A single exhibition poses one of the oldest questions in Western art: was Mary Magdalene a sinner or a saint? "Mary Magdalene: Sin. Pray. Love." brings together more than 100 paintings, sculptures and works on paper to test how artists across centuries have answered it.

The show's scale is its argument. The works come from around 60 institutions across Europe and North America, a lending operation that few single-figure subjects could command. Mary Magdalene is one of them.

Among the loans is Georges de La Tour's "Penitent Magdalen in Meditation" (1635–40), a painting that condenses the exhibition's central tension into one image. De La Tour shows the Magdalene alone, in candlelight, caught between her past and her penitence. The picture hangs at the heart of a display that asks whether these two identities — sinner and saint — were ever really opposed.

The three-word title, "Sin. Pray. Love.," sets out the arc. Artists have repeatedly cast the Magdalene as a figure who moves through transgression, devotion and affect — sometimes all at once. The exhibition's breadth, spanning paintings, sculptures and works on paper, suggests how persistent that template proved across media and periods.

The institutional reach matters as much as the object count. Sixty lenders on two continents indicates that the Magdalene resides everywhere in the Western collection, from major museums to smaller holdings, and that the curators have assembled a genuinely comparative view rather than a single collection's version of the saint.

De La Tour is the anchor. His "Penitent Magdalen in Meditation" belongs to a run of nocturnes in which the painter used a single flame to turn religious reflection into theater. In the context of this exhibition, the painting functions as evidence: by the 1630s, the Magdalene had become a subject capable of carrying an artist's most introspective ambitions.

The exhibition's framing — sinner or saint, posed as a question — also acknowledges that the answer has shifted with each era. The artists assembled here did not agree on who she was. They painted, carved and drew her according to the needs of their moment, and the show's size makes those disagreements visible rather than smoothing them into a single portrait.

For viewers, the promise is a rare chance to see the Magdalene whole: over 100 works, dozens of institutions, one contested figure, tested across centuries of making.