Feather tights

The style is assumed to derive from actual costumes worn by those playing angels in medieval religious drama, with the "feathered" elements presumably flaps or lappets of cloth or leather sewn onto a body suit.

[2] Mary Magdalene's hair suit is another iconographic feature, with a background in hagiographic legend, whose depiction apparently borrows from religious drama.

[9] An early English version of the style is found in the Egerton Genesis Picture Book, an unusual and much discussed illuminated manuscript attributed by the British Library (who own it) to "England, S.E.

[10] It is believed that this practice arose from medieval liturgical dramas and mystery plays, in which the actors portraying angels wore garments covered with feathers to emphasize their power of flight,[11] often standing on "clouds" of wool.

[12] Costumed angels also might be introduced for one-off special occasions: at the coronation of Henry VII's queen, Elizabeth of York, in 1487 an angel swinging a large censer was lowered from the roof of Old St Paul's Cathedral, and at the marriage of their son Arthur to Catherine of Aragon in 1501, the archangel Raphael was part of the ceremony, with "goldyn and glyteryng wingis and ffedyrs of many and sundry colours".

[11] The well-preserved church of St Mary the Virgin, Ewelme has examples in wood on the roof and the top of the large font cover, and in stone and alabaster round the tomb monument to Alice de la Pole, Duchess of Suffolk, and the Beauchamp Chapel in the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick has ones in stone (still painted) and glass.

[23] Instead she has a coat of hair somewhat like a dog's, ending rather neatly at the neck, wrists and ankles, suggesting derivation from a theatrical costume, as with the feather suits.

In the words of William Caxton's English translation of the Golden Legend: ... the blessed Mary Magdalene, desirous of sovereign contemplation, sought a right sharp desert, and took a place which was ordained by the angel of God, and abode there by the space of thirty years without knowledge of anybody.

[25]Moser's altar shows the scene of her last Holy Communion after her return to the world and just before her death, as recounted in the Golden Legend: [Saint Maximinus] saw the blessed Mary Magdalene standing in the quire or choir yet among the angels that brought her, and was lift up from the earth the space of two or three cubits.