The week saw a new featured article on The Magdalen Reading, an oil-on-oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painterRogier van der Weyden (c. 1400–64). Here, Mary Magdalen is given pale skin, high cheek bones, and oval, arched eyebrows, typical of the idealised portraits of noble women of the period. Art critic Charles Darwent says that in her mix of purity and eroticism, she "feels whole; but she isn't". The work is a fragment from a larger, lost altarpiece, and is held by the National Gallery, London.
This week's "Featured content" covers Sunday 22 – Saturday 28 May
