
in heaven as on earth. On earth, she was the apostle of the apostles… The Holy
Church likewise put her in front of all the virgins in the litany.)
Sermons of this type explained that through penance, contrition, and vigilant maintenance
of her chastity, Mary Magdalen’s virginity was restored. This concept of reclaimed purity
was likely a foremost concern in the mind of convertite women, as they shared the same
former transgressions of the Magdalen and could most closely identify with her path to
restored virginity.48 The Magdalen’s message does not seem to indicate an audience of
male clerics, as the religious clergy were not typically “hardened sinners,” nor in a state
of despair due to their past sins. The hopeful inscription on the Accademia Magdalen
likely meant to inspire the women of the convent to imitate Mary Magdalen while
simultaneously serving as a reminder that the loss of one’s virginity can be remedied
through penance.
The notion of chastity is also symbolically evoked through the stone towers
within the vita scenes on the Accademia panel. The first scene, Mary Magdalen in the
House of the Pharisee, illustrates the anointing of Christ’s feet from Luke 7:36-50.49
Adorned in a red cloak and golden halo, Mary Magdalen kneels in front of Jesus against
the background of a cityscape, shedding tears of shame. The Raising of Lazarus directly
follows and depicts the biblical account in which Jesus raises Lazarus, Mary Magdalen’s
supposed brother, from the dead. The fourth narrative, The Magdalen Preaching (Figure
5), is an extra-biblical account that takes place in Marseille. This otherwise intolerable
preaching habit is justified by the preceding scene on the panel, Noli me tangere, in
which the Magdalen receives the title of apostola apostolorum after seeing the risen
Christ. In the preaching scene, Mary Magdalen is declaring the Good News of Christ’s
16 Resurrection to a group of men and women in contemporary dress. She stands above the
crowd with her right hand up in a two-finger gesture of blessing and is perfectly aligned
with the tower in the background. In The Magdalen’s Burial, the final scene on the panel,
grieving clerics outfitted in red vestments surround Mary Magdalen’s funeral bier atop
which the fragile saint lies. These episodes from the Magdalen’s life depict a cityscape in
the background, and in one scene, the Magdalen is even aligned with the stone tower
behind her.
Although typical of the medieval Florentine landscape, the image of the tower
functioned as the central symbol of virginity in artistic and religious vocabulary.50 More
importantly, the symbol gained further popularity in Florence during the mid-thirteenth
century, in the years leading up to the creation of the Accademia Magdalen.51 The tower
earned increased recognition through the account of Umiliana de’Cerchi (d.1246), a
Florentine widow. According to her biographer, the Florentine penitent returned to her
father’s house following the death of her husband in the year 1241. A grieving widow,
Umiliana decided to retreat to her family’s tower and use it as her own wilderness and
personal stronghold against sexual temptation. Although a mighty fortress, she was
plagued by a serpent that continually slithered into the tower and wrapped itself around
her body while she slept, endangering her pursuit of strict chastity. Ultimately, Umiliana
defeated the writhing creature and threw it from her tower window. Vito da Cortona, a
Franciscan friar and friend of Umiliana, recorded this story in the year of her death,
1246.52 This account likely circulated in Florence throughout the thirteenth century, as it
both occurred and was recorded in that city.
17 It is plausible that the visual alignment of Mary Magdalen with the tower, a
recognized emblem of virginity in Florence, reflects the convertite concern with
safeguarding chastity and functioned as a reminder of this requirement for the audience
of penitent women. An earlier vita panel of Saint Catherine of Alexandria c. 1250 (Figure
6) further demonstrates the association of this motif with a virgin saint. One scene on the
panel, Saint Catherine Disputing with the Philosophers (Figure 7), bears a striking
resemblance to the preaching episode from the Accademia Magdalen (Figure 5). The two
saints, one a virgin and one whose virginity has been restored, are similarly pictured
aligned with a tower, their hands up in a gesture of blessing. The use of a tower to
represent virginity, or vigilant chastity, can also be seen in later Italian works, such as
Giotto’s Allegory of Chastity c. 1320 (Figure 8). The visual parallel of Mary Magdalen
with a tower not only represents her reclaimed virginity, but also likely served to remind
the female audience of their own quest for virginal redemption through maintained
abstinence and penitence.
It should also be noted that the use of tower imagery throughout the Accademia
Magdalen could additionally be indicative of a mendicant commission. As well as being
concerned with the notion of chastity, the mendicants were also an urban order and
usually built their convents in city centers.53 Thus, visually, these begging orders are
known for pairing images of cityscapes with those of reclusion, alluding to the ascetic life
within the worldly life, as evidenced by the Saint Francis vita panel c. 1235 (Figure 9).
The articulation of cityscapes via stone towers in the Accademia Magdalen has a
multivalent meaning that alludes to chastity while additionally reflecting mendicant
18 iconography. In any case, both the convertite and the mendicants were concerned with
virginity, and I maintain that this notion is deliberately articulated on the panel.
Reclamation of lost virginity could be accomplished solely through the act of
penance, another central focus for the convertite, as the notion is closely associated with
the Magdalen. The details of the thirteenth century penitential movement will be
addressed in the next chapter; however, the Accademia Magdalen reflects the emerging
fervor for penance through the unique sequencing of events in Mary Magdalen’s vita.
The scenes are arranged in narrative order from right to left, and the viewer is thus forced
to continually cross the figure of the saint between each scene to fully understand the
Magdalen’s story. Reading the narrative scenes up and down instead of right to left was
common in Italian vita panels during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, as
established in the vita panels of Saint Clare and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, as well as
in altarpieces such as Duccio’s celebrated Maestà altarpiece (Figure 10). Given these
examples, it can be inferred that reading of scenes in this fashion was standard and
familiar to the medieval viewer. The Accademia panel deviates from this structural
method in order to achieve a specific devotional objective. Considering that the
illustrated lives of saints are not records, but instead constructions designed through
artistic devices with a desired result in mind, this unusual arrangement of the scenes in
the Accademia Magdalen surely relates to the original function of this image.54 I contend
that the desired result of this choice to sequence the story horizontally, rather than
vertically, was penitential contemplation of the saint’s corporeality and long mantle of
hair between each narrative scene on the panel. In the following paragraphs, I offer
19 evidence as to why meditation on these aspects of the redeemed saint was likely geared
toward a group of former harlots at a convertite institution.
It is immediately apparent that the primary focus of the Accademia Magdalen is
the imposing figure of the saint herself. Unlike most works of this type, she does not have
her own architectural niche in which to stand.55 Rather, she encroaches on the scenes that
surround her. The visual crossing of her figure between each episode reinforces further
the physical presence of the saint to be contemplated during the visual reading of her life.
According to Caroline Walker Bynum, medieval female spirituality was highly emotional
and focused on the body of Christ and his humanity.56 This feminine concern with
corporeality, reflected in the panel’s structure, originates from the unpleasant rhetoric of
the female body that developed in the early medieval period. 57 The alleged female
inclination toward sexuality and the association of woman with Eve led medieval
theologians to associate the female body with temptation and the consequent Fall of
mankind. Accordingly, a medieval woman’s temptation would be sexual in nature and
involve her physical body, as seen in the example of the Magdalen.58
For the proposed audience of convertite women, the purpose of the overt focus on
Mary Magdalen’s corporeality would have served to instruct the women on the path to
penance: as their body was the source of their sin, it should be made to bear the
permanent marks of punishment, or penance.59 Bodily mortification among women took
many forms in the Middle Ages including holy anorexia, flagellation, and mutilation.60 In
this case, however, the path to penance for the convertite is alluded to in the example of
the Accademia Magdalen – the donning of a hair-shirt
20 The hair-shirt, or cilicium, was a garment of rough cloth made from the hair of a
goat and worn around the body as a sign of mortification and penance.61 It was probably
similar to the sackcloth mentioned in Psalm 34:13 of the Latin Vulgate, as well as the
cilicium worn by the eremite John the Baptist.62 This concept developed into the donning
of one’s own hair as a hair-shirt, found in examples of the desert saints from the Vitae
Patrum, a fourth-century compilation of aphorisms that became widely known in the
Western world by the sixth century.63 Emerging from this collection of saintly accounts
was the legend of Mary of Egypt, a former prostitute, who retreated to the desert in
penance, wearing only a mantle of her own long hair. Certain aspects of Mary of Egypt’s
legend, particularly the donning of a hair-shirt, were likely conflated with the legend of
Mary Magdalen throughout the centuries. In the Middle Ages, the hair-shirt was not
uncommon, as Charlemagne (d. 814), for example, was reportedly buried in his.64 The
sackcloth was also employed among female penitents and anchorites, such as Jutta of
Sponheim (d. 1136), Maria of Venice (d. 1399), and Margery of Kempe (d. 1438), in
order to safeguard their chastity.65
The hairy Magdalen may be tied to penance for a sin specifically related to female
sexuality. The representation of a hairy Magdalen was not an established Florentine
tradition and, in fact, the Accademia Magdalen is one of the first instances in which the
saint is represented as naked, by implication, covered only in her long hair.66 This novel
feature in all likelihood was introduced to serve a particular purpose: to remind the
panel’s proposed female viewers of their former indiscretions as well as provide them a
visual guide in the practice of penance. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
preachers used the pre-conversion Magdalen as an example of vanity and its
21 consequences, namely the vice of luxuria and the practice of prostitution. Luxuria, as
articulated by theologians, was described as the craving for carnal desires, or lust, which
was deemed a capital sin.67 Luxuria was also viewed as a disease, or sickness of the soul,
because it implied otherwise innocent men in a sinful act. On the contagion of luxuria,
Eudes de Châteauroux preached:
Sic qui communicat luxurioso induet luxuriam… Qui enim tetigerit peccatricem
inquinabitur as ea. Peccatum enim est morbus contagiosus et maxime peccatum
luxurie. 68
(Thus he who takes part in lust will be clothed in lust… Whoever touches a
sinner will be polluted by her. For sin is a contagious disease and especially so is
the sin of luxuria.)
