Saint Mary Magdalene, called La Belle Allemande
Gregor Erhart (c. 1470-1540) · c. 1515-1520
A naked young woman stands wrapped only in the golden mass of her own hair, which falls to her knees. She is Mary Magdalene, the repentant sinner who, according to legend, spent her last years as a hermit, clothed only in her hair and carried up to heaven by angels. The figure is nearly life size and carved from limewood, with the original paint of the flesh, the lips and the hair still in place. The gentle turn of the head and the swaying pose earned her the nickname the beautiful German woman when she arrived in Paris.
Gregor Erhart, one of the leading sculptors of Augsburg, carved the statue around fifteen fifteen to fifteen twenty, probably for the church of the Dominican convent of Saint Mary Magdalene in that city. It was not meant to stand on the ground: it hung from the vault of the church, supported by flying angels, as if the saint were being lifted into the sky. The base and the front of the feet are nineteenth-century additions made when she was set upright. The Louvre bought the figure from the dealer Godefroy Brauer in 1902, using the income of the Sévène bequest.
Did You Know? The statue originally floated beneath a church vault, held up by carved angels, so that the saint seemed to rise to heaven.
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