- Gabriel Francis Powers was an artist who wrote a short book about Mother Maddalena. He observed:
If it was difficult to paint Mother Bentivoglio’s portrait, it is even more difficult to write an account of her that shall be her own self, wholly herself, and not a travesty. It is difficult to get her in all her aspects, neither contradicting oneself nor omitting anything; and most difficult to give a full account of a character so rich in values and so well worth the study. How can one hold together without discrepancies her sense of humor, her delicate and sweet smile, her lovableness, her extreme tenderness, her perfect humanness, her gravity amounting to sternness in all that concerned the observance of the Rule; her personal austerity and ardent love for penance, and the something above all of these, — an intangible something that was the crown of them all and their aureole, — the something that is called holiness? - A Woman of the Bentivoglio, ch. 3