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拍品專文
Painted in 1649 for Cardinal Fabrizio Savelli (1606⁄7–1659), Papal Legate of Bologna from 1648 until 1651, Guercino's Penitent Magdalene is among the most accomplished religious pictures of the artist's later Bolognese years, and one of the few major works of this period still in private hands. It belonged to a celebrated sequence of five life-size, single-figure saints commissioned by the cardinal during his legation: a Saint Francis in the Wilderness (Pescara, Chiesa di San Cetteo), a Saint Jerome (Nogent-sur-Seine, Église Saint-Laurent), the present Magdalene, a Saint James the Greater (Vienna, private collection), and a Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness (Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj). Payments for the canvases are recorded in Guercino's Libro dei conti between April 1649 and November 1652, the last of them (the Saint John the Baptist) acquired by Cardinal Niccolò Ludovisi Albergati, Archbishop of Bologna, as a gift for Pope Innocent X. The first three are listed together by Malvasia, the present canvas described as 'Una S. Maria Maddalena, che si disciplina, quadro simile' ('A St Mary Magdalen who flagellates herself, a similar painting'; op. cit., II, p. 376).
On 21 November 1649 the artist registered the receipt of 400 lire (the equivalent of 100 scudi) from Giovanni Caccialupi (since identified as the Bolognese senator and Knight of Malta Giovanni Alamandini, Caccialupi after his mother's family) acting on Savelli's behalf, 'p[er] la Sant.a Maria Madalena penitente ordinata da questo E.mo Sig.re Card.le Savelli' ('for the penitent St Mary Magdalen ordered by this most eminent Cardinal Savelli'; B. Ghelfi, op. cit., p. 144, no. 414). Something of the atmosphere of the studio in those months can be recovered from the painter's correspondence with his most important Sicilian patron, Don Antonio Ruffo. Writing on 4 November 1648, Guercino complained that Savelli’s relentless pressure had compelled him to set aside every other commission, and in particular to defer the Erminia and the Shepherds long promised to Messina (V. Ruffo, 'Galleria Ruffo nel secolo XVII in Messina', Bollettino d'Arte, X, 1916, pp. 61-64 and 95-97). What he did not confess to Ruffo was that Savelli had earlier appropriated for himself the half-finished version of the Erminia originally intended for Sicily, obliging the artist to paint a second version for his Sicilian patron (now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, inv. no. 62.12); both pictures are recorded in the Libro dei conti on 14 and 16 January 1649 (D. Mahon, op. cit., 1991, p. 322).
In the present painting, the Magdalene kneels within a rocky grotto, traditionally identified with the cave at Sainte-Baume in Provence, where she was held to have passed the last thirty years of her life in penitential seclusion. Her tunic has been drawn down to bare her shoulders, and she raises in her right hand a knotted scourge of cords whose lashes fall back across her left shoulder; her gaze is lifted toward the small wooden crucifix that rises from a stone outcrop beside her open book of devotion. As Mahon observed, Guercino treats the subject with notable reticence (D. Mahon, op. cit., 1991, p. 324). The right arm, far from being braced for the violence of the lash, is drawn gently across the breast — a gesture that naturally resolves a question of decorum and softens the scourging into an act of quiet self-discipline rather than physical mortification. The palette, warm gold drapery against ivory flesh and the umber recesses of the cave, is deceptively simple, illuminated with the discreet, carefully calibrated light Mahon rightly emphasized as one of the picture's principal achievements (loc. cit.). The intensity of the composition resides not in any physical gesture but in the saint's interior concentration, the spiritual moment registered upon her face alone.
At the close of his legation Savelli took the cycle with him to Rome, where the present picture is recorded in his inventory titled 'Quadri del sig. Cardinale venuti da Bologna' ('Paintings of the Lord Cardinal come from Bologna') as 'Una Maddalena battente in ginocchio figura intera del Guerzino con paese, alto p.mi 10 largo 6' ('A flagellant Magdalen kneeling, full-length figure by Guercino, with landscape, 10 palmi high, 6 palmi wide'), valued at 200 ducatoni (G. Campori, op. cit., p. 166). The Savelli line came to an end in 1712, and the picture's whereabouts in the intervening century remain undocumented. By 1833 it hung at Alton Towers, Staffordshire, seat of John Chetwynd-Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, where it was admired by Passavant, who described it as 'remarkably fine' (J.D. Passavant, op. cit., II, p. 80), and by Waagen, who found it 'more noble in character than is usual with this master, and in lightness and clearness of tone approaching Guido' (G.F. Waagen, op. cit., III, pp. 253–254). At the celebrated Alton Towers sale of 1857, conducted on the premises by Christie, Manson and Woods, the painting was acquired (with the subject erroneously identified as Saint Mary of Egypt) by James Arnold of Macclesfield. It passed thereafter through two further Macclesfield collections before being presented in 1902-3 by Arthur Coventry to the Macclesfield Borough Council, with whom it remained until sold in 1981 (see Provenance). Throughout this long absence the composition was known only through workshop replicas, several of which are recorded by Salerno in his monograph (L. Salerno and D. Mahon, op. cit., p. 335).
