In her preface, Penny Howell Jolly states that the inspiration for this book came from her students, who kept asking whether or not the woman in Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Double Portrait was pregnant. This led her to question how artists of the time did in fact represent the pregnant female body. She discovered that many images of the Virgin Mary and Elizabeth, in scenes such as the Visitation, depict them in gowns with spreading laces to indicate their expanding wombs. More unexpectedly, Mary Magdalene is also represented in this manner. In her case, the maternity laces code Mary Magdalene paradoxically as both sinner and saint, and such images appealed to the faithful through her embodied demonstration of the promise of redemption. Jolly’s close and thoroughly documented examination of the maternity-laces motif introduces a fascinating, richly contextualized survey of images of Mary Magdalene produced in the North during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross is one of best-known Northern paintings of the fifteenth century, and in chapter 1 Jolly explores the striking image of Mary Magdalene, writhing in grief at the feet of Christ. Drawing on the history of dress, augmented with textual, theological, linguistic, and cultural sources, she analyzes the way Mary Magdalene’s clothing signifies on multiple levels: her opened laces connoting both her erotic past and her newfound status as Bride of Christ. Her maternity laces and low-slung belt with the inscription “IHESVSMARIA” signal her spiritual pregnancy, full of grace after her conversion; but along with her exposed kirtle and red sleeves, they are at the same time reminiscent of her previous carnality. This seems to be the first instance of the pregnant Mary Magdalene, but the motif quickly spread.

In chapter 2 Jolly’s focus is on Rogier van der Weyden’s Braque Triptych, commissioned by Catherine de Brabant after the death of her husband, Jean Braque, in 1452 at a relatively young age. Here again Mary Magdalene appears with maternity laces as well as her ointment jar; in this case, Jolly suggests that the focus is on the Magdalene as both a foolish and a wise virgin, and that her ability to signify both refers to the possibilities of transformation for all sinners. Specifically, after the 1439 Council of Florence promoted the efficacy of prayers for the dead in releasing them from purgatory, the intercessory figure of Mary Magdalene might have been comforting to Catherine as she prayed for the soul of her deceased husband.

Unlike the first two paintings, commissioned by specific patrons, the images treated in chapters 3 and 4 were created for the burgeoning art market in Antwerp and Bruges. These half-length portraits of women, depicted with elaborate jars and sometimes playing lutes, are not universally accepted as Mary Magdalene; in fact, some are clearly aristocratic women in the guise of the saint. However, Jolly sees the group as another example of the multivalent representation of her as reformed sinner, a liminal intermediary between the earthly and the divine with dual emphasis on her decadent past and spiritual present. The jar and the lute are malleable signifiers (for one thing, both can function as visual metaphors for the womb), and a strength of the book is its careful contextualization of the paintings within the social, artistic, economic, musical, and religious changes of the time, demonstrating how representations of Mary Magdalene could serve a variety of audiences with multiple meanings. In the final chapter, Jolly examines images of Mary Magdalene depicted in the wilderness, and she convincingly links them to ideas about lovesickness and melancholia, particularly because of Mary Magdalene’s connection with both carnal desire and spiritual ecstasy. Some of these later examples seem especially erotic, suggesting further layers of conflicting meanings.

This is a rich and comprehensive study of the enigmatic nature of Mary Magdalene, whose popularity ultimately rested in her promise that a path to salvation was available to all. Jolly’s book is its own paradox: a scholarly, nuanced treatment of a complicated topic, presented with a clarity that will have its own broad audience appeal.