ABSTRACT
Rogier’s Braque Triptych (Plate 3) has long interested scholars due to its innovative form and iconography. Universally considered autograph in its entirety or in part, it was owned by the young widow Catherine de Brabant, who probably commissioned it soon after her husband Jean Braque’s untimely death on 25 June 1452, only one or two years after their marriage.1 Yet the exact function of this small devotional triptych has never been fully understood, and Mary Magdalene’s role, in particular, has remained enigmatic. I argue that the Magdalene appears here as both a Foolish and Wise Virgin, an ambiguously unstable role of the sort commonly seen in Magdalene imagery. Like the Magdalene in Rogier’s Descent from the Cross (Plate 1) discussed in Chapter 1, she wears opening laces that embrace multiple aspects of her complex character; like those, her double role as Wise and Foolish Virgin thematizes penitents’ ever open possibility for transformation and encourages their timely progress from a state of sin to one of preparedness for death and judgment.
