Martha and Mary in Painting

The biblical story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38–42) has been depicted in paintings many times over the centuries.

“38 Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι αὐτοὺς καὶ αὐτὸς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς κώμην τινά. γυνὴ δέ τις ὀνόματι Μάρθα ὑπεδέξατο αὐτὸν εἰς τὸν οἴκον αὐτῆς. 39 καὶ τῇδε ἦν ἀδελφὴ καλουμένη Μαρία, ἣ καὶ παρακαθίσασα παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἤκουε τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ. 40 ἡ δὲ Μάρθα περιεσπᾶτο περὶ πολλὴν διακονίαν· ἐπιστᾶσα δὲ εἶπε· Κύριε, οὐ μέλει σοι ὅτι ἡ ἀδελφή μου μόνην με κατέλιπε διακονεῖν; εἰπὲ οὖν αὐτῇ ἵνα μοι συναντιλάβηται. 41 ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ εἶπεν αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Μάρθα Μάρθα, μεριμνᾷς καὶ τυρβάζῃ περὶ πολλά· 42 ἑνὸς δέ ἐστι χρεία· Μαρία δὲ τὴν ἀγαθὴν μερίδα ἐξελέξατο, ἥτις οὐκ ἀφαιρεθήσεται ἀπ’ αὐτῆς. ………” (Λουκ. Κεφ. 10ο, 38-42)

38 Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary.[b] Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

(Luke 10: 38-42)

In this post I present some of the most interesting paintings of the story. In terms of their composition, I grouped the paintings as follows.

Christ, Mary and Martha (5)

El Greco (c. 1600)

Jan Bruegel the younger and Rubens (1628)

Attributed to Abraham van Dijck (1652)

Johannes Vermeer (1655)

Charles de La Fosse (1700s)

Mary and Martha (1)

Caravaggio (1598)

Picture within a picture (1)

Velazquez (1618)

Interior without kitchen scene (3)

Engebrechtsz (1515-1520)

Tintoretto (1570 – 1575)

Anonymous, French (18th century)

Kitchen scene in the foreground (4)

Artsen (last quarter of the 16th century)

Beuckelaer (1568)

Jacopo and Francesco Bassano (1576 – 1577)

Jan Steen (1650s)

Cornelis Engebrechtsz – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

Circa 1515-1520
oil on panel
Height: 55 cm (21.6 in); Width: 44.5 cm (17.5 in)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Interior with Christ in the house of Mary and Martha. To the left Christ is sitting next to his mother Mary speaking to some of his disciples. On the floor in front of him Mary, Martha’s sister, is kneeling. In the background Martha is working by the fireplace. Above the archway to the kitchen a relief with the death of Lucretia is placed.

Pieter Artsen – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
Oil on panel

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Pieter Aertsen (1508 – 2 June 1575), called Lange Piet (“Tall Pete”) because of his height, was a Dutch painter in the style of Northern Mannerism. He is credited with the invention of the monumental genre scene, which combines still life and genre painting and often also includes a biblical scene in the background. He was active in his native city Amsterdam but also worked for a long period in Antwerp, then the centre of artistic life in the Netherlands.

His genre scenes were influential on later Flemish Baroque painting, Dutch still life painting and also in Italy. His peasant scenes preceded by a few years the much better-known paintings produced in Antwerp by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

The painting depicts a kitchen scene combined with a religious subject is set within Renaissance architecture. The background depicts the story of Christ in the house of Martha and Mary. This painting marks the transition from the late mediaeval practice of depicting religious subjects to a new era, in which art depicts the everyday life of the self confident bourgeoisie.

Joachim Beuckelaer – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

1568

Oil on canvas

The foreground shows an everyday scene of a kitchen filled with still-life elements and two women at work. In the background, beneath a portico, Jesus can be seen visiting the house of Martha and Mary, as is told in the book of Luke (Luke 10, 38-42). This Bible story is appropriate for emphasizing spirituality over material things. The abundance of objects in the foreground, recalling the opulence of the wealthy Flemish, is surpassed by the importance of the religious event depicted in the background. This approach breaks with the traditional thematic hierarchy and was characteristic among Flemish artists of that time. It had a considerable influence on Diego Velázquez´s early works. In this work, Beuckalaer combines the realist capacity to represent objects, which was characteristic of northern art, with the use of architectural elements, such as the portico, drawn from a knowledge of Italian art theory.

