The lamentation of the dying Mary Magdalen – Melchior de la Mars (c. 1580–1650) and the Power of Emotion in the Counter-Reformation

Phoebus Focus XX

In this Phoebus Focus edition, Lieke Wijnia takes the reader through the history of Saint Mary Magdalene and the little-known artist Melchior de la Mars. Moreover, the author holds up a mirror. In these crazy COVID times, De la Mars’s Mary Magdalene is perhaps more relevant than ever.

Lieke Wijnia (b. 1985) is a curator at Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht and a fellow at the Centre for Religion and Heritage at the University of Groningen. In 2016, she obtained her doctorate cum laude from Tilburg University with a thesis on perceptions of the sacred at the Musica Sacra Maastricht festival. Her postdoctoral research, which focuses on the sacred in modern and contemporary art, has been honoured by awards from the Teylers Godgeleerd Genootschap (2017) and the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park (2018). She has published in the International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and the Arts and the Yearbook of Ritual and Liturgical Studies. As a curator, she is responsible for Mary Magdalene: The Exhibition (2021) and the accompanying publication Mary Magdalene – Chief Witness, Sinner, Feminist. She is also a member of the expert panel of Scheppingsdrift, the podcast of EO and NPO Radio 4 on Bible stories in the arts.