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The Penitent Magdalene
(Baroque Europe )
Mary Magdalene is presented in Christian teaching as a beautiful prostitute who turned to Christ and rejected her former life of sin. From the 1500s through the 1800s, images of a penitent (regretful and self-chastising) Magdalene were very popular as a morally uplifting subject of paintings intended for Christian homes. Painters sometimes depict her as modestly dressed and in sober meditation (as can be seen nearby in the 17th-Century Gallery) or, as here, in an emotion-filled moment of physical privation in a wilderness. Here the result is calculatedly erotic, surely intended both to excite the male purchaser and to inspire devotion and penance. With her breast exposed to accentuate her vulnerability as well as sexuality, she kneels in a dark isolated setting that exudes danger.
For more information on this painting, please see Federico Zeri's 1976 catalogue no. 441, p. 552.
Inscription
Provenance
Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. Learn more about provenance at the Walters.
Don Marcello Massarenti Collection, Rome [date and mode of acquisition unknown] [1897 catalogue: no. 276, as Rondoni]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1902, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.
Geographies
Italy, Bologna (Place of Origin)
Measurements
Framed H: 42 3/4 × W: 35 3/4 × D: 3 in. (108.59 × 90.81 × 7.62 cm); Painted surface H: 32 1/16 x W: 24 15/16 in. (81.4 x 63.4 cm)
Credit Line
Acquired by Henry Walters with the Massarenti Collection, 1902
Location in Museum
Accession Number
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
37.1166