Loose and unbound hair on adult women fell into this category of luxuria, as hair
was associated with female sexuality and was also considered a vain superfluity.69
Medieval prostitutes were known to spend time on their elaborate hairstyles, provoking
continual sermons on the vanity of long, extravagant hair and the consequences of
beauty. I contend that the Magdalen’s hair served to remind the convertite of the
consequences of lust and simultaneously offered an avenue to absolution. As Mary
Magdalen used her hair to first entice and then repent, so should young penitents imitate
her—by using the hair they once exploited in luxuria to entice young men, they should
instead employ it as a tool for contrition. It is not only the presence of the Magdalen’s
figure and long tresses that are significant, but the requirement to reflect on these aspects
between each scene that caters not only to an audience of women, but specifically
addresses a group of former prostitutes through visual devices.
The Accademia Magdalen reflects yet another concern specific to its proposed
function within a convertite house: preoccupation with the Eucharist. The Eucharistic
22 emphasis throughout the panel reflects not only a distinctly feminine concern with the
body and blood of Christ, but more importantly, it reveals the original function for the
panel: it was in all likelihood the high altarpiece of the convent. The Magdalen Master
represented the saint receiving the Eucharist twice: once in Mary Magdalen Receiving
Communion in her Desert Grotto, and again in Mary Magdalen Receiving Communion
from Bishop Maximin. The first of these, in which Mary Magdalen receives the Eucharist
in her cave, is not actually described in Voragine’s account of the saint’s vita, nor is it
part of any known sermon or early legend.70 I suggest the artist’s elaboration of Mary
Magdalen’s legend and his purposeful integration of a second Eucharist scene was likely
meant to serve a liturgical purpose and is reflective of the panel’s function within the
space.
Medieval devotion to the Eucharist seemed to be a gendered phenomenon and can
be interpreted as both a consequence of the corporeal aspect of feminine spirituality as
well as the renewed significance of the Eucharist following the Fourth Lateran Council at
the beginning of the thirteenth century.71 The two communion scenes on the Accademia
Magdalen reveal this feminine fascination with the Eucharist and I suggest that this visual
addition to her legend reflects the convertite devotion to the body and blood of Christ.
Additionally, the Eucharistic emphasis indicates a function for the panel as an altarpiece,
beneath which the Host is consecrated and received, rather than a processional panel used
on the saint’s feast day. When comparing the Accademia Magdalen to contemporary vita
panels that were commissioned as altarpieces, such as those of Saint Catherine of
Alexandria (Figure 6), Saint Francis (Figure 9), and Saint Claire (Figure 11),72 the
similarities are striking. All of the aforementioned panels display a gabled top, a common
23 feature of medieval altarpieces.73 In addition, the panels are similar in scale, measuring
life-sized or larger. The continuity of scale among the works implies a similar function,
and the large scale indicates their place on the high altar. The addition of an invented
Eucharist scene furthers the evidence that the Accademia Magdalen served as an
altarpiece and likely reflected the function of the institution for which it was made. The
panel would not have been a fitting altarpiece for the male clergy within the Annunziata
due to the structural emphasis on the body of the saint-- an element prevalent in female
spirituality. The focus on the physical figure of Mary Magdalen also highlighted the dual
notions of lust and penance that characterized the convertite, aspects that an audience of
male clergy would not related to. Additionally, the Magdalen’s youthful appearance and
presumed nudity beneath her hair-shirt would not have been appropriate for a male
viewers, as the focus on sexuality could perhaps lead to temptation. I contend that the
Accademia Magdalen was commissioned for the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena as a
didactic and devotional aid to the penitent women inside.
The concerns present among the convertite—chastity and the Eucharist—are
illustrated through the Accademia Magdalen’s narrative scenes, while the notion of
penance is reflected through the narrative sequencing devised to place emphasis on the
saint’s corporeality and remarkable hair-dress. These aspects all indicate female
viewership. Additionally, the integration of a second communion scene and the
comparison of the Accademia Magdalen with contemporary vita panel altarpieces reveal
a function for the panel as a high altarpiece, below which the Eucharist is consecrated and
consumed.
24 While possibly commissioned by a mendicant friar, the iconographic duality of
the Accademia Magdalen suggests female viewers, rather than the hitherto suggested
audience of men at the Santissima Annunziata. The overt emphasis on the Magdalen’s
body coupled with her girlish appearance and rose-tinted cheeks, places the saint’s
sexuality at the forefront. The artist took no care to conceal the explicit reference to her
implied nudity, and perhaps even more significant, the artist fixed the saint’s gaze to stare
directly at the viewer. The Magdalen Master rendered the saint in such a way that appears
as if she took just one step, her luxurious hair would glide off of her smooth skin, and her
nude body would be on display. The forced contemplation of the Accademia Magdalen’s
long, smooth hair between each scene, both a symbol of luxuria and an allusion to the
cilicium, would be likely understood more as an object of luxuria and desire to an
audience of men.
The Accademia Magdalen, one of the first images to place Mary Magdalen as the
devotional focus, does not seem to have served an audience of male clerics, as the duality
of the saint’s hair and body would not have served to remind and instruct, as it would
(and likely did) in a convertite setting, but rather would have instead functioned to entice
and seduce. It is important to note that in this case, the gender of the patron of the work
does not necessarily dictate the gender of the intended audience. In the next chapter, I
will further explore this notion as well as the prostitution and penitential movements in
which these institutions emerged in order to further situate the Accademia Magdalen
within its historical and religious context.
25 CHAPTER TWO
Exemplum Perfecte Penitentie
The Magdalen as Mirror in Medieval Convertite Institutions
Shelters for convertite began to appear across Europe as a result of prostitution
reform sweeping the continent during the thirteenth century. These establishments were
typically dedicated to the Magdalen, as the eremitic saint had become the principle
symbol of hope and the model of penance for fallen women. 74 The Accademia
Magdalen, the first known image in Tuscany to feature the prostitute saint as the
devotional focus, would have likely been displayed in one of these institutions. In the
previous chapter, I examined the iconography and structure of the Accademia panel as
reflections of convertite concerns. In this chapter, I investigate the visual culture of these
emergent foundations in order to contextualize the Accademia Magdalen within a wider
framework and suggest that this panel may have served as the foundation for a tradition
of convertite imagery. In this pursuit, I examine the religious context of the thirteenthcentury penitential movement and its ties to prostitution reform and convertite houses. I
then present surviving examples of Magdalen imagery within convertite settings in
France and Italy, followed by examples from Florence, in order to situate the Accademia
Magdalen as one of the firsts in this larger tradition.
Prostitution reform in medieval Europe has been the theme of several scholarly
works.75 In addition, Katherine Jansen provides a geographically organized overview of
the development of convertite houses in her doctoral dissertation, “Mary Magdalen and
the Mendicants in Late Medieval Italy.”76 However, no study to date has linked the
convertite house phenomenon with a visual culture. This thesis is the first attempt to trace
26 a history of the art housed within and commissioned for these institutions and it thus lays
the groundwork for future studies. In what follows, I wish to situate the Mary Magdalen
panel within the broader thirteenth-century context of the religious campaign dedicated to
conversion, the houses that emerged to shelter these potential converts, and the
iconographic tradition associated with such foundations.
The medieval church defined prostitution based on promiscuity and gain.
Reiterating the basic principle of prostitution articulated by Jerome (c. 342-420), canon
law in the Middle Ages defined a prostitute as one who is not only promiscuous, but
indiscriminately promiscuous.77 This was voiced by the jurist Gratian (d. 1159), the
founding father of canon law, in his Decretum of 1140:
Promiscuum, id est, indifferenter et indistincte comisceret scilicet canino amore.
Canes enim indifferenter et indistincte comiscerentur.78
(Promiscuous, that is, she copulates indifferently and indiscriminately, as in
canine love. Dogs indeed copulate indifferently and indiscriminately.)
In the thirteenth century, prominent canonists added the element of notoriety to the
definition of the prostitute and indicated that these women were deceptive by nature.79
Since the Roman Empire and throughout the Middle Ages, prostitution was
mostly regarded as a necessary evil in society.80 According to Vern Bullough, medieval
authorities struggled with how to regulate the prostitution trade and gradually established
a solution: these women were to be consigned to a segregated area of town and made to
wear a specific wardrobe so that their profession would be easily identified.81 Compared
with the Romans, who viewed the prostitute as a revolting creature of low-status, in
accordance with circulating ideas about gender, medieval society viewed her as a
vulnerable and helpless sinner who could still be redeemed by the grace of God.82
27 An ecclesiastical campaign to save fallen women began early in the twelfth
century, when Robert of Arbrissel (c. 1045-1116) founded one of the first shelters for
repentant prostitutes. At his French abbey at Fontevrault, located in the county of Anjou,
one house was dedicated to sheltering and converting repentant women and was
dedicated to Mary Magdalen.83 In 1198, Pope Innocent III (c. 1160-1216) dictated a letter
that called for lay Christians to aid in the prostitution reform movement. In his letter, he
exhorted that if a man should marry a prostitute, and thus save her from a life of sin and
shame in the brothel, that man should be forgiven of all sins.84 The Pope wrote,
Statuimus, ut omnibus qui publicas mulieres de lapanari extraxerint et duxerint in
uxores, quod agunt, in remissionem proficiat peccatorum. 85
(We decree that for everyone who will extract public women from the
whorehouses and marry them, because they do so, their sins shall be remitted.)
Thus, in order to receive absolution, the prostitute could be saved and converted from her
sinful ways by a good Christian man, or she could pledge her life to cloistered devotion
in one of the many convertite houses that began to appear across Europe. Medieval
clerics offered that, in exchange for leaving their life of luxuria, prostitutes would gain
eternal salvation by entering such an institution, and in some cases, taking the veil.86
According to Katherine Jansen, most of these convertite houses were appropriately
dedicated to Mary Magdalen and followed Augustinian rule.87 As I will show, the visual
tradition surrounding these organizations often employed imagery featuring Mary
Magdalen as a didactic tool.
The first known appearances of convertite foundations include the
aforementioned twelfth-century abbey at Fontevrault, the first known convertite house in
the West.88 In the East, according to J.M.B. Porter, Empress Theodora (527-48)
28 established one of the first institutions for repentant prostitutes, reportedly housing five
hundred converted nuns throughout Theodora’s lifetime. In 1225, Guillame d’Auvergne
founded a convent in Paris for penitent prostitutes under Augustinian rule.89 In southern
France, institutions for repentant women were founded in Marseille, Avignon, Aix-enProvence, Toulouse, Montpellier, and Perpignan near the end of the thirteenth and into
the beginning of the fourteenth century. In Germany, an actual order was established with
the goal of converting prostitutes and was granted sanction in 1227.90 This order, the
Penitent Sisters of the Blessed Mary Magdalen, founded more than forty convents
dedicated to redeeming harlots throughout Germany, the Low Countries, and Bohemia. In
Italy, convertite houses appeared in Pisa, Rome, Bologna, Messina, and Florence between
c. 1240 and 1260. 91 In the following century in Italy, two Magdalen houses emerged in
the Angevin-ruled kingdom of Naples, as well as another one in Florence named
Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite.
