Mary Magdalene: Art's Scarlet Woman (Art Documentary) | Perspective

[Music] this is a film about a woman who probably never existed but whose story changed history it's a story that soaked into our culture it's everywhere in every corner sweaty sensuous and naughty it's the story of Mary Magdalene if you've read this and who hasn't then you'll know something about her already or at least you'll think you do because according to this Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ were lovers they had a baby together and their descendants are still among us today hiding their secret origins if you haven't read this you might have seen this the popular musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim ramas in this she's a former prostitute who falls hopelessly in love with Jesus and who sings that famous song to him I don't know how to love him don't know how to oh how artists through the ages have loved the idea that Mary Magdalene was a temptress [Music] but even if you haven't seen or read any of these things the chances are you've still heard of Mary Magdalene because she's infiltrated our culture on such a profound level for 2,000 years we've been fantasizing about her she's in our churches and on our walls in our chapels and in our windows in our paintings and in our dreams why are we so obsessed with her why does she ring our Bell so loudly and if she wasn't any of the things they say she was who really was she [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the Magdalene story begins in the Holy Land where else she's a creature of the Bible it's most alluring and intoxicating presence according to the Gospels she was a woman from Magdala this is Magdala today it's just a pokey sprawl on the banks of the Sea of Galilee but in biblical times this was a thriving fishing port Magdala Nanaia they called it Magdala of the fishes they still fish here when the mood takes them but once Magdala was a biblical hotspot a few miles up the road that way is Nazareth where Jesus grew up a few miles that way is Cana where he turned water into wine but over there is the Sea of Galilee where he walked on the waves also they say [Music] so these are crucial biblical territories where important things happened but the first thing to note about Mary Magdalene is that she hardly features in any of them considering how famous she is and how many men through the ages have drooled over her what's remarkable is how little we know about her and how much we've imagined in the Bible is mentioned just a handful of times a thoroughly minor character about whom we learn next to nothing basically she's mentioned four times and that's it the first time is in the Gospel of Luke where we're told that she was one of the women who followed Jesus here I'll read you the passage the twelve were with him that's the 12 apostles and also certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities among them Mary that was called Magdalene from whom Seven Devils had been cast out so she was one of the women who'd accompanied Jesus on his journeys through these biblical lands and he had cast seven demons out of her but what the hell are seven demons was she possessed for Seven Devils had she committed seven types of sin there's been endless speculation but no answers what is clear from this first spicy mention in the Bible is that Mary had a regrettable past she was stained with something sinful and when women in the Bible are said to be sinful the accusation usually points in a specific direction [Music] Jerusalem where Christ was flogged humiliated and crucified and where Mary Magdalene made the most telling of her tiny appearances in the Bible so we all know what happened here in the streets of Jerusalem the story of Christ's torture and crucifixion how he was mocked by the baying crowd as he carried his own cross up here to the place he was crucified the place we call Calvary [Music] Calvary where Christ was nailed to the cross is actually a mistranslation from the Latin the real name of this morbid hilltop is Golgotha the place of the skulls and that's the name I'm going to use [Music] it happened right there with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now spans that is Golgotha at 3 o'clock in the afternoon Jesus was nailed to the cross right there and hoisted up before us so we could witness his suffering and his death it's the most powerful moment in Christian art the scene of suffering so extreme you wonder how it ever ended up in a church the crucifixion is one of arts great subjects every old master of note has had a go at it it's a scene a spectacular torture and pain but it's also the moment when Mary Magdalene makes her second appearance in the Bible again it's just a passing mention mark chapter 15 verse 27 Jesus gave out a loud cry and breathed his last and there were women looking on from a distance among them was Mary Magdalene so she was there at the crucifixion just a brief mention but it was enough Mary Magdalene was a witness to the darkest moment in the Christian story she was there so she had to be imagined looked down to the foot of the cross in any crucifixion and you'll find her the