The Ecstasy of Mary Magdalene (1501–4): Art, History and Details

The Ecstasy of Mary Magdalene (1501–4) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Dürer’s woodcut of Mary Magdalene represents a popular subject in German art and is considered a schlechtes Holzwerk, a simple woodcut intended for a general audience. According to a medieval book of saints’ lives known as the Golden Legend, Mary Magdalene spent the last 30 years of her life as a hermit outside of Marseilles, France, where she was miraculously borne aloft to heaven seven times a day to hear the choir of angels. Considered a fallen woman in her early life, Mary earned redemption through her complete devotion to Christ. During this period, Dürer was preoccupied with the laws of human proportion and the female figure. Mary Magdalene’s powerful legs and widened hips are comparable to the female nudes in Dürer’s The Dream of the Doctor and Adam and Eve.

Object facts

• Title: The Ecstasy of Mary Magdalene
• Date: 1501–4
• Creator attribution: Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
• Culture: England, early 16th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: woodcut
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1941.42

Collection credit

Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.