Frankfurt am Main
Mary Magdalene is one of the most complex female figures in the Bible and art history. The exhibition at the Städel Museum is the first comprehensive show devoted to her in the German-speaking world and traces her changing depictions from the Middle Ages to the present day. More than 100 paintings, sculptures, and graphic works show Mary Magdalene as a saint, an alleged sinner, a mourner, and a close companion of Christ. Important loans from international museums are presented alongside works from the collections of the Städel Museum and the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection. Works by Albrecht Dürer, Georges de La Tour, Max Beckmann, Marlene Dumas, and other artists illustrate how each era projected its own ideas about the body, faith, and social roles onto this figure. The result is a striking visual history that questions familiar attributions and reveals Mary Magdalene as an independent personality who continues to fascinate to this day.
Paradise—a place of longing that has captured the human imagination for centuries. As both an earthly and heavenly garden, and as a symbol of the original harmony between humanity and nature, it has become a canvas for religious, philosophical, and artistic ideas. At the heart of the exhibition is one of the Städel Museum’s most famous and, at the same time, most enigmatic paintings: “The Little Garden of Paradise” (ca. 1410/20). The panel—barely larger than an open book—astonishes with its wealth of detail. In it, the Virgin Mary sits amidst a courtly gathering, while the enclosed garden can be interpreted both as a religious symbol and as a place of worldly love. Particularly striking is the sense of closeness to nature within the work. The exhibition focuses on this groundbreaking connection between art and the perception of nature and comprehensively situates “The Little Garden of Paradise” within the historical and artistic context of Europe around 1400—a time of upheaval, conflict, and intellectual exchange.
