The Penitent Magdalene

In one of the most popular devotional images of sixteenth-century Italy, the penitent Mary Magdalene lifts her tear-filled eyes to heaven, her long hair falling across a partly bared shoulder. Titian and his workshop repeated the composition in at least seven known variants, altering details for individual patrons — here the skull of other versions gives way to the Magdalene’s Bible resting on a cloth-covered support. The subject answered the Counter-Reformation emphasis on the sacrament of Penance, holding up the penitent saint as an exemplar of religious fervour at a moment when Catholicism felt itself challenged by the Protestant reform, even as the Magdalene’s implied sensuality gave such pictures their abiding appeal. This Getty version, likely executed with some workshop assistance about 1555 to 1560, is among the finest of the series. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.