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拍品专文
Painted with the bold colours, subtle brushwork and dramatic use of light and shadow which typify the artist’s mature style, The Penitent Magdalene with an Angel is a beautiful example of the work of Hendrick Goltzius, a pivotal figure in the transition from Dutch Mannerism to Classicism. Having begun his career as one of the most significant engravers of late-sixteenth century Europe - Goltzius worked in Haarlem, a prosperous city in the Northern Netherlands, where his animated and popular designs established the Mannerist aesthetic across Northern Europe - in 1600, Goltzius turned to painting, rapidly reaching the same level of accomplishment which he had attained with his graphic works.
Revered as a model for contemplative devotion and an icon of redemptive piety, Mary Magdalene’s significance had grown in Europe since the early Middle Ages and the saint rapidly became a popular figure in devotional painting. Goltzius himself seems to have favoured the subject, in addition to producing numerous graphic works (see for example fig. 1), he executed at least two other individual paintings of the saint - a Magdalene of circa 1612-15 in Lillington Church, Leamington Spa, and a Penitent Magdalene of 1614 in Museum Schloss Mosigkau, Dessau - and included her at the foot of the Cross in his Crucifixion of circa 1605 in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. For the majority of these depictions, Goltzius adopted the traditional iconography of the Magdalene as a penitent sinner, withdrawn from the material world following Christ’s Passion, as popularised by medieval accounts of the saint’s life.
In this painting, which is dated 1610, the Magdalene is shown in a rocky landscape, reminiscent of the cave to which she withdrew after Christ’s death and Resurrection, kneeling in a state of tearful penitence. Her richly coloured blue cloak and lustrously patterned dress beneath refer to her former life as a sinner. Unique among Goltzius’ representations of the Magdalene, an angel is included beside her, guiding her devotions through a large, open book, in which the numbers ‘140’ and ‘143’ are clearly visible, referencing Psalm numbers (Nichols, op. cit., p. 123, note 6). Psalms 140-143 all consist of pleas for salvation from God; Psalm 141, to which the angel gestures, begins: ‘I cried unto the Lord with my voice; with my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication…O Lord: I said, Thou art my refuge’. The Madgalene’s attribute of an ointment jar, to anoint Christ’s body, is beautifully rendered on the grass in front her, while the skull prominently positioned in the foreground symbolises her contemplation on worldly vanity and death. The twisting vine of ivy which grows over the rock before her was often used as an emblem of both death and of immortality, while the dandelion carefully depicted at the lower right of the picture was frequently used as a symbol of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection.
Goltzius was clearly aware of the visual precedents for depicting the Penitent Magdalene. His most direct and obvious source seems to have been Cornelis Cort’s engraving after Titian of this subject (fig. 2). The positioning of the Magdalene’s arms, one crossed over her body to hold her striped cloak and the other using her hair to cover her breast, as well as the rocky outcrop, which gives way to a distant mountainous landscape in this painting, all clearly evidence Goltzius’ knowledge of Titian’s example. That the Venetian painter’s Magdalene was known in Haarlem can be seen in an even more pronounced way in Goltzius’ later Penitent Magdalene at Dessau, which very closely follows Titian’s composition.
Revered as a model for contemplative devotion and an icon of redemptive piety, Mary Magdalene’s significance had grown in Europe since the early Middle Ages and the saint rapidly became a popular figure in devotional painting. Goltzius himself seems to have favoured the subject, in addition to producing numerous graphic works (see for example fig. 1), he executed at least two other individual paintings of the saint - a Magdalene of circa 1612-15 in Lillington Church, Leamington Spa, and a Penitent Magdalene of 1614 in Museum Schloss Mosigkau, Dessau - and included her at the foot of the Cross in his Crucifixion of circa 1605 in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. For the majority of these depictions, Goltzius adopted the traditional iconography of the Magdalene as a penitent sinner, withdrawn from the material world following Christ’s Passion, as popularised by medieval accounts of the saint’s life.
In this painting, which is dated 1610, the Magdalene is shown in a rocky landscape, reminiscent of the cave to which she withdrew after Christ’s death and Resurrection, kneeling in a state of tearful penitence. Her richly coloured blue cloak and lustrously patterned dress beneath refer to her former life as a sinner. Unique among Goltzius’ representations of the Magdalene, an angel is included beside her, guiding her devotions through a large, open book, in which the numbers ‘140’ and ‘143’ are clearly visible, referencing Psalm numbers (Nichols, op. cit., p. 123, note 6). Psalms 140-143 all consist of pleas for salvation from God; Psalm 141, to which the angel gestures, begins: ‘I cried unto the Lord with my voice; with my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication…O Lord: I said, Thou art my refuge’. The Madgalene’s attribute of an ointment jar, to anoint Christ’s body, is beautifully rendered on the grass in front her, while the skull prominently positioned in the foreground symbolises her contemplation on worldly vanity and death. The twisting vine of ivy which grows over the rock before her was often used as an emblem of both death and of immortality, while the dandelion carefully depicted at the lower right of the picture was frequently used as a symbol of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection.
Goltzius was clearly aware of the visual precedents for depicting the Penitent Magdalene. His most direct and obvious source seems to have been Cornelis Cort’s engraving after Titian of this subject (fig. 2). The positioning of the Magdalene’s arms, one crossed over her body to hold her striped cloak and the other using her hair to cover her breast, as well as the rocky outcrop, which gives way to a distant mountainous landscape in this painting, all clearly evidence Goltzius’ knowledge of Titian’s example. That the Venetian painter’s Magdalene was known in Haarlem can be seen in an even more pronounced way in Goltzius’ later Penitent Magdalene at Dessau, which very closely follows Titian’s composition.