Mary Magdalene Gilding the Symbols of the Passion of Christ

On the ledge in front of the woman lie the instruments of Christ's Passion, the chalice, the nails, the crown of thorns. She tends them, and the old title has her gilding them, laying gold over the tools of the crucifixion as an act of devotion. Who she is has been argued. The picture is usually called a Mary Magdalene, though some catalogues read the grieving figure as the Virgin Mary contemplating her son's coming death. Either way the meaning is close, and it is very much of its moment. Painted in 1581, deep in the Counter-Reformation, it turns private sorrow into a lesson about the Eucharist, the chalice standing for the blood of the Mass. Allori describes it all in his cool, exact hand, every gold thread and thorn set down.