The Three Marys

This work, an especially large example of the finished sheets Weyer made for the Central European market in the first decades of the seventeenth century, epitomizes the Mannerist mode of drawing the artist developed after his 1616 visit to the Netherlands.

With the expressive drapery, which by turns conceals and reveals the figures’ idealized forms and attenuated limbs, dramatic lighting, and liberal use of white gouache in combination with black ink and ocher-colored washes, Weyer gave this New Testament subject a vivid sense of drama. Mary Magdalene and, according to the gospel of Mark, Mary of Clopas and Mary Salome appear at center, holding the spices with which they planned to annoint Christ's body, only to discover his empty sepulchre following his Resurrection. They convey their shock through their exaggerated contrapposto and outstretched arms. The light and wind that that animate their forms, drapery, and the landscape around them, underscore this sense of revelation.

The drawing compares closely with a group in the SMK, Copenhagen, even exhibiting the vertical crease that these sheets also possess, indicating that they were once folded, presumably for safekeeping between the leaves of albums, as was common practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the early nineteenth century, the present work made its way into the collection of Peter Vischer (1751-1823) in Basel, at which point, most likely, it was adhered to its decorative mount. Vischer's collector's stamp appears on the mount at lower left.