On 21 November 1649 the artist registered the receipt of 400 lire (the equivalent of 100 scudi) from Giovanni Caccialupi (since identified as the Bolognese senator and Knight of Malta Giovanni Alamandini, Caccialupi after his mother's family) acting on Savelli's behalf, 'p[er] la Sant.a Maria Madalena penitente ordinata da questo E.mo Sig.re Card.le Savelli' ('for the penitent St Mary Magdalen ordered by this most eminent Cardinal Savelli'; B. Ghelfi, op. cit., p. 144, no. 414). Something of the atmosphere of the studio in those months can be recovered from the painter's correspondence with his most important Sicilian patron, Don Antonio Ruffo. Writing on 4 November 1648, Guercino complained that Savelli’s relentless pressure had compelled him to set aside every other commission, and in particular to defer the Erminia and the Shepherds long promised to Messina (V. Ruffo, 'Galleria Ruffo nel secolo XVII in Messina', Bollettino d'Arte, X, 1916, pp. 61-64 and 95-97). What he did not confess to Ruffo was that Savelli had earlier appropriated for himself the half-finished version of the Erminia originally intended for Sicily, obliging the artist to paint a second version for his Sicilian patron (now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, inv. no. 62.12); both pictures are recorded in the Libro dei conti on 14 and 16 January 1649 (D. Mahon, op. cit., 1991, p. 322).
In the present painting, the Magdalene kneels within a rocky grotto, traditionally identified with the cave at Sainte-Baume in Provence, where she was held to have passed the last thirty years of her life in penitential seclusion. Her tunic has been drawn down to bare her shoulders, and she raises in her right hand a knotted scourge of cords whose lashes fall back across her left shoulder; her gaze is lifted toward the small wooden crucifix that rises from a stone outcrop beside her open book of devotion. As Mahon observed, Guercino treats the subject with notable reticence (D. Mahon, op. cit., 1991, p. 324). The right arm, far from being braced for the violence of the lash, is drawn gently across the breast — a gesture that naturally resolves a question of decorum and softens the scourging into an act of quiet self-discipline rather than physical mortification. The palette, warm gold drapery against ivory flesh and the umber recesses of the cave, is deceptively simple, illuminated with the discreet, carefully calibrated light Mahon rightly emphasized as one of the picture's principal achievements (loc. cit.). The intensity of the composition resides not in any physical gesture but in the saint's interior concentration, the spiritual moment registered upon her face alone.
At the close of his legation Savelli took the cycle with him to Rome, where the present picture is recorded in his inventory titled 'Quadri del sig. Cardinale venuti da Bologna' ('Paintings of the Lord Cardinal come from Bologna') as 'Una Maddalena battente in ginocchio figura intera del Guerzino con paese, alto p.mi 10 largo 6' ('A flagellant Magdalen kneeling, full-length figure by Guercino, with landscape, 10 palmi high, 6 palmi wide'), valued at 200 ducatoni (G. Campori, op. cit., p. 166). The Savelli line came to an end in 1712, and the picture's whereabouts in the intervening century remain undocumented. By 1833 it hung at Alton Towers, Staffordshire, seat of John Chetwynd-Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, where it was admired by Passavant, who described it as 'remarkably fine' (J.D. Passavant, op. cit., II, p. 80), and by Waagen, who found it 'more noble in character than is usual with this master, and in lightness and clearness of tone approaching Guido' (G.F. Waagen, op. cit., III, pp. 253–254). At the celebrated Alton Towers sale of 1857, conducted on the premises by Christie, Manson and Woods, the painting was acquired (with the subject erroneously identified as Saint Mary of Egypt) by James Arnold of Macclesfield. It passed thereafter through two further Macclesfield collections before being presented in 1902-3 by Arthur Coventry to the Macclesfield Borough Council, with whom it remained until sold in 1981 (see Provenance). Throughout this long absence the composition was known only through workshop replicas, several of which are recorded by Salerno in his monograph (L. Salerno and D. Mahon, op. cit., p. 335).