The Magdalene renouncing worldly vanities

Exemplary in her renunciation of worldly pleasures and her subsequent pursuit of virtue, Mary Magdalene was one of the most popular subjects for painters and patrons alike in seventeenth-century Italy. According to legend, the Magdalene set aside her concerns with luxury and pleasure and turned instead to follow Christ. In the present painting, Mary, though still richly clad in lavish brocade and shown with one breast bared, casts aside her jewelry, quite literally ripping her pearl necklace from her bosom. Jettisoning the objects symbolic of her sinful past, she is shown in the moment she has chosen to follow Christ, alluded to by the ointment jar on the table beside her, where other jewels and finery have likewise been discarded. At the same time, the Magdalene gazes heavenward, her expressive face clearly indicating that we are witnessing her in a moment at once of spiritual ecstasy, and preforming a standard rhetorical gesture signifying concern with one’s heavenly reward. Her emblems of her worldly cares, strewn around her, have become irrelevant as she recognizes her true calling in following Christ.

When it was sold at Sotheby’s in 1998 (loc. cit.), the present painting bore a tentative attribution to the Caravaggist painter Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri. More recently, however, Giuseppe Porzio proposed the canvas to have been executed in the Neapolitan studio of Artemisia Gentileschi (private communication, 4 December 2022). Porzio notes certain similarities between the present canvas and works given to Giuseppe di Franco, a little-known artist who may have collaborated with Artemisia in Naples, noting in particular certain rigidities in details such as the draperies and the saint's feet.