"Maria Magdalena:extasis y arrepentimiento".

Museo Nacional de San Carlos 

Puente de Alvarado 50, Colonia Tabacalera

Mexico City

Tel.: [phone]

Through September

Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gayest me no water for my feet but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gayest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet My head with oil thou didst not anoint but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.

And Jesus said unto her, thy sins are forgiven.--Luke 7:36-50

Although the Gospels do not warrant a clear identification of this unnamed sinner who washed the feet of Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee, the Western Church has come to identify her as Mary Magdalene--a rejected woman redeemed through Christ, the sinner who became a saint.

Unlike the other more famous Mary of the Bible, whose image is simple and pure, all virtue and virginity, Mary Magdalene is more complex: a sinner--many interpretations hold that she was a prostitute--who turned over a new spiritual leaf to follow Christ. But her mystery goes beyond repentance: She became Jesus' most intimate confidant--some controversial Bible revisionists even hold that they were married--and was the first of his followers to testify to his Resurrection.

This incredible and enigmatic woman of the New Testament has fascinated artists over the centuries. They have found in her image the perfect juxtaposition of vice and virtue, sin and repentance, goodness and earthy, voluptuous beauty.

The Museo Nacional de San Carlos has brought together 90 paintings of Mary Magdalene from 50 museums, with works from l6th and 17th century France, Spain, Italy and New Spain.

"Her image possesses a vast potential for artistic expression: She is the incarnation of vice and virtue and a metaphor for spirituality contrasted with mortality," says Odile Delenda, an investigator at the Wildenstein Institute of Paris and one of the organizers of the exposition. "For that reason, every important painter has used her as a subject at least once."

The exhibit is divided into two parts. The first consists of representations of biblical stories--washing Jesus' feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee, at the foot of the cross witnessing his crucifixion, alone in prayer and surrounded by angels. The second part is full of representations of the legends that have sprung up in the centuries since her death in the La Sainte-Baume cave in modern-day France, where she spent her remaining 33 years after being exiled from Judea.

Artists are known for their fabulous imaginations, and they have been partly responsible for the continuing fascination that surrounds this woman. This exhibit will embrace you with rich oil paintings of her honey-colored locks cascading over bare shoulders, her bodice undone or nonexistent, eyes upturned toward heaven in spiritual ecstasy or downcast in mortal repentance. The virgin-whore dichotomy in Western culture is encompassed perfectly in the voluptuousness of her bare skin and the spiritual purity of her face.

This is the biblical Mary we can understand and relate to--full of contradictions and mystery, redeemed and forgiven despite all her sins.

Catherine Craddock is editor of BUSINESS MEXICO.