Each convertite house maintained the same fundamental goal—to take in and
shelter current or former prostitutes. However, not all of these organizations were similar
in nature. When comparing the extant convertite documents from Perpignan and
surviving statutes from Avignon, it is evident that establishments ranged in nature from
cloistered convents with strict rules and regulations, to halfway houses, where the women
were free to come and go.92 The convertite house of the Sisters of Saint Mary Magdalen
in Perpignan was established c. 1320 and was likely founded by Queen Esclaramunda of
Majorca. Although the statutes are now lost, Leah Otis points out that extant documents
concerning everyday activities can be just as revealing. In Perpignan, apparently, the
women had their own rooms and were allowed to bring a number of personal items into
29 the convent. In addition, Otis cites many incidents of violence and irresponsibility among
the women, as well as the fact that they were able to leave the convent and come back at
will.93
In sharp contrast, the extant statutes from the convertite institution at Sainte
Marie Madeleine in Avignon, founded c. 1280, reflect a much more strict, convent-style
environment.94 The convertite there were not permitted to wear tight clothes or garments
of precious material, so that their outward appearance would reflect their newfound inner
honesty. On keeping silence, chapter seven of the statutes decreed:
Les dictes seurs se abstiendront de toutes paroles illicites et deshonnestes, de
blasphèmes, d’opprobes, de murmurations, détractions, mensonges, perjures,
juremens, injures, crieries et rumerus quelzonques; ains tiendront tousjours
silence depuis l’heure de complies et faict le signe de la cloche par la sacretaine
jusque à la première heure qu’on retournera sonner la cloche la jour ensuivant, à
l’arbire de la gouvernante et prioress. 95
(The said sisters will abstain from all illicit and dishonest words, from
blasphemies, from shameful statements, from murmurs, detractions, lies,
foreswearing, oaths, insults, shouting, and any sort of noise whatsoever; indeed,
they will always keep silence from the hour of compline when the sacristan has
rung until the first hour that the bell sounds again the following day, at the
discretion of the governess and prioress.)
Further in the regulations, the consequence for any disobedience was spelled out:
Celles qui crieront, et diront parolles illicites au temps et lieux dessusdictz,
mangeront du pain et boyront de l’eaue en terre, devant toutes les seurs du
couvent. 96
(Those who shout out and who say illicit words at the aforementioned times and
place will eat bread and drink water on the floor before all the sisters of the
convent.)
Convertite establishments differ further on the question of ecclesiastical order.97 It
appears as though most institutions operated under either Augustinian or Cistercian rule.
However, some houses were privately funded, while others employed guardians of a
30 different rule to supervise the women within the convent. For example, Santa Maria
Maddalena in Naples operated under the Augustinian Order but was supervised by a
Franciscan guardian.98 Although diverse in rule, most convent-style institutions focused
on the same principles of conversion and penance.
These principles are reflected in the Magdalen imagery employed within the
growing convertite foundations. The Sisters of Saint Mary Magdalen in Perpignan, for
example, was firmly situated within the artistic culture of the medieval convertite house,
as they displayed several images of their patron saint, presumably for the purpose of
instruction and devotion.99 The convent reportedly owned a wooden statue of Mary
Magdalen as well as a painted altarpiece featuring the saint. Additionally, the treasury at
the convertite foundation was said to possess a “reliquiari de sancta Maria Magdalena ab
dos angles qui la tenen molt bel” (reliquary of Saint Mary Magdalen that was beautiful
from every angle).100
In Naples, Mary Magdalen iconography appeared inside the convertite house of
Santa Maria Maddalena. This convent was founded by the Angevin Queen Sancia of
Majorca c. 1324.101 Sancia was the daughter of Queen Esclaramunda, wife of King
Robert of Anjou (r. 1309-1343), and had a passion for converting the lost prostitute. In a
papal bull, Clement IV put the institution under papal protection and remarked that there
were 340 sisters within the convent, and some had already vowed chastity, poverty, and
perpetual enclosure.102
The hair-clad Mary Magdalen is depicted in two episodes within a larger narrative
cycle of four scenes, now privately owned, that were once exhibited on the wall of the
Neapolitan convent.103 Painted using tempera on linen, the cycle of paintings emphasizes
31 the theme of penance through bodily mortification and include two episodes that feature
Mary Magdalen—Madonna and Child with Saints Clare and Mary Magdalen (Figure 13)
and the Crucifixion (Figure 14). In both scenes, Mary Magdalen is robed in her long hair
as a sign of her faithful penitence, depicted at the right hand side of both the Virgin and
Christ, respectively. In addition to employing a hairy Magdalen, the cycle reflects the
imagery of the Accademia Magdalen via the use of bright red throughout the canvas.
According to Adrian Hoch, the repetitive employment of this color unifies the cycle and
alludes to the blood that is shed during extreme penitential suffering. Both Perpignan and
Naples offer examples of an emerging artistic tradition within convertite houses. The use
of Magdalen imagery in both French and Italian institutions suggests a wider culture of
Magdalen imagery as an educational tool for penance.
The emphasis on penance in the Neapolitan cycle can be explained as a result of
the Fourth Lateran Council held in November 1215.104 Assembled by Pope Innocent III
(r. 1198-1216), this influential conclave, hosting more than 1200 clergy members,
gathered to discuss the role of penance in the church, among other ecclesiastical issues.
One result of the Council was the reformulation of penitential theology dictated in Canon
twenty-one, omnis utriusque sexus. In order to receive the Eucharist, this canon required
that:
Omnis utriusque sexus fidelis, postquam ad annos discrectionis pervenerit, omnia
sua solus peccata confiteatur fideliter, saltem semel in anno proprio sacerdoti, et
iniunctam sibi poenitentiam stidenat pro viribus adimplere…105
(All the faithful of either sex, after they have reached the age of discernment,
should individually confess all their sins in a faithful manner to their own priest at
least once a year, and let them take care to do that they can to perform the
penance imposed on them...)
32 The concepts of penance and the Eucharist were thus inextricably linked, as one required
the other. Canon twenty-one went on to dictate the punishments of not abiding by these
new regulations: “…alioquin et vivens ab ingressu ecclesiae arceatur et moriens
christiana careat sepultura” (Otherwise, they shall be barred from entering a church
during their lifetime and they shall be denied a Christian burial).106
In the wake of the Council, a new enthusiasm for penance began to arise, as
salvation became the sole avenue to receiving the Eucharist. Additionally, Canon ten of
the historic council, De praedicatoribus instituendis (On appointing preachers), granted
the mendicant orders their mandate to preach:
Per se ipsos… generali constitutione sancimus, ut episcopi viros idoneos ad
sanctae praedicationis offcium salubriter exequendum assumant, potentes in opere
et sermone…107
(We therefore decree… by this general constitution that bishops are to appoint
suitable men to carry out with profit this duty of sacred preaching, men who are
powerful in word and deed…)
However, the newly mandated preachers were limited to preach solely on the subject of
penance, as they were untrained to orate on higher theological matters.108
Almost immediately, the Franciscan and Dominican Orders began to deliver
sermons on the subject of sacramental penance, using the redeemed Magdalen as the
exemplum perfecte penitentie, and thus perpetuating the preoccupation with prostitution
reform.109 Employing the saint as a didactic tool, mendicant preachers emphasized
contrition and confession as qualifications for penance, and ultimately, for salvation. On
the Magdalen’s feast day, the twenty-second of July, preachers would deliver sermons
geared toward the reinvented idea of penance, providing important insight into this
medieval phenomenon that Jansen describes as “penitential fever.”110 In one such
33 discourse, Jacobus de Voragine delivered a message on contrition and the threefold
meaning of the Magdalen’s tears at the feet of Christ. He explained:
Quae quidem lachrymae tres magnas efficascias habuerunt. Primo fecerunt ipsam
totam mundam… Secundo fecerunt sibi serenam conscientiam… Tertio in ipsa
auqa lachrymarum submerse sunt omnia criminal euis. 111
(Her tears have had three efficacious results. First, they purged her of all sin.
Second, they created within her a peaceful conscience. Third, in the water of her
tears, all her sins were purged.)
By mid-thirteenth century, prostitution reform was quickly accelerating as a result
of rekindled enthusiasm for sacramental penance preached by the newly mandated
mendicant orders. Houses for repentant women dedicated to the Magdalen appeared
across Europe, and I have offered evidence for a larger visual tradition of Magdalen
imagery exists in the examples of Perpignan and Naples. I will now narrow my focus to
the visual tradition of Florentine convertite houses to argue that the Accademia Magdalen
served an audience of penitents based on both the broader visual context as well as the
localized use of the Magdalen within these Florentine foundations.
The convent of Santa Maria Maddalena la Penitente, known today as Santa Maria
Maddalena dei’Pazzi, was founded c. 1257 in Florence’s Borgo Pinti district.112 The
foundation seems to have housed repentant prostitutes until c. 1442, at which time the
convertite departed and the institutional function changed from convertite house to
Cistercian monastery, housing monks who followed said rule.113 In 1470, soon after the
departure of the converted prostitutes, the Cistercian monks at Santa Maria Maddalena
commissioned an altarpiece featuring the Virgin surrounded by cherubs, with Saints
Mary Magdalen and Bernard on either side (Figure 14.) 114 Attributed to the artist
Botticini, Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints Bernard and Mary Magdalen portrays
34 the Magdalen as a penitent hermit, clad in her long hair, kneeling and praying to the right
of the Virgin Enthroned. In contrast to the Accademia Magdalen, the devotional focus in
the Botticini altarpiece is the Virgin, rather than the corporeality of Mary Magdalen.
