The Iconography

The Orthodox icon of Mary Magdalene shows her dignified and apostolic: bearing the alabaster jar of myrrh, or the red egg, or both, often in the proclaiming gesture of one sent to announce good news. The myrrh-bearers are shown together at the empty tomb before the angel; the meeting with the risen Lord (“do not cling to me”) has its own type. This file reads these iconographic types and the theology behind them, and contrasts the Eastern icon’s restraint with the dishevelled “penitent” of Western art produced by the conflation.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equal-to-the-Apostles, Myrrh-bearer)

The Alabaster Jar of Myrrh

The oldest and most constant attribute of Mary Magdalene in Eastern iconography is the vessel of myrrh — the alabaster jar or flask of aromatic ointment that the women carried to the tomb (Mark 16:1; Luke 24:1). She holds it as the emblem of her title Myroforos, Myrrh-bearer, and of the love that came to anoint the dead and found the Living One (see The Myrrh-bearing Women). The jar is held openly and with dignity, an instrument of devotion, not a token of penance. The icon shows a mature, composed woman, fully and modestly robed — usually in red — gazing forward or toward Christ, her bearing that of an apostle rather than a sinner.

It is worth noting that the jar of myrrh in the Eastern Magdalene icon refers to the spices at the tomb, not to the anointing of Christ’s feet by the sinful woman of Luke 7 — a scene the East assigns to a different woman (see The Eastern Tradition). The same object that in Western art became the jar of the penitent prostitute is, in the Eastern icon, the jar of the myrrh-bearer at the empty tomb.

The Red Egg

A second and distinctively Eastern attribute is the red egg, which Mary Magdalene frequently holds — sometimes alone, sometimes together with the jar of myrrh, the two emblems of her two titles. The red egg recalls the tradition of her bold proclamation of the Resurrection before the Emperor Tiberius and the egg that turned red at her word (see The Red Egg Tradition), and it carries the Paschal symbolism of the Resurrection: the sealed shell as the tomb, the red as the blood of Christ, the new life within as the risen Lord. An icon of Mary Magdalene bearing the red egg is therefore an icon of the Resurrection proclaimed — the first herald holding the sign of what she proclaimed.

The Myrrh-bearers at the Empty Tomb

Beyond the portrait icon, Mary Magdalene appears in the great festal images of the Resurrection cycle. The icon of the Myrrh-bearing Women (the Myrophores) shows the women — Mary Magdalene foremost — approaching the empty tomb with their spice-jars, met by a radiant angel seated on the rolled-back stone who points to the empty grave-clothes (Matt. 28:2–6; Mark 16:5–6). This is the proper Eastern “Easter morning” image, paired with the dogmatic icon of the Resurrection itself, the Descent into Hades (the Anastasis). The myrrh-bearers’ icon places Mary Magdalene at the very center of the Church’s Paschal imagery, as the first to come and the first to be sent (see The Feasts).

“Do Not Cling to Me”

The personal meeting of Mary Magdalene with the risen Christ in the garden — John 20:14–17 — has its own iconographic type, known in the West by the Latin tag Noli me tangere (“touch me not”) and in the East as the appearance of the risen Lord to the Magdalene. It shows Mary, often kneeling or reaching toward Christ, and the risen Lord gesturing — at once permitting recognition and bidding her not to cling but to go and proclaim (John 20:17; see The First Witness). The Eastern versions emphasize the sending: Mary is not merely restrained but commissioned, and the image becomes one of mission rather than of mere prohibition.

The Eastern Icon’s Restraint and the Western Penitent

The most striking feature of Eastern Magdalene iconography is what it refuses. Western art, working from the conflated “penitent Magdalene” (see The Three Marys), developed an immense iconography of penitence: the Magdalene with long, loose, dishevelled hair (drawn from the sinful woman who wiped Christ’s feet with her hair, Luke 7:38), half-clothed or in the wilderness, weeping over a skull, the jar of ointment recast as the emblem of a reformed harlot. From the Renaissance and Baroque this became one of the most reproduced of all sacred subjects — and one of the most eroticized, the penitent’s bared shoulder and flowing hair lending the image a sensuality foreign to its ostensible piety (Haskins, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor, 1994, on the penitent in Western art).

The Eastern icon refuses all of this. Its Magdalene is robed and composed, her hair covered, her bearing apostolic; she holds the jar of the myrrh-bearer or the red egg of the Resurrection, not the skull of the penitent hermit. The iconographic restraint is theological: the icon shows the saint as she is in glory, transfigured and at peace, not as a figure of dramatic emotion, and it shows this saint as the Church knows her — Equal-to-the-Apostles, not reformed prostitute. The contrast between the two iconographic traditions is, in miniature, the whole contrast between the Eastern and the conflated Western Magdalene.

The Theology of the Icon

All of this rests on the Orthodox theology of the icon, defined at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787) and articulated by St. John of Damascus and St. Theodore the Studite: the icon does not merely illustrate but makes present, in honor, the person depicted, and the veneration passes to the prototype (Nicaea II, 787, Definition; John of Damascus, On the Divine Images; see Icons and Iconoclasm). The icon of Mary Magdalene is therefore not a portrait of a historical personality but a window onto the glorified saint — which is precisely why it shows her transfigured and apostolic rather than as the Western drama of penitence. To venerate her icon is to honor the first witness of the Resurrection and to be drawn, through her, toward the risen Lord she proclaimed.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version: Mark 16:1–6; Luke 7:38; 24:1; Matthew 28:2–6; John 20:14–17.
  • The Second Council of Nicaea (787), Definition on the Holy Icons. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 14.
  • John of Damascus. Three Treatises on the Divine Images. Trans. Andrew Louth, Popular Patristics Series. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003.
  • Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982.
  • Haskins, Susan. Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994. (On the penitent Magdalene in Western art.)