An Italian art restorer is “firmly convinced” she has identified the famous female follower of Jesus in Michelangelo’s celebrated Sistine Chapel masterpiece and put an end to a mystery that has lasted centuries.
There are 300 tangled figures depicted in Michelangelo’s sprawling rendition of <em>The Last Judgment</em> in the celebrated chapel, but until now the presence of Mary Magdalene had not been identified.
Sara Penco, an Italian art restorer, said her research indicates that a blonde woman in the giant artwork, who is depicted kissing a wooden cross held by a figure said to be Jesus Christ, is the famous female character from the gospels, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/10/mary-magdalene-identified-michelangelo-sistine-chapel-hunt/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">reports</mark></a> the <em>Daily Telegraph</em>.
“I am firmly convinced that this is Mary Magdalene…the intimacy with the cross, the yellow dress and the blonde hair but also the whole context in which Michelangelo places this figure to underscore her importance,” Ms Penco told a media conference in Rome on 10 December.
Art experts have long tried to identify the wide-eyed woman, who appears in the far-right-hand middle section of the fresco on the wall behind the Vatican chapel’s altar.
Ms Penco, who specialises in Renaissance and Baroque art, said her research should finally put an end to the mystery.
“The fresco was screaming that something was missing,” she says. “Michelangelo was an expert painter, he was very cultured, he was someone who knew the dynamics of the Church very well, he knew the gospels and he could not have forgotten her.”
Mary Magdalene, described as a "sinful woman" in the Gospel of Luke and generally viewed to have been a prostitute who then repented, is one of the most mysterious and intriguing figure in the gospels. She became one of Christ’s loyal followers and was one of the women at the foot of the Cross during His Crucifixion. She is now widely regarded as a saint by Catholic and other Christian faiths.
Ms Penco, who consulted various studies by scholars and theologians before conducting her own research, said the gospels often describe Mary Magdalene in relation to Christ's redemptive role in bringing salvation to the world, the <em>Telegraph</em> reports.
“The cross-bearer is looking in the direction of Mary Magdalene, it is as if he is estranged from the composition looking towards the woman peacefully holding the wood and the cross,” the Italian art restorer says.
Her findings will be published this week in the 240-page book <em>Mary Magdalene in Michelangelo’s Judgement</em>.
Writing in the book’s foreword, Prof Yvonne Dohna Schlobitten, of the Gregorian University's department of history and cultural heritage in Rome, has endorsed the claim.
“With great intuition, Sara Penco has discovered something that defines the being of art,” Prof Schlobitten says. “We can clearly see how iconography and theology are linked in Penco’s reasoning to form a vision: the woman kissing the cross has an important role, even if she appears hidden on the edges of the image.”
<em>The Last Judgment</em>, which took Michelangelo Buonarroti four years to complete, attracts more than five million visitors to the Sistine Chapel every year.
Painted between 1537 and 1541, it depicts the Second Coming of Christ during the Apocalypse, and shows human souls and angels either ascending to heaven or descending into hell.
At the heart of the story of Mary Magdalene lies a paradox, Alexander Faludy previously noted for the <em>Herald</em>.
He describes how we know almost nothing about her for certain – pointing out that the canonical Gospels actually confirm little – and, as a result, this paucity of information made both possible and necessary the construction within Christianity of a variety of ‘lives’ of Mary Magdalene.
<a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/mary-magdalene-a-cultural-history-by-philip-c-almond/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><em><strong>RELATED: Mary Magdalene: A Cultural History, by Philip C Almond</strong></em></mark></a>
<em>Photo: Michelangelo’s 'Last Judgment' in the Sistine Chapel (screenshot, CNS).</em>