It seems plausible that the Cistercian monks residing at Santa Maria Maddalena
commissioned this new altarpiece as a replacement for the Accademia Magdalen that
once occupied the same space. As the audience of Santa Maria Maddalena shifted from
female to male, the altarpiece therefore transferred devotional emphasis from the
Magdalen to the Virgin Mary. This reflects the medieval notion that while women’s
spirituality contained corporeal elements; medieval men seemed to pledge devotion to the
Virgin Mary.115 The Accademia Magdalen would have been moved following the
departure of the convertite c. 1442, and the Botticini altarpiece seems an appropriate
replacement for the altarpiece that once stood in its place. Martha Levine Dunkelman has
argued that Donatello’s Penitent Magdalen (Figure 12) was originally created for Santa
Maria Maddalena rather than the Florence Baptistery.116 She explains that the sculpture
would have fit into the group of several “penitent Magdalen” sculptures that emerged
during the fifteenth century in Italy. While scholars typically date the Donatello
Magdalen to c. 1450, Dunkelman proposes a date in the early 1430s to suggest that the
Magdalen served as an object of devotion to the convertite of Santa Maria Maddalena.117
The Accademia Magdalen and the Donatello Magdalen alike employ the hair of the saint
to represent bodily mortification and penance. It is likely that the earlier, Florentine
Accademia Magdalen influenced Donatello, directly or indirectly, as his Penitent
Magdalen is also clad in a mantle of her own hair as a representation of her penitential
journey and suffering. It is possible that these two works may have shared the same
35 space. Equally plausible is that the Penitent Magdalen, with its traditional dating of c.
1450, was commissioned after the departure of convertite to serve a male audience. As
Donatello’s sculpture circumvented the issue of the saint’s implied nudity and sexuality
by representing the saint as a withering, aged ascetic, this work becomes more
appropriate for for an audience of men, as the Magdalen’s body is not the primary
focus.118
Florence’s second convertite institution, Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite, was
founded c. 1338.119 Reportedly, the members of a confraternity associated with the
Augustinian church of Santo Spirito were so moved by the penitential sermons of Simone
Fidati da Cascia (d. 1348) that they were inspired to establish an additional convent for
penitent women in the city. In 1490, Sandro Botticelli was commissioned to paint a fivepiece retable for the convent.120 The Pala delle Convertite features the Holy Trinity
(Figure 16) as the central panel, depicting the crucifixion of Christ flanked by a hairy
Magdalen and an eremitic John the Baptist. The four predella panels include: Mary
Magdalen attending Christ’s Preaching, The Conversion of Mary Magdalen, Noli me
tangere, and the Angelic Levitation and Final Communion.
The iconography of the predella scenes reflects the institution of social control
present in the medieval convertite house, not merely in Florence, but throughout Europe.
In each scene, the Magdalen’s movements and actions are authorized by a male guardian
and illustrate the obligation of the man to manage the unpredictable and vulnerable
woman.121 In fact, the convertite were only allowed to partake in the Eucharist on the
advice of the administering cleric: “… et sumere cum devotione magna sacramentum
preciosum corporis Christi, juxta consilium et ordinacionem supradictorum confessorum”
36 (and to take the sacrament of the precious body of Christ with great devotion, according
to the council of the aforesaid confessors and ordinances). 122 This regulation reflects
medieval ideas about gender and necessitates the need for male guardianship, as does the
following statute from a French convertite house c. 1280:
Item statuons et ordonnons qui doresenavent ne seront receues audict monastère
fors seullement jeune femmes de l’eage de 25 ans, qui en leur jeunesse auront
estées lubriques, et que par leur beaulté et formosité pourroient encores estre par
fragillité mondaines promptes et inclinées à volupté mondaine, et induire et attire
à cette totallement les hommes. 123
(We decree and ordain that from this moment on, there will be received in the said
monastery only young women of the age of twenty-five years who in their youth
were lustful, and who by their beauty and formalness could still be prompted by
worldly fragility and inclined to worldly voluptuous pleasures and attract men to
the same totality.)
This statute encourages the notion of female instability and reflects the medieval belief in
the inherent weakness of the female sex. According to Jansen, a masculine presence in
convent settings was not isolated to Naples, but was characteristic of other convents for
reformed prostitutes in Europe.124 This tendency toward male supervision is documented
in the example of Santa Maria Maddalena in Naples, which was under the supervision of
Franciscan Friar, Philip Alquier.125 The Friar was responsible for safeguarding the
chastity of the young and allegedly lustful creatures by ensuring they maintained strict
sexual abstinence.
The notion of required supervision of the weaker sex is also reflected in the
Accademia Magdalen, in which the artist renders Bishop Maximin, Mary Magdalen’s
confessor, in two of the vita narratives. The Magdalen Receiving Communion from
Bishop Maximin illustrates the cleric Maximin, referred to as a priest in her vita but
represented here as a bishop, providing the Eucharist to Mary Magdalen in her desert
37 cave. The following scene, The Magdalen’s Burial, depicts Bishop Maximin again,
among other clergy, at the saint’s interment. From the six extant southern Italian
Magdalen cycles created during this period (c. 1280-1380), only one other depicts
Maximin twice—the Magdalen Chapel in the Florentine Palazzo del Podestà,
commissioned in the 1320s and attributed to Giotto’s workshop.126 This building was
home to the Florentine government, and the Magdalen Chapel served to house criminals
sentenced to death on the night before their execution. Maximin is pictured twice in this
cycle—once in the Magdalen Receiving Holy Communion (Figure 17) and once in the
Bishop Maximin Blessing Mary Magdalen (Figure 18). The emphasis on male
supervision within these Magdalen cycles is perhaps indicative of a larger medieval
social concern with the institution of male supervision that transcended gender barriers
and implied that the weaker, marginalized members of society, including prostitutes and
criminals, should be under the guardianship of a male authority figure.
Following Botticelli’s c. 1490 altarpiece, Sant’Elisabetta commissioned a Penitent
Magdalen (Figure 19) from the artist Francesco da Sangallo in 1519.127 The sculpture
bears striking resemblance to Donatello’s earlier Penitent Magdalen (Figure 12), as
Sangallo was probably influenced by Donatello’s earlier Florentine work.128 These
Magdalen images by Donatello, Botticelli, and Sangallo, add to the mounting evidence
for a unique visual culture centered around the prostitutes-turned-penitents within
convertite communities.
Houses for repentant prostitutes, born out of the Fourth Lateran Council and the
rise of mendicant orders, were generally dedicated to Mary Magdalen and as I have
shown, often exhibited artwork featuring the penitent saint as a devotional and
38 instructional aid within the convent. This visual culture is not only demonstrated in
Florentine convertite institutions, but also has a wider significance, as supported by the
examples of Perpignan and Naples, as well as later Renaissance examples in Venice and
Rome. I have situated the Accademia Magdalen within a wider context of social and
religious reform and as well as within the pictorial tradition of the medieval convertite
institutions. The panel emerges as one of the earliest examples of this type and may have
thus helped engender this tradition of convertite imagery in Florence, a tradition that
would persist throughout the Renaissance.
39 CHAPTER THREE
The House of Anjou
The Accademia Magdalen and Dynastic Influence in Florence
From 1279 to the mid-fourteenth century, Angevin promotion of the cult of Mary
Magdalen in their Neapolitan and Provençal kingdoms is well documented.129 Less
discussed, however, is the Angevin presence in Florence, and what effect this presence
may have had on the art commissioned during their royal signoria in the city. Tied to
Mary Magdalen through the miraculous discovery of her remains in 1279, members of
the House of Anjou became important patrons of Magdalen imagery and establishments.
In this chapter, I contextualize the Accademia Magdalen within the specific framework of
Angevin rulership in Florence in the late thirteenth century. I offer evidence of the royal
family’s possible influence in the creation of the panel as well as its original institution.
Angevin adoption of the Magdalen as patron saint implies an association with the groups
under her patronage, including the medieval convertite house. This link further indicates
that the Accademia Magdalen could have been created for a convertite house in Florence
during the Angevin signoria.
In 1266, the House of Anjou came to power in Naples under Charles I of Anjou,
brother of King Louis IX, replacing the Hohenstaufen dynasty at the request of the
papacy.130 One year later, Charles arrived in Florence on papal instruction to expel the
Ghibellines, a group that supported the Holy Roman Emperor instead of the papacy, from
Florence. Following this 1267 victory, he was proclaimed podestà—chief administrator
of justice—and was given a ten-year rule over the city of Florence. According to Marica
Tacconi, Charles I became somewhat of a civic hero in the eyes of the Florentine
40 population.131 The King established strong trading links between Florence and Naples,
which continued under his son and grandson, Charles II and Robert, respectively.
According to a fifteenth-century Dominican legend, in the year 1279, Charles of
Salerno, the King’s son and the Count of Provence, had a moment of divine inspiration
while held captive in a Spanish prison.132 In this mystic vision, Mary Magdalen appeared
to the Angevin prince and told him that her remains were not buried at Vézelay, as the
monks there claimed, but instead were interred in Aix-en-Provence, where the she spent
thirty years as a hermit. She also revealed to him that he would find a piece of paper,
encased in leaves for protection, which would authenticate her body. In May of the same
year, under the direction of Prince Charles, the Magdalen’s body was exhumed from a
tomb in the crypt of Saint Maximin in Provence. Following the excavation, another
discovery was made, a scrap of paper rolled in leaves that stated: “Hic requiescit corpus
beatae Mariae Magdalenae.” (Here lies the body of Saint Mary Magdalen.)133
Victor Saxer explains that the cult of the Magdalen experienced renewed fervor in
the wake of “l’invention des reliques”134 at Saint Maximin, thus strengthening her
associated cause, the ongoing movement aimed at redeeming prostitutes.135 As shown in
the previous chapters, it was not solely the finding of the Magdalen’s body that prompted
a renewed interest in the saint; her cult had been steadily growing following the Fourth
Lateran Council, the rise in mendicant preaching, and the phenomenon of prostitution
reform. However, a miraculous discovery of relics certainly bolstered the campaign and
tied the Angevin dynasty to this cause.
Sarah Wilkins argues that the Angevin motives behind the momentous 1279 event
likely included the promotion of their own dynasty.136 By associating their dynasty with a
41 revered saint, the House of Anjou legitimized their right to rule through divine authority
and often exploited the Magdalen’s image as political propaganda. I do not disagree with
Wilkins, but I do offer another plausible motive behind the findings, namely, an earnest
wish to link themselves with the reform movement. Indeed, their choice of Mary
Magdalen as patron saint assumes a relationship with the groups under her patronage, one
of which was the medieval convertite institution. In the following years, the Angevin
royal family demonstrated their loyalty to the saint and the campaign of prostitution
reform through patronage of Magdalen establishments and imagery throughout France
and Italy.
