A hawking party

The subject of the present work has on occasion been interpreted as a scene from the life of Mary Magdalen prior to her conversion, upon which she renounced all earthly pleasures and activities. A comparable narrative appeared on the interior left wing of a now-dismantled altarpiece datable to the first quarter of the sixteenth century, depicting The Legend of the Magdalen, around which Max J. Friedländer constructed the oeuvre of the eponymous Master of the Magdalen Legend (interior left wing formerly Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Berlin, now destroyed; fig. 1). Further panels from the altarpiece represented the washing of Christ’s feet in the House of Simon the Pharisee (Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest), Noli me tangere (Staatliches Museum, Schwerin) and The Sermon of Mary Magdalen (Philadelphia Museum of Art).

The Berlin panel followed a similar format to the present lot; the Magdalen, attired in a lavish brocade gown and headdress, rides a white horse through the foreground with a bird perched on her arm. Attendants ride alongside with hounds making chase, and a secondary scene unfolds in the upper left corner. The Berlin panel here depicts the moment of her conversion, while in the present lot she kneels before a group of people, perhaps her family, on the terrace of a grand house. The narrative aligns with the conventional pictorial traditions of the Magdalen prior to her conversion, where she is frequently shown in the sumptuous attire she would later cast aside.