Penitent Magdalene (Caravaggio) - History

History

The painting was completed ca. 1594-1595, during which time Caravaggio was residing with Giuseppe Cesari and Fantin Petrignani. Caravaggio was known to have used several prostitutes as models for his works, and historians have speculated that Anna Bianchini is featured in this painting. Contemporary biographers indicate Bianchini may also have featured in Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin, Conversion of the Magdalen (as Martha) and Rest on the Flight into Egypt (as the Virgin Mary). It may be the first religious painting ever completed by Caravaggio.

The painting represents a departure from the standard paintings of the penitent Mary Magdalene of Caravaggio's day, both in portraying her in contemporary clothing and, in the words of biographer John Varriano (2006), avoiding "the pathos and languid sensuality" with which the subject was generally treated. It was Caravaggio's departure into realism that shocked his original audience; according to Hilary Spurling in The New York Times Book Reviews (2001), "contemporaries complained that his Mary Magdalene looked like the girl next door drying her hair alone at home on her night in." Decades after the painting's completion, 17th century art biographer Gian Pietro Bellori opined that Caravaggio had feigned religious imagery by adding items associated with Mary Magdalene—a carafe of oil and discarded jewelry—to an otherwise modern genre scene. But Jesuit poet Giuseppe Silos evidently did not regard the work as feigned spirituality. Rather, in his Pinacotheca sive Romana pictura et sculptura, published in 1673, he praised it and its painter elaborately:

We can see the silent remorse hidden in her conscience, and in the depths of her heart she is burned by a secret flame. Certainly Caravaggio's colors are so lively as to reveal even her most intimate sentiments. A rare bird is that painter who can so clearly expose in a mere image that which is hidden in the blind darkness of the conscience.

In his controversial contemporary biography M (2001), Peter Robb suggested that the realism of the piece and the subtle hints of violence he perceived—broken pearls and the subject's swollen face and hands—might suggest a political dimension, a commentary on the mistreatment of courtesans in Caravaggio's time by police in Rome. Based on records from Bianchini's life, Robb speculates that Bianchini might have been publicly whipped in the custom of the day, the ointment in the jar her treatment for this, her injury Caravaggio's inspiration.

Whatever may have inspired Caravaggio's Magdalene, his piece inspired Georges de La Tour to produce a Penitent Magdalen of his own. De la Tour dramatically changed the angle of his painting. Although the Magdalene remains seated, face averted, her hands clasped on her lap, she is strongly backlit by a candle set before a mirror, and cradles a skull on her lap.

The Caravaggio painting, which is also called the Repentant Magdalene, hangs in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery.