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Mary Magdalene is a familiar presence in modern culture. We’ve read about her in the Da Vinci Code. We’ve heard about her in Jesus Christ Superstar. We think we know the story well. Yet in actual fact we don’t know it at all because it’s all a fantasy. For a thousand years, the Mary Magdalene story has been one of art's most tremulous myths. In the Bible, she warrants just four actual mentions. She's the most beautiful of the three Marys’ at the foot of the cross. This extraordinary new film tells her story and how it inspired the likes of Giotto, Caravaggio, Titian, Cezanne and Van Gogh. In the end, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Mary Magdalene is that she appears in all this art, yet we still know so little about her. Instead, the many stories of Mary Magdalene tell us more about the artists who have painted her.

Waldemar Januszczak explores the impact of Mary Magdalene's myth on art and artists. In art all Christian saints are inventions but Mary Magdalene has been the subject of more invention and re-invention than any other.