most beautiful of the sobbing women who've come to mourn the passing of Christ and if none of them is beautiful look for the one who's screaming the loudest because Mary Magdalene who barely gets a mention in the Bible was elevated in art to the exciting and dramatic role of chief mourner [Music] the third mention of Mary in the Bible is the most important of them all having been there at the crucifixion and witnessed the death of Christ she's also named a few verses later as the first witness to his resurrection on the third day you'll remember Jesus came back from the dead the job of saving us was done and it was Mary Magdalene who met him again and who spread the word of his return [Music] in three of the Gospels she's one of a group of women all called Mary who find the tomb empty but in the Gospel of st. John the most vivid and influential of the Gospels its Mary Magdalene and only Mary Magdalene who first encounters the risen Christ salve Aldo chose the moment in an unusual fashion dawn is breaking and there's Mary Magdalene turned towards us with a strange expression on her face she's heard something and a mysterious light has fallen on her so she turns around and there's Jesus looking at her thus evaldo which is in the National Gallery in London is different in most paintings of the scene Mary doesn't recognize Jesus because she thinks he's dead and according to Saint John in his gospel she mistakes him for a gardener that's why in Rembrandt's wacky version of the scene Jesus sports that unlikely horticultural hat and why when Frangelico painted it he gave him a garden implement to hold slung casually on his shoulder so the sobbing Mary mistakes Jesus for a gardener he asks her why she's crying and she tells him that Jesus's body has disappeared does he know where it's been taken Mary he says to her and she looks up and she knows it's him falling at his feet the Magdalene tries to touch Jesus but he tells her not to nollie Tangere he says don't touch me he's not a man anymore he's a God [Music] it's a strange scene why out of all the important figures in the Bible was Mary Magdalene singled out to witness Christ's resurrection in the Middle Ages when they were especially unkind and misogynistic about these things the explanation that was usually given was that women were gossips and that by showing himself to a woman Christ was ensuring that word of his return would quickly spread but I don't think that's it I think it's because from the start Mary Magdalene was one of us a tangibly human presence the girl next door a sinner like me you in art she's never a creature of the clouds there's always something real about her I mean look at this superb terra cotta by niccolò delica how real is that so that's it that's all the mentions of Mary Magdalene in the Bible she's the sinner who had seven demons thrown out of her she witnessed the crucifixion and she was the first person to see Jesus when he rose from the dead so those are the facts and from now on everything else is fantasy or fabrication or it's a mix up with all the other Mary's in the Bible because there were a lot of them and before we go any further in this film we need to clear that up so here is my handy guide to all the relevant Mary's in the Bible first there's our Mary Mary Magdalene who followed Christ and witnessed his crucifixion in roger van divided ins great descent from the cross she's the sobbing Mary on the right the one who's wearing a Jesus and Mary Jane but outranking her in religious status is Mary the mother of Jesus the Virgin Mary she's everywhere in art in the van dividin she slumped at the front at the sight of her dead son now according to some and this is very confusing the Virgin Mary's sister was also called Mary and she's Mary salamy she's in the picture to supporting her sister and weeping for her then there's a third Mary Mary clear fasts another female disciple of Christ who was there they say of the crucifixion now confusingly she too was another sister of the Virgin Mary the why anyone would name three of their daughters Mary is beyond me what's certain is that her tears are the most miraculous in a masterpiece that's wet with divine sorrow so these three here form a family group and they're often shown together but so too are these three and they form another group commonly known as the three Mary's and they pop up in a lot of art they were especially popular in the Middle Ages and if you want to find the Magdalen among them look down on the ground so the Magdalene was lost in a crowd of biblical Mary's and needed to stand out and that's where the Pharisees come in the Pharisees were the bad guys in the story of Jesus they were an Orthodox Jewish sect who were suspicious of Jesus and who made things difficult for him [Music] here are some Pharisees in a painting by Poussin that's Simon the Pharisee this is his home and he's throwing a big feast to which he's invited Jesus we're inviting him for dinner here in Capernaum Simon was hoping to find out more about this rebellious fellow from Nazareth who was traveling around the Holy Land with his disciples spreading his new word the feast was a test who was this Jesus