Botticelli’s Magdalene Panels: A Plastic Approach
Essay: Gretchen Cole

Taken together, these panels represent many elements of the late Florentine tradition. The compositions rely heavily on the contrast of curvilinear figures to rectilinear architectural forms rendered in one-point perspective. Delicate straight bands of very dark or very light color define much of the architecture, creating delicate vertical rhythms across the horizontal format. The color-schemes are austere and of medium to low saturation, relying mainly on reds and greens. Light and color remain separate almost throughout all four panels. The color itself is compartmentalized and not structural. Botticelli's interest in decorative line can be seen primarily in the delicate color lines accenting the architecture and some of the drapery.

However, there are a few departures from strictest Florentine practices. For one thing, the scale of the works is smaller than many usually studied: about 8x17 inches. There seems to be a r Flemish influence in the interest in deep space, which occupies more and more of each successive panel. There is an overall more sketchy, less polished quality to the panels, and Botticelli has certainly departed from his reliance the omnipresent arabesque line. Notably, most of the faces of the figures are implied rather than delineated, and the deep space is rendered very loosely.

When the panels are considered as one piece, an overarching compositional plan emerges, based on the carefully defined horizontals and verticals of the architecture, which have actually been incised into the panel. This plan depends upon strong alternating bands of light and dark vertical rectangles on the two side panels carrying through to the edges of the center panels, with a more complicated arrangement of verticals and horizontals in the center that is almost symmetrical from a linear point of view. However, the use of large very light-colored areas in the left-center panel keeps the eye moving into the right-center panel, which centers a very stable combination of figures in a regularly divided rectangle of space, thus effectively giving the eye a “pat of butter” resting place. The gathering of figures to the right, and the movement of light from left to right, also encourages the movement of the eye to and through the third panel, where the movement becomes slower and more evenly rhythmic.

These four panels show the spiritual journey of the Magdalene as a literal journey of a large mass of high-saturation red through the first three panels. Smaller, lower-saturation units of a similar color keep our eye moving in the last panel to find the two figures that represent her final days. There is also an interesting progression from completely enclosed space to quite open space, and from fairly high color saturation and decorative quality to very low saturation of color and almost ascetic line. This progression is within Botticelli’s fund of knowledge, very expressive of the overall narrative arc of his subject, the Magdalene’s journey from depravity to transcendence. Thus, the subject is plastically illustrated.

Botticelli, Sandro
Christ Teaching
John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art

The first panel, Saint Mary Magdalene Listening to Christ Preach, uses a wide range of values and hues, which causes the unity of the design to suffer. The central element on the panel is a large, gaping square of black, contrasting with the very pale pillars on either side to give a strong sense of depth from fore to mid-ground. In fact, three planes can be defined strictly on the basis of color scheme: a shallow background of blacks and greenish grays, a foreground of creams and eggshells, and the mid-ground which, while including both very dark and very light values, is dominated by mid-tone reds and greens of fairly high saturation. The color of the front-most pillars, which certainly function as repoussoirs, warms and darkens from left to right, even increasing in size with the rightmost forms and reinforcing the general rightward and upward motion of the design. The most saturated color --bright red-- is found on the leftmost figure and in parts of the rightmost figure. This bright red, contrasted against the black central area previously mentioned, both establishes the leftmost figure as the focal point, and connects it to the rightmost figure across the intermediate group.

Light is used chiefly to model draperies and to pick out a few spots from left to right: Mary’s headdress, that of the kneeling figure at the front of the intermediate grouping, and the side of the box and pillar to the right. Thus a diagonal downwards from left to right strikes a strong upward vertical leading to the rightmost figure.

The pillars divide the panel into three sections and set up a regular rhythm contrasting with the curvilinear forms grouped irregularly from the center to the right. If the second and third sections were considered alone, they would demonstrate almost bilateral symmetry, with some movement up from left to right; the third “empty” section, so much darker in overall value, creates a second division of the panel on a diagonal from lower left to upper right, greatly increasing the compositional interest and giving a sense of gathering or collectedness to the figures. It also balances what seems to have been originally intended to be an even larger section of “empty” architecture on the far right of the whole assemblage. The monumentality of the four pillars and of the Christ figure makes this the anchor panel that introduces the series.
Space top to bottom and left to right is quite closed in and limited. Triangles seem to be an important compositional theme; in addition to the whole panel being divided into two triangles, the upward triangles of the architecture are mirrored by the downward triangles of the drapery. The overall unity of the panel may be threatened by the presence of so many compositional ideas and motions: vertical rhythm, horizontal rhythm, diagonal movement, triangles and rectangles all vie for dominance in the overall arrangement of forms. When viewed closely, these elements do not cohere. The plastic relationships between rectilinear and curvilinear forms become more interesting and less distracting when the whole work can be taken in at once, when they seem to express the human value of gathering, connectedness and the tension between inclusion and separation.

Botticelli, Sandro
Feast in the House of Simon
John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art

In the second panel, The Feast in the House of Simon, the color scheme is similar to that of the first, but there is much less reliance on very dark values. There are still large areas of very light value. The color on the figures alternates values rhythmically, while the contrasts in the rectilinear forms are more irregular. There does seem to be a general progression in these forms of darker overall to lighter overall left to right. There are also strong horizontal divisions of space by alternating bands of color. The areas of lightest value form a sort of “U” starting with the second doorway, moving across the tablecloth and down that diagonal, then up to the high white panel at the far right. This movement of color and light serves to emphasize the kneeling figure at lower right who is the main character of the narrative. The color in the tablecloth is more structural than usual, showing the gentle undulation of a stiff fabric.

