Introduction
This subject for an unexecuted predella for his 1877 oil painting of the Magdalene is described in a small notebook now in the British Library. If completed, it would have had two sides: one depicting Mary Magdalen annointing the feet of Christ, and another showing her clinging to the foot of the cross at the Deposition. The first is a scene taken from
John 12: 3-8
(the woman is identified as Mary only in John's account), and the second from all four gospels (e.g.,
Mark 15: 40-47
).