In 1283, four years after the initial “invention des reliques,” Prince Charles had
the skull of the Magdalen placed in an opulent golden reliquary of its own, fitted with a
crystal face through which the holy relic could be viewed and worshipped.137 Charles I
sent an Angevin crown to Provence, encrusted with dazzling jewels and precious gems,
with orders that it be displayed atop the saint’s head. Engraved on the reliquary itself
were verses that eternally linked the name of the Magdalen with the Angevin dynasty:
Hospita mirifica, Christi specialis amica,
Transita post Maria, micuit bonitate Maria:
Bis sexcenteno junctis tribus octuageno,
Princeps Salerne, bonitatis amore superne,
Han auro levat, quam sacra corona decorat;
Ergo patrona pia, nobis adesto, Maria,
Hic huic viventi, paradisum da morienti. 138
Mary, wonderful hostess and special friend of Christ,
After crossing the all the oceans, the glory will be yours:
In the year 1283
The prince of Salerno, from kindness and love for the Lord,
Displayed her in gold, decorated with a sacred crown.
Therefore, Mary, be our pious patron,
Protecting him while living and in death.
42 Prince Charles laid the first stone for a church in Naples dedicated to the
Magdalen, now called San Domenico Maggiore, after the founder of the order, in
1284.139 In the same year, he was captured by the Aragonese army and jailed in
Catalonia. Within six months, his father, Charles I, had died. Prince Charles was crowned
King upon his release from prison in 1289. In subsequent years, Charles II began his
campaign to promote the Magdalen’s cult again in earnest.140 The new king approved the
construction of churches in honor of Saint Mary Magdalen throughout the Southern
Kingdom and Naples, including sites in L’Aquila, Sulmona, and Saint-Maximin. Aiming
to complete the Franciscan church his father established, Charles II commissioned a
giottoesque Magdalen cycle c. 1295 at the church of San Lorenzo in Naples, and at the
turn of the century, he commissioned the restoration of a Magdalen chapel at San
Domenico in Manfredonia. In 1308, an entry in Charles’ ledger shows a payment to the
Roman artist Pietro Cavallini, who at that time was working in Naples on a Magdalen
cycle in the church founded by the pious king himself years earlier, San Domenico
Maggiore.141 It is quite clear that Charles was invested in promoting the cult of Mary
Magdalen and her cause. In fact, the Angevin dynasty had so closely associated
themselves with the Magdalen that any promotion of her cult was seen as allegiance to
the dynasty, and thus, the Magdalen cycles produced during their reign represent Angevin
influence and allegiance.142
After the death of the saintly Charles II, Robert of Anjou (r. 1309-1343) took the
crown and continued his brother’s promotion of the cult of the Magdalen through
patronage and preaching. It is documented that Robert was not happy with the problem of
prostitution in Naples, as evidenced in 1314, when he ordered that “all intemperate
43 women scandalously for sale by disgraceful prostitution” should be expelled from their
residence.143 This distaste for the shameful prostitute likely explains his interest in
funding a convent in which they could reside. Furthermore, a few lines into his first
sermon on Mary Magdalen, the first of three he delivered on the saint’s feast day, Robert
quotes John Chrysotom with approval: “Sexus enim mulieres incautus et mollis…” (The
female sex is incautious and weak…)144
Robert’s scathing remark was perhaps as a result of the plague of harlotry in
Naples. As well as orating sermons and being a patron of the holy saint’s shrine at Saint
Maximin, his wife Sancia (d. 1345), founded two convertite institutions in Naples during
the second decade of the fourteenth century and the royal family donated money to these
foundations throughout their lifetime.145 On the wall of the first Neapolitan convertite
house, Santa Maria Maddalena, were displayed a cycle of works depicting images of
penitence, commissioned by the Angevin rulers themselves. Mary Magdalen is featured
in two of the four scenes of penance, and as always, is robed in her long hair. One of
these scenes, The Crucifixion (Figure 14), includes the eremitic Magdalen, as well as the
Neapolitan royal family, King Robert and Queen Sancia. They are pictured piously
kneeling at the foot of the cross.
In 1325, a crisis in Florence spurred the town’s elite to seek aid from their former
southern ally, the Angevin Kingdom of Naples.146 Robert and Sancia were welcomed in
Florence with a lavish celebration and formal entry, and the Florentines named Robert
signore of the city with a ten-year term. A Magdalen fresco cycle, dated by Janis Elliott
to the mid-1320s, was painted in the Palazzo del Podestà, the civic building from which
Robert’s grandfather once ruled.147 The scenes in the cycle include: The Feast in the
44 House of the Pharisee, Resurrection of Lazarus, The Maries at the Tomb, Noli me
tangere, the Magdalen Talking with the Angels, Communion of the Magdalen (Figure
17), and Bishop Maximin Blessing Mary Magdalen (Figure 18). Elliott argues quite
convincingly for Angevin influence in the decoration of the chapel, and it seems logical,
given the physical presence of Robert in Florence and his well-documented dedication to
Mary Magdalen. Elliot’s argument is further substantiated by the strict emphasis on male
guardianship in Santa Maria Maddalena in Naples, a theme also present in the Podestà
cycle and discussed in the previous chapter. Robert’s vocal aversion to prostitution,
combined with his patronage of the convertite cycle at Santa Maria Maddalena and
probable influence in the Florentine Podestà cycle, indicates the Angevin interest in the
promoting prostitution reform via Magdalen imagery.
Members of the Angevin ruling family were influential in the commissions of
Magdalen imagery and institutions both in Provence and Italy, as well as active patrons
of convertite institutions. In fact, many of the first convertite houses in Europe emerged
in Angevin territory.148 In light of this, it is plausible to theorize that the Angevin
presence in Florence surrounding the 1279 discovery of the saint’s remains may have
accounted for the appearance of the monumental Accademia Magdalen, and furthermore,
may have influenced the institution for which it was created. I suggest that the first
church in Florence dedicated to the Magdalen, which also served to convert prostitutes,
would have been an appropriate setting for an Angevin-influenced work.
A close examination of the artistic choices employed for the Accademia
Magdalen, framed within the political and religious context in the years surrounding its
creation, reflects at the very least the impact of the Angevin presence in Florence, if not
45 of their direct influence on the work itself. I suggest that the episodes Mary Magdalen
Preaching (Figure 5) and Mary Magdalen Receiving Communion in her Desert Grotto
(Figure 20) reveal the Angevin ties to the panel. Mary Magdalen Preaching illustrates the
saint preaching in Provence after the death and resurrection of Christ. The only other
known instance in which the Magdalen is depicted preaching during the late Middle Ages
and early Renaissance appears in a scene from a larger Magdalen cycle c. 1350 in the
Pipino Chapel at the church of San Pietro a Maiella in Angevin-ruled Naples. Wilkins
and Katherine affirm that the Pipino Chapel was likely commissioned in order to honor
Charles II and unequivocally had the approval of Robert, the reigning King.149 The artist
of the Neapolitan narrative cycle expressly implicated a link between Florence and
Naples by including the preaching scene from the Accademia Magdalen in Florence into
his cycle.
The most telling episode, however, is Mary Magdalen Receiving Communion in
her Desert Grotto. Wilkins explains that this scene is not recorded in the Golden Legend
account of the Magdalen’s vita, nor is it known to be a part of any earlier legends or
homilies and is the first surviving depiction of this fictional event.150 This episode is
significant, as it appears in all of the later Neapolitan cycles of the Mary Magdalen’s life,
a sign that Florence and Naples were perhaps artistically linked through Angevin
rulership. In addition, Wilkins has argued that the invented account and pictorialization of
the Magdalen in her cave serves to represent the totality of the hermit-saint’s retreat to
Provence, the home of the Angevin dynasty and the location where her remains were
miraculously discovered.151 I contend that the Magdalen Master’s integration of this
46 scene speaks to the influence of an Angevin ruler in Florence, and additionally points to
links between Florence, Naples, and Provence.
Through his divine revelation and consequent exhumation of Mary Magdalen’s
remains in 1279, Prince Charles succeeded in linking the Angevin dynasty with the
celebrated figure of the Magdalen, patron saint of mendicant orders and redeemed
prostitutes. The devout king went on to commission numerous establishments and
imagery in her honor, a trend that was closely followed by his Angevin heirs. I suggest
that the political climate during the thirteenth century in southern Italy, notably the
connection between Angevin-ruled Naples and Florence, provides a specific context in
which to position the Accademia Magdalen. Considering the significant Angevin
patronage of Magdalen imagery and convertite establishments, the documented presence
of dynastic rulers in Florence, and the visual connections between the Accademia
Magdalen and later Neapolitan works, the convertite institution of Santa Maria
Maddalena in Florence again emerges as the likeliest establishment for which the
Accademia Magdalen was originally created.
47 CONCLUSION
In this thesis, I situated the Accademia Magdalen within the framework of the
visual, social, and political context of thirteenth-century Europe in order to present my
hypothesis that the panel was originally created for Santa Maria Maddalena, a convertite
institution, housing repentant prostitutes in Florence from 1257 to 1442. The iconography
of the Accademia Magdalen illustrates the convertite concerns of chastity and the
Eucharist, while the structure of the panel reflects the notion of penance, a concept that
regained popularity in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council. I argue that the painting’s
unusual narrative sequencing stressed the importance of the saint’s physical body and
shirt of hair, aspects that suggest female viewership. The addition of a second
communion scene also reveals a function for the panel as a high altarpiece rather than a
processional saint-day panel.
Furthermore, I contextualized the Accademia Magdalen within the wider culture
of thirteenth-century religious trends and the emergence of houses for repentant
prostitutes. I suggest that the panel fits into the broader visual tradition among these
medieval convertite institutions, and may well have been the one of the earliest works of
its kind within this growing practice and gave rise to a multitude of similar convertite
imagery throughout the Renaissance. Additionally, I examined the politics of Florence
surrounding the years leading up to the creation of the Accademia Magdalen to show that
the Angevin presence in the city, with their ties to the cult of the Magdalen and the
prostitution reform movement, likely influenced the iconography as well as the
commission of the panel for the first Florentine convertite house of Santa Maria
Maddalena. Replete with former sinners, the women at Santa Maria Maddalena perhaps
48 gleaned instruction and hope from the Accademia Magdalen that may have once served
as their altarpiece.
