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The chapel of the courtesan and the quarrel of the Magdalens
Art Bulletin, The, June, 2002 by Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe
(81.) The chapel had been built and decorated for Teobaldi Pontano, who was bishop of Assisi from 1314 to 1329. The frescoes, executed by an unidentified artist, must have been commissioned during this period. See Lorraine Schwartz, "Patronage and Franciscan Iconography in the Magdalen Chapel at Assisi," Burlington Magazine 133 (1991): 32-36.
(82.) Formerly in the church of Mary Magdalen, Munnerstadt, and now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, See Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 261-62; and Julien Chapuis's catalogue entry in Tilman Riemenschneider Master Sculptor of the Late Middle Ages, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2999, 222-21, cat, no. 13. Mary Magdalen's long hair is apparently derived from Luke's unnamed sinner, who evidently had hair long enough to wipe Christ's feet. By the 15th century, the vanity of Mary Magdalen before her conversion was seen to focus on her hair. In a sermon given in the early 15th century, Saint Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) declared that Mary Magdalen's "third sin was through her hair," adding, "she did everything to make herself more blond" through a practice of "staying in the sun to dry her hair [Terzo modo di peccare si fu co' capegli; impero ch 'ell'aveva cossi bet caps e sempre avea che fare di stare a imbiondire e di stare al sole a seccare]." See San Bernardino da Siena, Ecco il segno: Predicazione in italiano--antologia, ad. Giacomo V. Sabatelli (Siena: Cantagalli, 1985), 323. My thanks to Larissa Juliet Taylor for supplying this reference. Such sermons were aimed at contemporary women. At this time and into the 16th century, it was frequently the practice of courtesans to dye their hair blond. The technique of dyeing hair blond (arte biondeggiante) is described in Cessre Vecellio's Habiti antichi et moderni di tutto il mondo (Venice: Damiano Zenaro, 1590). The same technique is also described by an English traveler in Venice, Thomas Coryate, Coryate's Cruzdities, vol. 1 (London: Printed by W.S., 1611; reprint, Glasgow James MacLehose and Sons, 1905), 48; also noted by Haskins, 247-48. See also Armand Basehet and Feuillet de Conche, Les femmes blondes selon lespeintres de 1'ecole de Venise, par deux Venitiens (Paris: A. Aubry, 1865), 45-106, 271-309. Mary Magdalen's hair is frequently shown blond and is one of her principal attributes. See Xavier Barbier de Montault, "Sainte Marie-Madeleine d'apres les monuments de Rome," Revue de l'Art Chretien 24 (1880): 124-25. Several locations claim portions of her hair as relics, including S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura and S. Maria in Trastevere in Rome (Barbier de Montault, 119). Blandness has long bean associated with beauty and sex. Botticelhi's Venus emerges from the sea to stand, like Mary Magdalen, wearing nothing but her blond hair. See Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), 353-69. For sermons condemning Mary Magdalen's vanity, see Thomas M. izbicki, "Pyres of Vanities: Mendicant Preaching on the Vanity of Women and Its Lay Audience," in De Ore Domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages, ed. Thomas L. Amos, Eugene A. Green, and Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1989), 211-34.
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