Ambrosius Benson, The Magdalen Reading

A woman, her hair covered by an elaborate structure of caps and semi-transparent veils, holds a luxurious illuminated book in a green velvet binding. The pot identifies her as Mary Magdalene: it holds the ointment with which the saint anointed Christ’s feet.

The hands and book are copied from Saint Barbara in Gerard David’s The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor. They are so close that it seems Ambrosius Benson copied from the original or that he had access to the preliminary drawings. He was a pupil of David, and the two were involved in a lawsuit about patterns which David alleged he had found in Benson’s chest. The folds of the veil are extremely close to Mary Magdalene’s headdress in The Magdalen in a Landscape by Albert Cornelis, from whom Benson borrowed patterns.

Benson specialised in half-lengths of young women depicted as Mary Magdalene or as sibyls (female oracles in classical mythology). This lady’s strangely elongated ear and large hands are typical of the artist. The style of her dress suggests a date of about 1520, making it one of the artist’s earliest such pictures.