Saint Mary Magdalene

Saint Mary Magdalene at the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar — the city most closely associated with Schongauer's career — belongs to his saints series and to the museum that already holds the Isenheim Altarpiece, making it one of the richest repositories of late medieval Upper Rhenish devotional art. Mary Magdalene was a saint of particularly rich symbolic complexity: repentant sinner, intimate companion of Christ, first witness of the Resurrection, and in Western tradition the contemplative who withdrew to the desert. Her attribute, the jar of ointment with which she anointed Christ's feet, appears consistently in her iconography. Schongauer's treatment reflects both his graphic sharpness and his ability to give individual physiognomy and psychological depth to saintly figures.

Oil on canvas — though Schongauer's surviving panels are mostly on wood, raising questions about later transfer. The saint's figure is outlined with the precise contour derived from engraving practice, then filled with thinly layered paint that gives the surface a taut, graphic quality. The ointment jar is painted with still-life attention to its ceramic or glass surface.