of Nazareth and what was he up to now in those days when you invited a guest for dinner one of the first things you did was to wash their feet they've been traveling through the dusty desert wearing sandals probably so their feet were dirty in the Poussin Simon himself is getting his feet washed by a servant but look who's washing Jesus's feet that's not a servant that's a woman with regrets all the Bible tells us about her is that she was a sinner an unnamed woman who came to the house of Simon the Pharisee and who saw that Jesus his feet were dirty so she washed them with her tears dried them with her hair and then kissed them and anointed them with oils it's a scene that artists through the ages loved to depict a desperate woman a sinner groveling at the feet of Jesus kissing and cleaning them begging for forgiveness [Music] no one says it's Mary Magdalene she could have been anybody but quicker than you can say of Babylon the early Christian mind began putting two and two together and the unnamed sinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee began to be recognized as Mary Magdalene as for her unnamed sins well she was a woman wasn't she and we all know what sins women like to commit [Music] I said there were a lot of Mary's in the Bible but there were even more outside the Bible in the various tales of repentance and heroism that began to be passed from Christian to Christian one such tale a very fruity one was the story of Mary of Egypt the repentant harlot who lived in the desert Mary of Egypt was what they later called a nymphomaniac she loved sex couldn't get enough of it and although she was a harlot she often did it for free just for the fun of it also they say one day Mary of Egypt decided to go to Jerusalem to tease the pilgrims but when she got to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre an invisible force refused to let her enter she couldn't get in and she realized that she needed to change her ways so she returned to the desert and became a hermit and for 20 years she survived on three loaves of bread and whatever she could find in the wilderness one day another hermit called Zaza MMus came across her in a cave she was naked except for her hair which had grown so long that it covered her shameful nakedness za Zemus gave her his cloak to put on but when he returned a year later she was dead a repentant sinner whose repentance was complete in Assisi in the chapel devoted to Mary Magdalene painted by Giotto you can see all this being acted out on the walls because yes you've guessed it Mary of Egypt was another identity that was quickly added to the growing myth of Mary Magdalene this idea that Mary Magdalene was a harlot a prostitute that her sins were the sins of the flesh isn't in the Bible there's no evidence for it of any kind but it soon became the big idea about Mary Magdalene the idea everyone wanted to believe thus the life of Mary of Egypt was stolen from her and given to Mary Magdalene from now on any artist seeking to portray the Magdalene assumed as joosep a Ribera assumes here that she was a repentant harlot who needed to pay for her sins having been turned into a naughty sinner Mary Magdalene needed a new look so art got busy inventing one for her this stuff here is called spiked nard it's a fragrant oil made from Himalayan plants and it was popular in ancient times as a perfume and appointment's [Music] spikenard was the oil that the unnamed sinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee rubbed so tenderly into the feet of Jesus when she washed them with her tears and dried them with her hair prostitutes used it to it's delicious aromas would intoxicate their clients and fill them with desire [Music] for all those reasons spikenard in Avars or a jar or a bowl became the symbol of Mary Magdalene and could always be found by her side so if you see an unknown woman in art and there's a pot of white man near her that's Mary Magdalene look out also for her hair if it's loose and falls down her back like a river as it does in this Guido Matt Soni sculpture that's the Magdalene as well [Music] another thing to look out for is the color of her dress if it's bright red like this then it's probably her since ancient times red has been the color of love a dangerous color that's why the expression a Scarlet woman entered our language because of Mary Magdalene out of almost nothing out of a handful of mentions in the Bible and some stolen bits of other Mary's art constructed the giant myth of Mary Magdalene [Music] and it didn't stop there so far everything I've told you has been set in Galilee or Jerusalem but the Holy Land is tiny too tiny to contain the enlarging myth of Mary Magdalene the more they fantasized about her the less recognizable she became and the time soon arrived for the myth of Mary Magdalene to travel [Music] you must have wondered how Mary Magdalene ended up in The Da Vinci Code after all that terrible book is set mostly in France but Mary Magdalene's story is set in the Holy Land okay it's time for a bit of geography so over here imagine that the holy land where Mary Magdalene story begins in the Bible roundabout here and Galilee