The primary contribution of this thesis is to lay the groundwork for future
research on early convertite imagery—specifically, the use of Magdalen iconography as a
didactic tool. This project is the beginning of a much larger venture, the aim of which
would be to reconstruct the visual culture of artwork created for these medieval
institutions and how convertite women related to this imagery. Further study on this topic
could address larger questions surrounding the function of Magdalen imagery, as well as
its iconographic development and influence in the Middle Ages and throughout the
Renaissance.
Furthermore, this project indicates a marked difference between images
designated for male and female viewership. By unearthing connections between gender,
politics, and iconography, a host of questions arise related to medieval gender and the
function of medieval art as it related to the viewer. This study argues that certain
iconographic elements are indicative of a specific group or gender, and therefore implies
a distinction between art made for men and art made for women during the medieval
period. This thesis examines the visual as well as the historical in order to prompt further
study on the topic of Magdalen imagery, the artistic tradition within convertite
institutions, and medieval gender.
49 1
J.B. Schneyer, Repetorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die zeit von
2
The date, artist, current location, and dimensions of the panel can be found in multiple
sources, including Enzo Carli, Italian Primitives: Panel Paintings of the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries (New York: Harry Abrams, Inc., 1968): pl. 24.
3
For this thesis, I have referred to both the Latin and English versions of the text on
Mary Magdalen’s life: Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints,
Translated by William Granger Ryan (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997),
374-383; and Jacobi a Voragine, Legenda aurea vulgo historia lombaridica dicta,
recensuit Dr. Th. Graesee, editio secunda (Leipzig, 1850), 407-417.
4
Allison Luchs, Cestello: A Cistercian Church of the Italian Renaissance (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1977), n. 57.
5
Martha Levine Dunkleman, “Donatello’s Mary Magdalen: A Model of Courage
and Survival,” Women’s Art Journal 26 no. 3 (Autumn 2005 – Winter 2006): 12.
6 John
Najemy, A History of Florence: 1200-1575. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006),
72-82 and Janis Elliot, “The Judgment of the Commune: The Frescoes of the Magdalen
Chapel in Florence,” Zeitschrift Kunstgeschichte 61 (1998): 509.
7
See: Neal Raymond Clemens, “The Establishment of the Cult of Mary Magdalen in
Provence,” PhD Diss., (Columbia University, 1997.)
8
For this and what follows, see: Domenico Moreni, Descrizione delle chiesa della SS.
Annunziata di Firenze (Firenze, 1791), 61; Vincenzo Follini, Firenze antica e moderna
illustrate III (Firenze, 1791), 363.
9
For this and what follows, see: Joanna Cannon, “Beyond the Limits of Visual Typology,
Reconsidering the Function and Audience of Three Vita Panels of Women Saints c.
1300,” In Studies of the History of Art vol. 61, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, 291-313 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2002): 305. In this article, Cannon explains in endnote
number 71 that the panel came from Raimondo Adami, prior general of the Servite Order
at the Annunziata, to the Accademia in 1810.
10
For this and what follows, see: Oswald Sirén, Toskanische Maler rim XII Jahrhundert
(Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1922), 268-269. The translation and paraphrasing are my own.
11
12
Sirén, Toskanische Male, 268.
Offner, Italian Primitives at Yale (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927), 9-17. In
this section, Offner discusses the style of the Magdalen Master using several pieces,
including the Magdalen panel, as evidence of the attribution. Additionally, see: George
Richter, “Megliore di Jacopo and the Magdalen Master,” The Burlington Magazine 57
50 no. 332 (November 1930): 223-236. Richter compares the Master’s style with other
artists that were alive the same time as evidence that these artists influenced one another
and the date for the panel that Sirén proposed is correct.
For general information on the Magdalen Master, see: Benjamin Rowland Jr., “Notes on
the Magdalen Master,” Art in America 19 (1931):125-133; Gertrude CoorAchenbach,“Some Unknown Representations by the Magdalen Master,” The Burlington
Magazine 93, no. 576 (March 1951): 71-79; Coor-Achenbach, “A Neglected Work by the
Magdalen Master,” The Burlington Magazine 89 no. 530 (May 1947): 119-129.
For information on attribution of the Accademia panel to the Magdalen Master, see:
Sirén, Toskanische Male, 264-270; Richard Offner, Italian Primitives at Yale, 11;
Raimond van Marle, Italian Schools of Painting (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1925),
and George M. Richter, “Megliore di Jacopo and the Magdalen Master,” The Burlington
Magazine 57 no. 332 (November 1930): 223-236.
13
Magdalen LaRow, “The Iconography of Mary Magdalen: The Evolution of a Western
Tradition until 1300” PhD diss., (New York University, 1982) and Susan Haskins, Mary
Magdalen: The Essential History (London: Pilimico, 2005.) For the work of Katherine
Jansen upon which I have relied, see: Jansen, “Like a Virgin: The Meaning of the
Magdalen for Female Penitents of Later Medieval Italy,” Memoirs of the American
Academy in Rome 45 (2000): 131-152; Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants in
Late Medieval Italy,” (PhD Diss., Princeton University, 1995); Jansen, The Making of the
Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages, (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 2000); Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants: The
Preaching of Penance in the Late Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval History 21 (1995):
1-21.
14
Cannon, “Beyond the Limits of Visual Typology,” 302; LaRow, 180-197.
15
Catherine Helen Lusheck, “The Magdalen as Mendicant? Servite Experience, Visual
Rhetoric and the Magdalen Master Altarpiece c. 1280,” Masters Thesis (University of
California at Berkeley, 1992.) In this thesis, Lusheck argues that the Servite Brothers of
the Annunziata are the probable patrons for the panel. She cites that Marilena Mosco, La
Maddalena Tra Sacro e Profano, Da Giotto a De Chirico (Firenze: Palazzo Pitti,
1986),43, agrees with her. However, Mosco cites LaRow, and LaRow’s suggestion is
merely a suggestion.
16
For information on male supervision within convertite settings, see: Adrian Hoch,
“Pictures of Penitence, from a Trecento Nunnery.” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichite. 61
no. 2 (1998): 211; and Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 181-182.
17
There has been no study to date that creates an artistic history of artistic commissions
for convertite institutions c. 1300-1500. For sparse information, see: Sarah Wilk, “The
Iconography of the Magdalen in Fifteenth Century Florence.” Studi Medievali 26 no. 2
51 (1985): 696. In this article, Wilk groups together two convertite commissions—
Botticini’s Virgin and Child Enthroned and Botticelli’s Holy Trinity—but only discusses
them as commissioned by institutions dedicated to the Magdalen, not part of a convertite
tradition.
18
Haskins, Mary Magdalen, 232. There is one earlier depiction of Mary Magdalen as a
hair-clad hermit, the earliest representation of the Magdalen in this way, frescoed onto a
wall in the church of San Prospero in Perugia and dated c. 1225. The fresco is signed by
the artist Bonamicus.
19
For this and what follows, see: Rachel Geschwind, “Magdalene Imagery and
Prostitution Reform in Early Modern Venice and Rome, 1500-1700,” PhD diss. (Case
Western Reserve University, 2011).
20
Schneyer, RLS, 3: 725. Translated in: Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 172 note 20.
21
For example, the Order of the Penitent Sisters of Mary Magdalen was an established
religious order that used the Magdalen as a didactic tool for conversion. For more
information, see: J. M. B. Porter, “Prostitution and Monastic Reform,” Nottingham
Mediaeval Studies 41 (1997): 72.
22
This and what follows can be found in: Lusheck, “The Magdalen as Mendicant,” 5.
23
This translation can be found in: Robert Kiely, Blessed and Beautiful: Picturing the
Saints (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 96.
24
Image and text cited and translated in: Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 267 (Fig. 44).
25
For the later visual tradition of Mary Magdalen with a scroll, see: Mary Magdalen with
Scroll c. 1300 (Index of Christian Art #026969), Mary Magdalen with Julian Hospitalier,
the Archangel Michael, and Mary of Bethany c. 1315 (Index of Christian Art #078306),
and Mary Magdalen with Banner Receiving Holy Communion in Desert (Reproduced in
Mosco, 32, figure 2).
26
27
Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, vii.
There were many early circulating legends and sermons that expounded Mary
Magdalen’s life, notably the Vita eremitica beatae Mariae Magdalenae, which came to
Italy in the late ninth century, and Odo of Cluny’s influential ninth-century vita
evangelica. For more information on this and other sources for the Golden Legend, see:
Wilk, “The Cult of the Magdalen,” 686; Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 36-41; and
LaRow, “Iconography of the Magdalen,” 128-154. It can be presumed that many aspects
of these earlier stories were combined to form the basis for the Golden Legend account.
52 28
Voragine, Legenda aurea, 415. The translation is my own.
29
For information regarding the Byzantine icon as it influenced the Italian vita panel, see:
Nancy Patterson Ševčenko,“The ‘Vita’ Icon and the Painter as Hagiographer,”
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 53 (1999): 149-165, James Stubblebine,“Byzantine Influence in
Thirteenth Century Panel Painting,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 20 (1966): 85-101, and
Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans.
Edmund Jephcott (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 21-23.
30
Stubblebeine, “Byzantine Influence,” 85.
31
Belting, Likeness and Presence, 21-23.
32
For this and the following information, see: Klaus Krüger, Der fruhe Bildkult des
Franziskus in Italien (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1992), 32-47.
33
Stubblebeine, “Byzantine Influence,” 85.
34
This and the following can be found in: Kiely, Blessed and Beautiful: Picturing the
Saints, 84-85. The biblical references to Mary Magdalen and her assumed roles are
charted in appendix 1 of LaRow, “The Iconography of Mary Magdalen,” 203-214. Mary
Magdalen at the Crucifixion appears in John 10:25-27, Matthew 27:56 and Mark 15:40.
Mary Magdalen at the tomb appears in Matthew 28:1-4, Mark 16:1-4, Luke 24:1-2 and
John 20:1. She is given the title of Apostle of the Apostles in John 20:11-18.
