
The Golden Legend’s account of St. Mary of Egypt is based ultimately on a 7th-century Life by Sophronius of Jerusalem. According to the Legend, Mary was an Egyptian prostitute who at the age of 29 traveled to Jerusalem out of curiosity regarding the Holy Cross. Finding herself incapable of passing the threshold of the church where the cross was being worshiped, she repented her sins and became a solitary contemplative in the desert beyond the Jordan River, where she eventually died at an advanced age, her clothes having rotted away with the passage of time.
Two years before her death she had been discovered by a monk named Zosimus. In Sophronius her hair was short and white with age, a detail that Voragine omitted, and her skin burned black by the sun. Zosimus gave her his cloak and returned the following year to bring her communion. When he came back the year after that, he found her dead and buried her with the help of a lion.
How to portray a saint who wore no clothing

Hans Memling’s portrait of 1480 draws on the eastern tradition for the cloak draped from the shoulder and abandons the long-hair strategy, leaving the saint’s upper body exposed to view. In Memling’s and almost all other portraits she has a fair young face, despite the statement in the legends that Zosimus found her blackened by the sun.

Attributes
The Memling panel also exemplifies an attribute often seen in portraits of this saint: three loaves of bread held in one hand. In the Legend she took these loaves with her into the desert and they lasted seventeen years.
She is also sometimes shown with a book. No books are mentioned in the Golden Legend account or in the much longer tale in the South English Legendary, but according to Sophronius she had a knowledge of scripture that came directly from God. The books in the images thus refer to this knowledge, even if actual books were not its source.
Narrative images

The Russian icon above covers the whole story from when Zosimus is told to go into the desert until he and the lion bury the saint and her soul is carried to Heaven. Among images that focus on single events, the last communion and the burial are the more likely to be presented.
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