This is a very traditional Florentine form: the disciples behind a table in a room which has been rendered in meticulous one-point perspective. However, Botticelli has innovated by once again pushing the central action to the right, and by introducing a glimpse of deep space through the doorway, foreshadowing the Dutch interiors seen 150 years later. There is a definite spatial sense of foreground figure, table as repoussoir, figures, wall and deep space. Most of the strong compositional elements, the door frames, the figures, even the panels on the walls, are vertical, but the tablecloth serves as a horizontal skewer to connect them all.

This panel seems to be primarily an exercise in the arrangement of rectilinear and curvilinear forms. The human interest in the work comes almost exclusively from the illustrative content.

Botticelli, Sandro
Noli me Tangere
John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art

In the third panel, Noli Mi Tangere, the color palette is narrowed to reds and greens of high saturation in the figures and low saturation in the setting, relieved only by a few pale blues in sky and deep space. Areas of color are much larger than previously, leading to more consistent rhythms across the panel. The labeling quality of the color becomes quite distracting across the enclosing wall. The high saturation of the figures’ drapes, as well as their placement in the center of an architectural enclosure, with a tree and pilaster behind them functioning as skewers, ensure that they will be the viewer’s focus. They create a strong triangular movement, as the large bright red mass on the left seems to be unbalanced. It is supported only by its connection with the smaller, orangeier red mass on the right figure, which rests securely on a strong vertical unit of green, the whole forming a right triangle. This is the strongest plastic portrayal of human values in the whole series, as dependence, fear and stability are all represented by the falling but not fallen movement of the bright red mass.

This panel also contains the most decorative lines seen so far, found as arabesque color lines in the drapery and hair of the figures, and as color-to-color curls and swoops in the landscape. Because only these three units are curvilinear and detailed, they move the eye across the page and into deep space, again echoing the narrative content of the painting, which depicts Christ telling Mary that He must soon leave her to return to heaven. The delicacy and grace of the line in this panel support the expressive nature of the massive figures and enhance the plastic expression of the illustrative content by increasing the pathos of the falling movement of the bright red mass.

The composition feels much more spacious in every direction than either of the preceding, due to the absence of a ceiling and the infinite space portrayed through the doorway. Again, if the composition were considered without the gate on the right, it would be almost bilateral, but the painter has moved the action again, this time to the left, so that the movement is not in from space, but out to it. In this panel, illustrative, decorative and expressive elements all serve each other to create a beautiful and moving portrait of the motion from earthly to transcendent and from despair to hope.

Botticelli, Sandro
Last Moments of the Magdalene
John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art

The final panel, The Last Moments of Saint Mary Magdalene, is divided almost exactly in half by a large architectural element. This is more appropriate to the illustrative content than in Listening to Christ Preach, as the subject is in fact two different events. The color scheme is almost exclusively warm browns, greenish grays and eggshells. Unsaturated, pale greens and blues are used in the far distance. The ethereal colors of deep space contrasting with the earth tones used everywhere else are expressive of the transcendence referred to in the illustrative content of the painting. The mass of light values immediately to the left of center is balanced with the spot of light value that is the backmost figure in the right grouping, to create a more interesting composition than mere distribution of linear units could achieve, and to help effect unity between the two sides.

The two compositions in the panel almost mirror, with the rightmost vertical of the architecture as their line of symmetry. Two figures curve away from each other towards groups of three on the left and right edges of the panel. However, the left group is pushed considerably back into a rather Northern, outdoor space, while the right group occupies the traditional shallow mid-ground of completely enclosed Florentine architecture. Yet both groups of figures are placed before a screen of rock on the left and wall on the right. Due to the low saturation of the colors used in the figures on the left, the entire group almost disappears. The figure of Mary in particular seems to take on the transferred value of the rocks behind her. On the right, the group of three figures forms an almost architectural parallelogram, anchored by the eggshell color (similar to that used for architectural elements throughout the panels) and pillar-like fluting on the backmost figure’s draperies. So the use of space and color plastically illustrate the narrative idea of moving from earthbound and solid architectural space to ethereal and transcendent deep space.

One rather distracting element in this composition is the transparency of the figures in the architecture, which may have been added to the panel as an afterthought. The illustrative content of that scene is not in sequence with the left-to-right chronology of the rest of the story. The transparency of the paint, which perhaps did not adhere well to previously applied layers, detracts from the contrast between massy earthly forms and the figure of Mary, who seems to be meant to appear almost disappeared from the world already.

Each panel in this series is a more or less enclosed, shallow space described by rectilinear architectural forms decorated with straight color lines, and labeled with compartmentalized colors of gray-greens, eggshells and warm browns. These spaces are then contrasted with figures which consist of curvilinear masses of reds, greens and gold, also using labeling, compartmentalized colors, more or less decorated with arabesque color lines, and grouped and distributed against the rectilinear elements. There is a consistent use of stable compositional devices such as symmetry, the balance of equivalents, and pyramidal groupings in each panel, along with an interest in adding new elements to these devices. Therefore, throughout the panels, color, line, space and light do not become integrated into a plastic whole.

When the panels are viewed as a sequence, it can also be said that there is an increasing interest in open and deep space and in the creation of rhythmic movement from both ends to the middle. This movement comes from the interplay of vertical and horizontal and light and dark. It comes to rest on the two figures of the Noli Me Tangere, which form an extremely stable right triangle. Due to the predominance of verticals and horizontals, the overall effect is static, one of stability and calm. This effect is enhanced by the subdued, repetitive color scheme and by the rather architectural or sculptural quality of many of the figures, which are activated by decorative color line but do not move. While some panels seem imprisoned by plastic devices and completely dependent on illustration to carry any meaning, the Noli attains to a fairly high level of integration of the plastic means with the illustrative content, nicely supported by skillful decoration, and representing a high-water mark in Botticelli's career.