Period: 17th century
Price: € 2.700
Venetian School, 17th Century Penitent Magdalene Oil on copper, 19.5 x 15.5 cm Frame 34 x 28.5 cm The oil painting on copper depicts Saint Mary Magdalene as a penitent in the foreground, with her hands clasped in prayer, her gaze turned upwards, towards the sky, in prayer and meditation. The absorbed and delicately sensual image presents her shoulders and body nude, covered only by a mat. Next to her are the crucifix and a skull, while in the foreground there is an open book and the jar of ointments. The composition is related to the Magdalene created between 1598 and 1602 by the Venetian painter Domenico Tintoretto, son of the more famous painter Jacopo Robusti, known as Tintoretto. The work, now at the Capitoline Museums in Rome, was created in the city of Mantua during a stay of the Venetian painter, and was originally part of the rich collection of works of art of the Gonzaga family. The painting was known through a 1609 engraving by the Flemish Raphael Sadeler and enjoyed wide diffusion and re-elaborations. The Magdalene is generally identified with the penitent harlot described in the Gospel of Luke (7.36). According to the Golden Legend, she retired in prayer in a cave in Sainte-Baume in France, a spatial reference taken up in Tintoretto's work and reworked here in the landscape setting. The small size of the work under analysis indicates that it was made for private devotion.