Jacopo Tintoretto – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

between 1570 and 1575
oil on canvas
Height: 200 cm (78.7 in); Width: 132 cm (51.9 in)

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Jacopo and Francesco Bassano – Christ in the House of Martha, Mary and Lazarus

1576 – 1577
Pitti Palace, Florence, Italy
Oil on canvas
81 x 116 cm (with 105 x 140 x 8 cm frame)

The description of the environment dominates everything: the large rustic kitchen opens onto an open hilly landscape – typical of the Veneto region– and is equipped with various kinds of utensils, copper pots, tin dishes, bowls and sieves; a kitchen where the opulence of food triumphs with a great variety of poultry and fish. In the foreground a cook is bending over a large crockpot in which she is making soup, and Lazarus is looking at its meal avidly. Of course the vices of greed and gluttony are contrasted with the virtues of the spirit and sacrifice but the scene as a whole is a pleasant description of a domestic environment at the end of the 16th century.

Probably due to the depiction of the pleasantness that surrounds the moral content, this picture was extraordinary successful compared to other Venetian paintings from the 1570s. A large number of replicas and variations are kept in Italian and European museums and abroad.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Martha and Mary Magdalene

c. 1598
Oil on canvas, 98 x 133 cm
Institute of Arts, Detroit

The painting shows the sisters Martha and Mary from the New Testament. Martha is in the act of converting Mary from her life of pleasure to the life of virtue in Christ. Martha, her face shadowed, leans forward, passionately arguing with Mary, who twirls an orange blossom between her fingers as she holds a mirror, symbolising the vanity she is about to give up. The power of the image lies in Mary’s face, caught at the moment when conversion begins.

Martha and Mary was painted while Caravaggio was living in the palazzo of his patron, Cardinal Del Monte. 

El Greco – Christ in the House of Mary and Martha

circa 1600
oil on panel
38 x 33 cm

Private collection

Diego Velázquez – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

1618
Oil on canvas
63 cm × 103.5 cm (25 in × 40.7 in)
National Gallery, London

Velázquez has painted the interior of a kitchen with two half-length women to the left; the one on the left appeared in his Old Woman Cooking Eggs from the same period. On the table are a number of foods, perhaps the ingredients of an Aioli (a garlic mayonnaise made to accompany fish). These have been prepared by the maid. Extremely realistic, they were probably painted from the artist’s own household as they appear in other bodegones from the same time.

In the background is the biblical scene. Christ is shown as a bearded man in a blue tunic. He gesticulates at Martha, the woman standing behind Mary, rebuking her for her frustration.

Jan Bruegel the younger and Rubens – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

1628

oil on oak wood
64 × 61.9 cm (25.1 × 24.3 in)

National Gallery of Ireland

Christ conversing with Martha and Mary – Attributed to Abraham van Dijck

Drawing on paper

c. 1652

Height: 184 millimetres
Width: 261 millimetres

The British Museum, London

Pen and brown ink with brown and grey-brown wash, heightened with white; some scraping-out;* framing lines…

Abraham van Dijck was a painter and draughtsman; probably from Dordrecht. He may have been a young pupil of Rembrandt in c.1650, to judge from his style, though this was possibly transmitted by another Rembrandt pupil, such as Samuel van Hoogstraten (q.v.). Dated paintings are known from 1651. He is recorded in Amsterdam in 1661, but died in Dordrecht in 1680.

The drawing presents a dark interior with Christ seated before a window with double arch, addressing Martha who stands at left with a basket in her hand, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, Mary sits with a book on her knees to right. 

Jan Steen – Christ in the House of Mary and Martha 

1650s
oil on panel
Height: 73 cm (28.7 in); Width: 73 cm (28.7 in)
Collection Pollock House, Glasgow, Scotland

Johannes Vermeer – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary 

1655
Oil on canvas
160 cm × 142 cm (63 in × 56 in)
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

It is the largest painting by Vermeer and one of the very few with an overt religious motive. The story of Christ visiting the household of the two sisters Mary and Martha goes back to the New Testament. The work has also been called Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (reversing the last two names).

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is thought to be the earliest known painting by Vermeer. The strongest argument for its early date is the differences in painting techniques between this work and his later ones. In no other painting does he focus so exclusively on the figures in the central core of the composition. Vermeer in his mature works was very conscious of the relationship of his figures to their environment, a concern not evident in this work. Another element of Vermeer’s mature style is his interest in rendering the specific textures of objects. 

Charles de La Fosse – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary 

1700s

Oil on canvas

90 x 117 cm; 35 1/2 by 46 in.

Anonymous, French – Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
18th century
Engraving

Sheet: 12 1/16 × 7 1/2 in. (30.6 × 19.1 cm)

An engraving of an interior scene with Christ seated in a chair, addressing Mary and Martha, with three men standing behind him in the shadows. The print was published by Jean Mariette (French, 1660-1742), one of the most important print publishers active in Paris in the first half of the 18th century. An attribution to Claude Simpol (French, 1666-1716) has been tentatively proposed.