Mary Magdalen
Master i.e.
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Despite its apparent simplicity, Mary Magdalen, is one of Master i.e.'s most accomplished works. He depicted the patron saint of hairdressers and perfumers as a graceful, pensive figure clothed in an elegant robe, with her hair tied in large braids around her head. She delicately grasps her attribute, the jar containing the ointment with which she anointed Christ's feet. The depiction of the saint as a single figure, removed from any narrative and standing on a schematically indicated mound of earth, is related to prints by the great fifteenth-century northern European printmaker Martin Schongauer, but Master i.e. depicted his saint on a much larger scale and rendered the costume with an intricate brocade seldom seen in his teacher's work. We know very little about the author of this beautiful engraving. He was most likely active in the shop of Martin Schongauer, to whom much of his work is stylistically indebted. Our name for this unknown artist derives from an interpretation of the Gothic initials that appear in reverse on an engraving of a peasant holding a sausage (unique impression in the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) and that may or may not be his monogram; none of the other prints attributed to him is signed.
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.