and this way all the way around this is what the Romans used to call male Nostrum which means our sea but today we call it the Mediterranean and also on the Mediterranean up here this is France and just about there is this very Beach we're standing on in Provence and this is the beach on which Mary Magdalene actually landed when she fled the Holy Land and cast herself at the mercy of the Mediterranean [Music] the facts are pretty unclear because there aren't any it was all made up but the story goes that when the Jews began persecuting the Christians Mary Magdalene and her fellow Mary's were put on boats with no wars no sales and they drifted across the Mauri Nostrum until they reached Braavos so she landed here on the beach at San Molly delamare st. Mary of the sea and having been miraculously saved she set about converting the French to Christianity [Music] Provence was to play a gigantic role not just in the story of Mary Magdalene but in the story of art as well there's a famous painting of this very beach by Van Gogh showing some boats pulled up on the sand at first sight it looks like an innocent boat picture but at San mahi de la Mer there's no such thing as an innocent boat picture as we shall see as the sainthood converted Provence Mary Magdalene was particularly popular here a visiting superstar from the Bible who'd made the South of France her home and whom the locals were keeping very very busy because she'd been a prostitute they made her the patron saint of prostitutes because she'd met Jesus in the garden she became the patron saint of gardeners - and because she dried Christ's feet with her hair she looked after hairdressers as well most importantly of all because she'd arrived in Provence and brought Christianity with her they made her the patron saint of Provence and this was her church the Basilica of Mary Magdalene and there she is the woman herself or at least a skull carefully preserved in a golden reliquary that shows off her beautiful hair the hair that wiped Christ's feet this big church in the small Provencal town of Saint Maxim in la boum was where her body was miraculously discovered in 1279 some monks were digging up the Crypt when they found an ancient sarcophagus inside was her perfectly preserved corpse and drifting up from the bones was the sweet smell of roses [Music] now of course all this had been made up why because of the relics in medieval Europe relics were like gold dust if you had some important ones like the body of Mary Magdalene people would travel hundreds miles to see them and to touch them relics had magic powers they could cure you of terminal illness or bring you babies if you touch a holy body even a bit of it a toe a hand the saintliness flowed through you and you'd go to heaven also they said as news spread of the great find pilgrims began flocking here in spectacular numbers and where there are pilgrims there's muddy lots of it and money has to be controlled so the church was handed over to the care that especially fierce religious order the Dominicans and Mary Magdalene became their patron as well aha yes the Dominicans Punishers in chief of the medieval church as the patron saint of the Dominicans Mary Magdalene makes a beautiful appearance in the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence in some deceptively exquisite Renaissance frescoes by the Dominican friar Frangelico and all around her the dominicans the great flagellate errs of the monkish orders suffer mightily for their sins and make sure the rest of us suffer mightily as well darkness and punishment were now creeping into the story of Mary Magdalene having invented her sinful past art was now determined to make her pay for it Mary Magdalene had touched Christ she'd kissed his feet rubbed spikenard into them and smelt them and as a former prostitute her erotic past could never be scrubbed completely clean but as always with sin it's both deeply regrettable and deeply attractive in the battered porches of medieval France she's always easy to spot a rare horizontal in a vertical world crawling about on the ground washing Jesus's feet with her tears she was everywhere but here in Provence they had one thing that no one else had it's up there at the end of this exhausting climb the cave of Mary Magdalene [Music] when her work in Provence was complete and the pagans had been converted the Magdalene was said to have retired here high in the hills above akes just one duty remained for her to fulfill the Scarlet woman needed to pay for the sins of the user originally this was a grotto devoted to the Virgin Mary Mary the mother of Jesus but as the Provencal legend of Mary Magdalene grew and grew the cave switched identities and became the Cave of Mary Magdalene [Music] this is where she spent the final 30 years of her life paying her penance she didn't eat she didn't drink all she did was repent Mary Magdalene had already played a spectacular number of roles in art what she hadn't done yet is suffer properly for her sins really suffer and that's what happened here in this cave to show the Magdalene atoning for her past for all those young men she'd led astray with her dangerous beauty