John Singer Sargent

14 x 11 inches








There's currently an exhibition of Sargent's portraits of women at the Fenimore Art Museum

Ideology

There's a lot of 19th Century art on this blog. But the intention is not to take sides in the the fight between conservatives and progressives in the art world. For an ideological disclaimer here's a link to one of my other art blogs

Da Vinci

This is a detail of an angel from The Virgin of the Rocks, which I altered digitally so that it made more sense as a composition in itself.

Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene, Attributed to the Master of the Mansi Magdalene (Dutch)

The idea that Mary Magdalene was a fallen woman is a complete fabrication by medieval clerics who wanted to make her into an ideal of the penitent  sinner, and so had to turn her life before meeting Christ into something sinful.

She was in fact an incarnation of the Purity of the Divine Feminine, which makes the slurs on her character an even greater wrong.

Mary Magdalene is referred to in early Christian writings as "the apostle to the apostles." In apocryphal texts, she is portrayed as a visionary and leader of the early movement, who was loved by Jesus more than the other disciples.

She is often depicted opening a vessel of ointment (which suggests the vessel of the Spirit, the Kundalini) She is also sometimes shown meditating in the wilderness with a skull in one hand, symbolising the renunciation of the body. These depictions are reminiscent of Indian paintings of Shri Mahakali, the renunciant aspect of the Goddess.

The name Mary occurs in 51 passages of the New Testament. There are several people named Mary in the Gospels. There also are several unnamed women who seem to share characteristics with Mary Magdalene. At different times in history, Mary Magdalene has been confused or misidentified with almost every woman in the four Gospels, except the mother of Jesus. "The idea that this Mary was 'the woman who was a sinner,' or that she was unchaste, is altogether groundless."^[ There is no scriptural or historical evidence that Mary’s relationship with Jesus was anything other than that of a disciple to her teacher, definitely not a lover or wife. Although in the past she has suffered from a case of mistaken identity, Mary Magdalene was never reviled, demeaned or dismissed.

-Wikipedia