THE MYSTERY OF MAGDALENE ON DISPLAY AT THE SAN DOMENICO MUSEUMS IN FORLI

Entitled Magdalene. The Mystery and the Image and is the not-to-be-missed event that puts on display at the San Domenico Museums in Forlì, more than 200 masterpieces – from the 3rd century A.D. to the 20th century – as an intimate investigation into the eternal fascination of Mary of Magdala, a woman whose existence is deeply intertwined with the faith of the first Christian communities in history. An exhibition, an itinerary that seeks to answer the eternal question: who was Mary Magdalene really?

The figure of Mary Magdalene is certainly one of the most emblematic and mysterious; her mystery is the starting point of many studies that still today bring new keys to interpretation. Art, literature, and cinema have dedicated hundreds of works to her.

Among the great masters fascinated by the figure of Magdalene are present in the exhibition Masaccio, Crivelli, Van der Weiden, Signorelli, Bellini, Perugino, Barocci, Savoldo, Mazzoni, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Guercino, Vouet, Reni, Lanfranco, Mengs, Canova, Hayez, Delacroix, Böcklin, Previati, Chagall, De Chirico, Guttuso, Melotti, Sutherland, and Bill Viola.

Twelve sections tell the story of the confrontation with the aesthetics of pain in ancient art, the formation of iconographic models in the Middle Ages, the anthropological turn from Giotto to the late Gothic period, the humanistic perspective included between penitence, hagiography and portraiture, the formal tension of the 16th century and the sensuality of the 17th century, the neoclassical revival, the religious 19th century and the Symbolist restlessness until the 20th century, which restored to the figure of Magdalene the sense of the mystery of human living.