Chapter XVII: Part 17

[313] There is a fine series of frescoes from the life of Mary Magdalene by Gaudenzio Ferrari, in the church of St. Cristoforo at Vercelli. 1. Mary and Martha are seated, with a crowd of others, listening to Christ, who is preaching in a pulpit. Martha is veiled and thoughtful: Mary, richly dressed, looks up eagerly.—Half destroyed. 2. Mary anoints the feet of the Saviour: she lays her head down on his foot with a tender humiliation: in the background the Maries at the sepulchre and the _Noli me tangere_.—This also in great part ruined. 3. The legend of the Prince of Provence and his wife, who are kneeling before Lazarus and Mary. Martha is to the left, and Marcella behind. In the background are the various scenes of the legend:—the embarkation; the scene on the island; the arrival at Jerusalem; the return to Marseilles with the child. This is one of the best preserved, and the heads are remarkably fine. 4. Mary Magdalene sustained by angels, her feet resting between the wings of one of them, is borne upwards. All the upper part of the figure is destroyed. In the background are the last communion and burial of the Magdalene. I saw these frescoes in October 1855. They suffered greatly from the siege in 1638, when several bombs shattered this part of the wall, and will soon cease to exist. They are engraved in their present state in Pianazzi’s ‘Opere di Gaudenzio Ferrari,’ No. 19.

[314] Bayle, Dict. Hist.; Molanus, lib. iv., de Hist. Sacrar. S. Mag., cap. xx. p. 428; Thomasium, prefat. 78. The authority usually cited is Abdius, a writer who pretended to have lived in the first century, and whom Bayle styles ‘the most impudent of legendary impostors.’

[315] Paris, Bibliothèque du Roi, MS. 7013, fourteenth century.

[316] Il Perfetto Legendario.

[317] Queen’s Gal.

[318] Bodleian MSS., Oxford.

[319] It is perhaps in reference to this tradition that St. Martha has become the patroness of an order of charitable women, who serve in the hospitals, particularly the military hospitals, in France and elsewhere,—her brother Lazarus having been a soldier.

[320] Fl. Gal.

[321] B. Museum.

[322] It was in the Sp. Gal. in the Louvre, now dispersed.

[323] Santa Maria Penitente.

[324] ‘Leben und Werke Von Albrecht Dürer,’ No. 2067.