The Penitent Magdalene

The drawing was etched in reverse by an anonymous artist identified by J.G. van Gelder as Willem Buytewech (H. 12 and Haverkamp Begemann, vG 7). The first state of the etching shows an erased inscription that reads '...F', the second state bears the name of the author of the composition 'P.Paul Rubens' and in the third state the name has been erased. The etching was executed as a pair with one of Saint Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata (H. 11 and Haverkamp Begemann, vG 6), also attributed to Willem Buytewech by J.G. van Gelder, 'De etsen vaan Willem Buytewech', Oud Holland, 1931, pp. 49-72. The print of Saint Francis is a mirror image of the saint in the picture of the same subject in the Ghent Museum, M. Jaffé, Rubens, Milan, 1989, no.1026. The Ghent picture was dated by Michael Jaffé to circa 1636, which would preclude an attribution to Buytewech, who had died twelve years earlier. Indeed H. Hymans and Arther Hind had proposed the name of Theodoor van Thulden as the author of the etching, A.M. Hind, 'Rubens as Etcher', The Print Collector's Quarterly, X, 1923, p. 68. Egbert Haverkamp Begemann pointed out that the etching of Saint Francis was not executed directly after the painting but from an intermediate drawing. Probably that drawing, along with one of the Magdalene, formed the pair in the Chanoine Wauters sale in Brussels in April 1794. The Magdalene was then described as 'The Magdalen in the desert who pulls out her hair. The sketch is the one etched by Rubens', D. Bodart, op. cit., p. 79.