The Magdalen Reading is one of three surviving fragments of a large mid-15th-century oil on panel altarpiece by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. The panel, originally oak, was completed some time between 1435 and 1438 and has been in the National Gallery, London since 1860. It shows a woman with pale skin, high cheek bones, and oval eyelids who is identifiable as Mary Magdalene from the jar of ointment placed in the foreground, which is her traditional attribute in Christian art.Painting: Rogier van der Weyden