art invented a new genre the penitent Magdalene [Music] pretty much every notable artists of the 16th 17th and 18th centuries produced a penitent Magdalene they were phenomenally popular she was usually shown at night home alone remembering her naughty past and regretting it it all got very sweaty and strange you remember Mary of Egypt the harlot who lived in the desert wore no clothes and whose identity was subsumed in the identity of Mary Magdalene well it was in this cave that the Mary of Egypt side of Mary Magdalene found it's weirdest expression [Music] this peculiar creature is the hairy Magdalene carved by tilman Ahriman schneider at the end of the 15th century naked in the wilderness she's grown a thick belt of neck to ankle body hair to cover her modesty riemann schneider was a german whose attitude to female nudity was furtive and uncomfortable but when the italians started to paint penitent Magdalene's they had no such problem see for instance Titian Magdalene big head and beautiful in a plump Venetian way she tries to cover her modesty with her gorgeous hair but it's all a bit half-hearted isn't it so she's naked in this cave for 30 years no food no drink how did she survive with divine help of course seven times a day the legends say angels would come down to her from heaven and feed her on celestial music for thirty years Mary Magdalene survived on ecstasy and in art religious ecstasy and sexual ecstasy are always difficult to tell apart when Artemisia Gentileschi came to paint the scene she produced something that goes off the scale on the steamy front [Music] Mary came to the cave to repent for her sins but by the time Artemisia got her hands on her she seemed to be enjoying them again and when you start enjoying the sin of fornication we all know what happened next as a painting by Caravaggio of the Magdalene in ecstasy it was lost for many years but it's recently turned up and there she is open-mouthed transported in a dark pleasure Caravaggio was especially fond of Mary Magdalene he painted her a number of times and one image in particular haunts me it's a penitent Magdalene but a particularly awkward one what a strange pose there's her spikenard and the pearls she no longer needs but why would anyone sit like that I'm going to explain it to you but first a little quiz here we have two low chairs both have a specific purpose do you know what it is well this one here is what they call a prayer chair a Pleader you use it when you want to pray and the usual explanation for Caravaggio's Magdalene is that she's sitting in one of these the trouble is these aren't meant for sitting they're meant for kneeling like so and that's not what the Magdalene is doing so I think she's actually sitting on one of these a birthing chair this is a modern one but they've been used for thousands of years an especially low chair on which a woman sits when she's giving birth to a baby [Music] look at the way Caravaggio's Magdalene holds her hands the tenderness on her face it isn't just Dan Brown who insinuated that she was pregnant when she came to France lots of artists have implied it Roger van dividin the master of the tear implied it with exceptional subtlety in his beautiful brat triptych in the Louvre see how the laces of the Magdalene's corset are loosened at the tummy in Flemish art loosened laces are the sign of pregnancy there are various ways to read all this there's the Dan Brown way the sensational way that she really was pregnant with Jesus's baby and that their descendants are still among us today plotting their return well there's something more subtle the van dividin way in which Mary Magdalene's love of Jesus is understood as a spiritual state [Music] what she's carrying is the Word of God that's what she came to France with she's the Bride of Christ but in the spiritual sense inside Mary Magdalene is the Christian future [Music] you recognize that view don't you it's one of the most famous views not just in Provence but in the whole of art it is of course the Mulsanne Victoire Suzanne's favorite mountain ever knows how many times he painted it he was a local boy a provençale through and through and the great mountain was always on his horizon what you may not know is that our cave the cave of Mary Magdalene is also over there on the other side of the mountain and say maximum la boum is there as well with Mary Magdalene's skull the presence of the Magdalene is something you feel everywhere in Provence she soaked into the region's history she soaked into Suzanne although he's thought of as the great pioneer of modern art which he was Suzanne had another side to him he was very religious in a blunt and Provencal way his views on art were progressive but his views on women were not this spectacularly awkward painting is Suzanne's penitent Magdalene he painted her in her cave kneeling praying for forgiveness there's a Miss shapen scull on her table and Mary herself is bulky and unglamorous so unglamorous she looks more like a man than a woman when you first see it it's a very unappealing picture clumsy and dark but one of the great things about film cameras is that they allow you to get really close