3-071-037 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Jesus at the House of the Pharisee, from the picture by F. W. Lawson, 1881. Engraving of a painting depicting '...the visit of our Saviour to the house of Simon the Pharisee, when the Magdalene showed such touching self-abasement, and bestowed upon our Lord those courtesies which had been forgotten by his host...the attitude of the painter has been wholly reverential. We see the house of the scornful Pharisee, the table laid for a meal. Simon himself at the head of it, negligently grasping his knees, looks half amused and half scornfully at his Guest...Our Saviour is...looking...with tender pity on the Magdalene...At the end of the couch, reverentially embracing the Saviour's feet, with her long hair sweeping over them, the box of ointment at her side, the Magdalene kneels, the complementary figure to that of our Lord, and, as rendered by the painter, an extremely touching and beautiful one. The great charm about Mr. Lawson's Magdalene is her perfect purity...It is a magnificent realisation of the scene when this outcast, whose penitence has made her immortal, came "And wept, and with her untressed hair Still wiped the feet she was so blessed to touch; And he wiped off the soiling of despair From her sweet soul because she loved so much".' From "Illustrated London News", 1881.