35
Mary Magdalen receives her title of apostola apostolorum in the Gospel of John 20:
11-18. The New International Version reads, “(11)Now Mary stood outside the tomb
crying. As she wept, she bent over to look inside the tomb (12) and saw two angels in
white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. (13)
They asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying?’ ‘They have taken my Lord away’ she
said, ‘and I don’t know where they have put him.’ (14) At this, she turned and saw Jesus
standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. (15) He asked her, ‘Woman, why
are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’ Thinking he was the gardener, she said,
‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.’
(16) Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic,
‘Rabboni!’ (Which means ‘teacher’). (17) Jesus said, ‘Do not hold on to me, for I have
not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending
to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ (18) Mary Magdalen went to
the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them that he had said
these things to her.”
36
Haskins, Mary Magdalen, 3-4.
53 37
The unidentified female sinner can be found in Luke 7:36-50. Mary of Bethany’s
biblical references are as follows: Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9 and John 12:1-11, as
charted in appendix 1 by LaRow, “The Iconography of Mary Magdalen,” 203-214.
38
Victor Saxer, Le cult de Marie Madeleine en Occident: des origins à la fin du moyen
age (Paris: Auxerre, 1959), 3.
39
J.P. Migne, Patrologaie cursus completus. Series latina (Paris, 1844-1855), LXXVI,
1238. The translation is my own.
40
This derives from the medieval belief that sexual sins like fornication and prostitution
were sins reserved only for women, as the female sex was considered naturally more
carnal than men. This notion is expounded upon in Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The
Making of the Magdalen, 148 and James Brundage, “Prostitution in Medieval Canon
Law,” Signs 1 no. 4 (Summer, 1976): 832.
41
Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants in Late Medieval Italy,” 163.
42
Hugonis de Sancto Caro, “In evangelia secundum Matthaeum, Lucamm Marcam, &
Joannem,” In Opera Omnia in Universam, vol. 4 (Venice: 1754), cap.xxi. Translation is
my own. Also cited in Haskins, Mary Magdalen, 430 note 50.
43
Brundage, “Prostitution,” 832.
44
Jansen, “Like a Virgin,” 142.
45
For this and what follows, see: Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 145. This is based on
Jerome’s explication of The Parable of the Sower.
46
Jansen, “Like a Virgin,” 131.
47
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Vat. Lat. 4691, f. 118v. Cited in Jansen, Making of the
Magdalen, 287. The translation is my own.
48
Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 287
49
The entire story is told in Luke 7:36-50. Verse 37, however, identifies the woman as a
sinner. It reads, “(37)And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she
knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of
ointment…”
50
For more information on the tower as symbol of chastity, see: Jansen, “Like a Virgin,”
130; Catherine Parker, “Virgin, Bride and Lover: A Study of the Relationship Between
Sexuality and Spirituality in Anchoritic Literature,” (PhD diss., Memorial University of
Newfoundland, 1992), 140-154. For another visual example of the tower representing
54 virginity, see Hoch, Adrian Hoch, “Pictures of Penitence,” 217 in which he cites The
Flagellation of Saint Elisabeth of Hungary portraying the chaste saint in an ivory tower.
51
For this and what follows, see: Jansen, “Like a Virgin,” 130.
52
For the source of Umiliana’s vita, see: Vito da Cortona, Acta sanctorum, May, vol. 4
(Antwerp, 1685), 385-418.
53
For information on the history of the Franciscan Order and the main characteristics of
other mendicant orders, see: John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its
Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968).
54
Cynthia Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart: The Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives on the
Saints from the Tenth through Thirteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 2001), 57.
55
The vita panels of Saint Francis (Figure 9), Saint Clare (Figure , Saint Margherita of
Cortona (Museo Diocesano, Cortona) and Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Figure 6) all
have distinct architectural niches in which the saint stands.
56
For sources on the body by Caroline Walker Bynum, see: Fragmentation and
Redemption: Essays on the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books,
1992); Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance to Food to Medieval
Women (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987); and “Why All
the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective” Critical Inquiry 22 no. 1 (Autumn
1995): 1-33. For an alternate view on the medieval body, see: Ulrike Wiethaus,
“Sexuality, Gender, and the Body in Late Medieval Women’s Spirituality: Cases from
Germany and the Netherlands,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 no. 1 (Spring
1991): 35-52.
57
For this and what follow, see: Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and
Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988)
439-441.
58
Haskins, Mary Magdalen, 157.
59
For more information on the woman’s body as a site of sin, see: Haskins, Mary
Magdalen, 230; Brown, The Body and Society, 437-441; and Elizabeth Robertson, “The
Corporeality of Female Sanctity in the life of Saint Margaret,” 268-87, in Images of
Sainthood in Medieval Europe, Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate and Timea Szell, eds.
(Cornell University Press: Ithaca, 1991).
60
For further information on female mortification of the body, during the Middle Ages,
see: Bynum, Holy Feast and Fast, and Robertson, “Corporeality.”
55 61
Charles George Herbermann, Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol.VII (New York: Robert
Appleton Company, 1910), 113-114.
62
Ibid:“Ego autem, cum mihi molesti essent, induebar cilicio.” (When they tried to
molest me, I covered myself with sackcloth.)
63
For this and what follows, see: LaRow, “The Iconography of Mary Magdalen,” 62 and
154. For more information on prostitute saints in medieval legend, see: Vern Bullough,
“The Prostitute in the Early Middle Ages,” in Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church
(Buffalo, NY: Promethus Books, 1992); 34-42; Karras, “Holy Harlots,” Prostitute Saints
in Medieval Legend,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 1 no. 1 (July 1990): 6-14.
64
Herbermann, Catholic Encyclopedia, 113.
65
For information on the hair-shirt of Margery of Kempe, see: John Arnold and
Katherine J. Lewis, editors. A Companion to the Book of Margery of Kempe (Cambridge:
D. S. Brewer, 2004); For Maria of Venice, see:, Fernanda Sorelli, “Imitable Sanctity: The
Legend of Maria of Venice” in Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy,
eds. Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, 165-181 (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1996), 168-69. For Jutta of Sponheim, see: Fiona Maddocks, Hildegard of
Bingen: A Woman of Her Age (New York: Random House, 2001), 6.
66
Haskins, Mary Magdalen, 232.
67
For information on the concept of luxuria as related to the Magdalen, see: Jansen, The
Making of the Magdalen, 145-167 and 168-196; and Haskins, Mary Magdalen, 151-153.
68
Schneyer, RLS, 4: 948. The translation is my own. Also cited in: Jansen, Making of the
Magdalen, 173.
69
For this and what follows, see: Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 157-58.
70
For this and what follows, see: Sarah Wilkins, “Imaging the Angevin Patron Saint in
the Pipino Chapel in Naples,” California Italian Studies 3 no. 1 (2012): 11 n. 59. Wilkins
agrees that the communion in the cave was an invention of the Magdalen Master as well.
71
For female devotion to the Eucharist, see: Bynum, Holy Feast and Fast and
Fragmentation and Redemption; and Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late
Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
72
Sources on those altarpieces
73
Belting, Likeness and Presence, 21.
56 74
For information on the institution of prostitution in the middle ages, see: Jacques
Roissaud, Medieval Prostitution, Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1988); Leah Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in
Languedoc (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Leah Otis,
“Prostitution and Repentance in Late Medieval Perpignan,” in Women in Medieval
Society, eds. Julius Kirshner and Suzanne Wemple (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1985), 137-60; Vern Bullough and James Brundage, Sexual Practices and the Medieval
Church (Buffalo, NY: Promethus Books, 1992); R. C. Trexler, “La prostitution
Florentine au XVe siècle: patronages et clienteles,” Annales ESC (1981): 983-1015; and
James Brundage, “Prostitution in the Medieval Canon Law” 825-845.
75
For information on prostitution reform and convertite houses, see: Katherine Ludwig
Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants in Late Medieval Italy,” 175-190; Otis,
Prostitution in Medieval Society, 72-75; Otis, “Prostitution and Repentance,” 149-156;
and Roissaud, Medieval Prostitution, 202-204.
76
Katherine Ludwig Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants in Late Medieval
Italy,” 175-190.
77
Brundage, “Prostitution,” 827. Brundage cites Saint Jerome’s Epistle 64.7.
78
Translated in: Brundage, “Prostitution,” 827. Author cites original document in
canonistic citation system: C. 27 q. 1c. 41 glos v promiscuum.
79
Brundage, “Prostitution,” 827. Canonists like Cardinal Hostiensis (d. 1271) and
Joannes Andrea (c. 1270-1348) added to canon law the themes of public promiscuity,
female deception, and monetary gain.
80
Bullough, “Prostitution in the Early Middle Ages,” in Sexual Practices in the Medieval
Church (Buffalo, NY: Promethus Books, 1992), 34; Bullough, “Prostitution in the Early
Middle Ages,” in in Sexual Practices in the Medieval Church (Buffalo, NY: Promethus
Books, 1992), 176; Otis, Medieval Prostitution, 15-24; Brundage, “Prostitution,” 830.
81
Bullough, “Later Middle Ages,” 179.
82
Bullough, “Early Middle Ages,” 34.
83
Porter, “Prostitution and Monastic Reform,” 72.
84
Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants in Late Medieval Italy,” 177; Otis,
Medieval Prostitution, 72.
85
Migne, PL, 214: 102-103. Translated in Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants,”
177.
57 86
Hoch, “Pictures of Penitence,”
87
Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants in Late Medieval Italy,” 178.
88
For this and what follows, see: Porter, “Prostitution and Monastic Reform,” 73.
89
For this and what follow, see: Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants in Late
Medieval Italy,” 178-79.
90
Porter, “Prostitution and Monastic Reform,” 77-78.
91
For this and what follows, see: Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants in Late
Medieval Italy,” 177-80.
92
On different types of convertite institutions, see: Leah Otis, Prostitution in Medieval
Society, 72-76; “Prostitution and Repentance,” 151-157. In this article, she compares the
statutes from Avignon, reproduced in their entirety in P. Pansier, L’oeuvre des Repenties
à Avignon du Xllle au XViiie siècle (Avignon and Paris: Libraire-Editeur, 1910), with
extant documents from the convertite house at Perpignan.
93
See: Otis, “Prostitution and Repentance,” 151-157.
94
P. Pansier, L’oeuvre. For English translations of certain statutes, see: Roissaud, 201204.
95
P. Pansier, L’oeuvre, 138.
96
Ibid., 143.