to paintings when you get really close to Suzanne's Magdalene the clumsiness fades down and the pathos fades up those white blobs above ahead incidentally are the pearls that fell from the roof of her cave pearls they say made out of the Magdalenes tears tears are the Scarlet woman's great gift to art and in Provence the Magdalene and her tears are never far away [Music] so in this Mary Magdalene comes to France pregnant she has Jesus's baby and establishes a dynasty that marries into the French royal family and they're still out there today somewhere it's complete nonsense utter fantasy but Mary Magdalene's story is 99% fantasy most of it has been made up what's really remarkable though is how influential it's been that's why I've brought you to this Beach again and this is where van Gogh comes in we're just up the road from all deep in Van Gogh country [Music] we all know what van Gogh did in Provence he painted some of the most celebrated masterpieces of post-impressionist art and on this beach at San mati Delamare he painted his famous boats pulled up on the sand it's the same beach on which Mary Magdalene was said to have landed with her fellow Mary's three boatloads of ancient Christians washed up without rudders or sails at San mahi delamare and if you look carefully you'll see that the battered box also washed up on the beach is signed Vincent one of the big mysteries of Van Gogh it's always puzzled people is why he came to this bit of Provence in the first place I mean he had the whole of the south of France to choose from so why pick somewhere as pokey and backward as this [Applause] well I have a theory about that it involves Mary Magdalene and this book here Marais oh by Frederick Mistral the greatest provençal poet it's set at San Mao Adela Mer right here and a few miles up the road in our with van Gogh cut off his ear so notoriously and it tells the story of a beautiful local girl called Marie oh and a soulful young man who falls in love with her named Vincent Vincent is a humble basket weaver and itinerant craftsmen who fix his chairs like the one van Gogh painted as a stand-in for himself in the yellow house in all mirre Oh meanwhile was from the other side of the tracks the daughter of a local landowner rich spirited and lovely they meet in an orchard Vincent loves me Rio immediately and she loves him but her father disapproves so they make a pact if anything is to happen to either of them they should meet over there at the church of San martín de la Mer where Mary Magdalene and her fellow Mary's will look after them and save them Mireya was turned into an opera by Charles Gounod and it was playing in Brussels when Van Gogh lived there studying to be a preacher [Music] in the Opera that an important moment set in the arena in our where Vincent meets murió at the bullfights and they grab a secret moment to express their love interestingly just before he came to our and goth started to sign his work Vincent it's an unusual thing to do to use your Christian name so often so prominently he said it was because people found van Gogh difficult to pronounce but there's something insistent about that signature something declamatory loud while we're on the subject names Vireo is provençale from Marais and both are derived from Miriam biblical name that's also used sometimes for Mary factory Mireya Marais Miriam Mary she switched identities more often than Jason Bourne but whatever she called herself artists couldn't stop dreaming about her so what am I saying what I'm saying is that this poem and the Opera made from it played a decisive role in van Gogh slice I'm saying that van Gogh came to San Marie de la Mer because of it and that's why he painted the beach and the boats I'm saying he painted the bullring in all because that's where Vincent met Marie oh and that this could be him and her right there I'm saying that van Gogh began calling himself Vincent not for reasons of pronunciation but because he identified so fiercely with the humble basket weaver I think he came here looking for love mr. owls poem haunted him it singled him out and filled him with yearning I think he came to all because that's where my rayou is set and I think he came here to San Marie de la Mer because this is where Vincent and Maria ended up this church in front of Mary Magdalene and that's the thing about the story of Mary Magdalene the twists here and there but it keeps coming back to love [Music] so there we have it how a few grains of truth were turned into the mountain of fantasy that is Mary Magdalene she's a work of fiction one of the great female leads created by the artistic mind but where most fictional characters are the work of a single author Mary Magdalene is a communal achievement [Music]

Channel: Perspective

Views: 153,742

Rating: 4.8114824 out of 5

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, mary magdalene, mary magdalene documentary, art history, history, history documentary, waldemar januszczak, waldemar januszczak documentary, arts and crafts, arts tv, da vinci code, documentary history

Id: SV6M0MxPGM0

Length: 58min 46sec (3526 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2020