A Marble Bust of Mary Magdelene

Horatio Greenough is known to have sculpted an ideal figure of Mary Magdalene, for which he charged $370; the figure, however, is now lost. In the period 1840 to 1845, Greenough also sculpted busts of Lucifer and of Christ, the latter of which has much in common with the bust of Mary Magdalene offered here. The deeply molded ringlets of hair on her shoulders particularly recall the Christ figure (Collection of the Boston Public Library). For more on Greenough, see Dr. Richard Saunders, Horatio Greenough: An American Sculptor's Drawings