The composition of this small painting was inspired by a well-known Penitent Magdalene by Titian; it was probably painted in Spain in the second half of the 16^th century.

As Professor Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez wrote in the Catalogue Raisonné of the Banco de España Collection in 1988, this anonymous artist may have based their version on a Magdalene by Titian that is held in the El Escorial collections and was most likely acquired by Philip II of Spain. The earliest surviving version of the painting was commissioned by the Duke of Urbino and painted by Titian between 1530 and 1535. In keeping with the custom of the time, Titian produced several versions of the same painting commissioned by different noble and royal families of the time. We know, for example, of paintings in the Capodimonte Museum, the Hermitage and the Palazzo Pitti. The Titian original in the Spanish Royal Collections was stolen during the Peninsular War and went up in flames in the Bath House fire in London (1873). In reality, what the anonymous painter took from Titian was the composition, as Mary Magdalene rests her forearm on the book and skull. Her clothes are in disarray but she modestly covers her breast with her long wavy hair, while her face, slightly foreshortened, looks enraptured up towards heaven. The contrast is maintained in the background, which is similar to the versions in the Capodimonte and Hermitage: the left side is dark with a rocky mountain, while the right side is a cloudscape with divine lighting coming from it in the form of a ray. The composition of the anonymous painting at the Banco de España includes the clumsy addition of a large cross held in the arms of the saint. What is sensuality, emotion and corpulence in paint in Titian’s version is reduced here to dryness in drawing. The work is not of great quality, with the foreshortening of the face and the anatomy of the arms standing out for their poor workmanship.

Isabel Tejeda