Scripture · Psalm 119:130
Psalm 119:105
The Penitent Magdalen
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
One candle becomes two flames in the mirror. Between the light and its reflection, Mary Magdalene rests her intertwined fingers on a skull, making stillness the centre of an image full of small visual doubles.
What does The Penitent Magdalen show?
The Metropolitan Museum’s canvas, dated about 1640, places pearls on the table and what appear to be discarded pieces of jewellery on the floor. Such objects belong to the later image of Magdalene renouncing luxury. The Gospel accounts do not identify her as the unnamed sinful woman of Luke 7 or describe this candlelit retirement.
Mr and Mrs Charles Wrightsman gave this painting to the Met in 1978. Its mirror differs from the Washington Magdalene’s: here it repeats the candle rather than presenting the skull. The same group of objects can therefore change the direction of attention from a reflected reminder of death to a repeated source of light.
Featured in: Georges de La Tour’s Bible Paintings: The Candle Painter Hidden Under Other Names
What does Psalm 119:105 mean?
Psalm 119:105 calls God’s word a lamp for the speaker’s feet and a light for the path. In the surrounding verses the speaker promises obedience while acknowledging affliction and asking for life. Guidance is sought in difficulty, not from a position where the road has become effortless.
The candle supplies the visual connection, but the psalm does not describe Magdalene or the scene La Tour painted. Read beside the image, its language gives a practical direction to the light: it is something by which one can continue to walk.
Psalm 119:105 connects the doubled flame with the word that guides a person’s next steps, without claiming the painting illustrates the psalm.
Sources
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York collection record.
Psalm 119 — Berean Standard Bible. The paired text read with its surrounding chapter.
Georges de La Tour’s Bible Paintings: The Candle Painter Hidden Under Other Names. Exact-work research, history and interpretive qualifications for this reading.
Also from Psalm:NativityMorning Prayer
Continue looking:Saint Jerome WritingPenitent Magdalene