97
This information was gathered from: Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants in
Late Medieval Italy,” 161-202 and Otis, Medieval Prostitution, 72-80.
98
Hoch, “Pictures of Penitence,” 207.
99
For this and what follows, see: Otis, “Prostitution and Repentence,” 150. In note 63,
Otis cites the cost of the altarpiece as found in: Archives départmentales de PyrénéesOrientales, P-O, H, 256. She does not give any information on the artwork, whether or
not it is still extant, and whether or not this information can be found in the above
archive.
100
Otis, “Prostitution and Repentance,” 150. She cites the original text as found in: AD
P-O, H, 256, 1430. The translation is my own.
58 101
Hoch, “Pictures of Penitence,” 207-14. It is interesting to note that Hoch places the
founding of the institution around 1324, while Jansen places it around the time of the
commissioned cycle, c. 1342.
102
For this and what follows, see: Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants in Late
Medieval Italy,” 184.
103
For this and what follow, see: Hoch, “Pictures of Penitence,” 207-14.
104
For this and what follows, see: Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen, 199-203 and
Michelle Erhardt, “The Magdalen as Mirror: Trecento Franciscan Imagery in the
Guidalotti-Rinuccini Chapel, Florence,” in Mary Magdalen, Iconographic Studies from
the Middle Ages to the Baroque, ed. Michelle Erhardt and Amy Morris (Leiden and
Boston: Koninklijke Brill, 2012), 30.
105
Quoted and translated in: Norman Tanner, ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils
Volume 1 (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 245.
106
Ibid.
107
Ibid., 239.
108
Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 200.
109
For the mendicant adoption of Mary Magdalen as patron saint, see: Wilk, “The Cult of
the Magdalen,” 687-688; Hoch, “Pictures of Penitence,” 216; and Erhardt, “Magdalen as
Mirror,” 21.
110
Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 200.
111
Jacobus de Voragine, Sermones Quadragesimales (Venice, 1621), 162-163. The
translation is my own.
112
Luchs, Cestello, note 57.
113
Dunkelman, Donatello’s Magdalen, 12.
114
Guiseppe Richa, Notizie Istoriche delle Chiese Fiorentine, I (Firenze: Pietro Gaetano
Viviani, 1761), 322. He notes in his description of Santa Maria Maddalena in 1761: A
mano finiftra ripigliando dalla porta , la prima Cappella è dei Cavalcanti con tavola di
Cofimo Roffelli , che dipinfe Maria , Santa Maria Maddalena , S. Francefco e alcuni
Angioli con tanto amore , e diligenza che poco differente è la miniature. (Resuming the
door, the first is the Cavalcanti Chapel with the tableau of Cosimo Rosselli, who painted
Mary, St. Mary Magdalene, and St. Francis with angels with so much love and care, as
one would a miniature.) The translation is my own. Apparently, the painting was first
59 attributed to Cosimo Rosselli and Saint Bernard was mistaken for Saint Francis.
115
Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 58-59.
116
For this and what follows, see: Dunkelman, Donatello’s Magdalen. She cites an early
yet similar statue of the saint from the church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Pescia dated
c. 1400 as well as an eremitic Sangallo Magdalen commissioned for Florence’s sister
convertite house, Sant’Elisabetta, in 1519.
117
There is no commission information for the statute, but Theresa Louise Huntley, “On
Guilded Ugliness: Donatello’s Penitent Magdalen and Issues of Beauty, Sanctity, and
Sexuality in Fifteenth Century Florence,” Master’s Thesis (Queen’s University, Kingston,
Ontario, Canada, 2008) cites c. 1455, Sarah Wilk cites after 1450, and Dunkelman cites
1430s.
118
Here, I’m just following the vein of Dunkelman argument and giving my own opinion.
119
For this and what follows, see: Jansen, “Mary Magdalen and the Mendicants,” 182.
120
For this and what follows, see: Ronald Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli, 2 Volumes,
(London: Paul Eeck, 1978), volume 2 (Complete Catalogue), 75-78. For a discussion of
the predella panels as reflective of gender discourse, see: Jansen, Making of the
Magdalen, 184-196.
121
For information on medieval gender theory, see: Brundage, “Prostitution and
Medieval Canon Law,” 832-835; and works by Carolyn Walker Bynum cited in note
122
P. Pansier, L’oeuvre, 119.
123
Ibid., 125-26.
124
Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 182.
125
For this and what follows, see: Hoch, “Pictures of Penitence,” 211 and Jansen, Making
of the Magdalen, 181-182.
126
The other cycles include: The three Neapolitan cycles at San Pietro, San Domenico,
and San Lorenzo, as well as the cycle at San Francesco in Assisi.
Janis Elliot talks about this cycle in terms of possible Angevin influence in: Elliot, “The
Judgment of the Commune.”
127
For information on this sculpture, see: Alan Phipps Darr and Rona Roisman,
“Francesco da Sangallo: A Rediscovered Early Donatellesque 'Magdalen' and Two Wills
60 from 1574 and 1576,” The Burlington Magazine 129, No. 1017, Special Issue on
European Sculpture (December 1987), 784-793.
128
Based on iconography alone, the two were likely in dialogue with one another.
129
For general information on the Angevin dynasty and patronage of Mary Magdalen,
see: Clemens, “The Establishment of the Cult of Mary Magdalen in Provence” and Saxer,
Le culte.
130
For this and what follows, see: Najemy, A History of Florence, 72-82.
131
See: Marica Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance
Florence: the service books of Santa Maria del Fiore (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 74-75.
132
For this and what follows, see: Saxer, Le Culte, 228-244 and Clemens, “The
Establishment of the Cult of Mary Magdalen in Provence,” 64-69.
133
Saxer, Le culte, 234.
134
Ibid.
135
Ibid.
136
Sarah Wilkins, “Imaging the Angevin Patron Saint.”
137
For this and what follows, see: Etienne Faillon, Monuments inédits sur l’apostola de
Sainte Marie-Madeleine en Provence, et sur les autres de cette contrée (Paris: John-Paul
Migne, 1865), 908-910.
138
Faillon, Monuments, 909.
139
Caroline Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy 12661343 (New Have and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 6 and 95-98.
140
This and the following can be found in: Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen, 312.
141
Ibid.
142
Jansen, Making of the Magdalen, 316-17.
143
For this and what follows, see: Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen, 322.
144
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, lat. Cl. 76 (2101), f. 89. Cited in Jansen, The Making
of the Magdalen, 322. The translation is my own.
61 145
Hoch, “Pictures of Penitence,” 211.
146
For this and what follows, see: Najemy, The History of Florence, 122.
147
For this and what follows, see: Elliot, “The Judgment of the Commune,”
148
For example, the convertite houses at: Avignon, Aix-en-Provence, Fontevrault, and
Marseille.
149
Wilkins, “Imaging the Angevin Patron Saint,” 1 note 3; Jansen, The Making of the
Magdalen, 316.
150
Wilkins, “Imaging the Angevin Patron Saint,” 12.
151
Ibid.
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67 68 IMAGES Figure 1. Master of the Magdalen, Mary Magdalen Surrounded by Eight Scenes from her Life, c. 1280. Tempera on panel, Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence. 65 x 29 ⅞“ 69 Figure 2. Apostolorum Apostola, miniature from the Gospel Book of Henry the Lion, 12th century. Herzog August Bibliothek. 70 Figure 3. Andrea di Cione, Symbol of Hope, 1350. 71 Figure 4. Byzantine Master, Saint Catherine with Scenes from her Legend, late twelfth century, Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai, Egypt 72 Figure 5. The Magdalen Preaching, detail of Figure 1, c. 1280 73 Figure 6. Pisan Master, Saint Catherine of Alexandria with Eight Scenes from her Life, c. 1250-­‐1300. Tempera on panel. Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa. 44 ½ x 42 ⅛ “ 74 Figure 7. Saint Catherine Disputing with Philosophers, detail of Figure 6, c. 1250 – 1300. 75 Figure 8. Giotto di Bondone, Allegory of Chastity, c. 1320. Fresco, Lower Church of San Francesco, Assisi. 76 Figure 9. Bonaventura Berlinghieri, Altarpiece of Saint Francis, c. 1235. Tempera on Panel. San Francesco, Pescia. 60” x 72” 77 Figure 10. Duccio di Buoninsegna, back panel of Maestà Altarpiece, Stories from the Passion, 1308. Tempera and gold leaf on panel. Opera della Metropolitana, Siena. 83 ½ x 167” 78 Figure 11. Umbrian artist (Maestro della Santa Chiara), Saint Clare with Eight Scenes from
her Life, 1283. Tempera on panel. Santa Chiara, Assisi.
110 ⅝ x 65 ⅜ “
79 Figure 12. Donatello, Penitent Magdalen, c. 1430-­‐55. Polychrome and gilding on wood. Duomo Museum, Florence. 80 Figure 13. Master of the Franciscan Temperas, Madonna and Child, c. 1342. Tempera on
linen. Private Collection. From Santa Maria Maddalena, Naples. 81 Figure 14. Master of the Franciscan Temperas, Crucifixion, c. 1342. Tempera on linen. Private Collection. From Santa Maria Maddalena, Naples. 82 Figure 15. Francesco Botticini (attr.), The Virgin and Child in Glory, c. 1470. Tempera on poplar wood. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France. From Santa Maria Maddalena di Cestello, Florence. 70 x 74” 83 Figure 16. Sandro Botticelli, Holy Trinity with Saint Mary Magdalen and Saint John the Baptist, the Archangel Raphael and Tobias, central panel for Pala delle Convertite Altarpiece, c. 1490. Tempera and oil (?) on panel. The Courtauld Gallery, London. From Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite, Florence. 84 ¼ x 76 ½ “ 84 Figure 17. Giotto di Bondone (attr.), Communion of the Magdalen, c. 1320s. Fresco. Magdalen Chapel, Palazzo del Podestà, Florence. 85 Figure 18. Giotto di Bondone (attr.), Blessing of Mary Magdalen, c. 1320s. Fresco. Magdalen Chapel, Palazzo del Podestà, Florence. 86 Figure 19. Francesco da Sangallo, Penitent Magdalen, c. 1519. 87 Figure 20. Mary Magdalen Receiving the Eucharist in her Desert Grotto, Detail of Figure 1, c. 1280