Mary Magdalene Repentant, Circle of Abraham Van Diepenbeeck, 17th Century Flemish Oil on Copper, Period Ripple Frame

The Magdalene is shown half length, her arms crossed over her breast and her eyes raised, her long red gold hair falling loose over her shoulders and covering the body. Behind her to the right stands a wooden cross bearing the INRI titulus, and at the lower edge a glass vessel catches the light, the ointment jar that identifies her. The ground opens into a bare landscape of rock and cloud, painted in soft browns and greys that hold the figure in the centre of the light. The copper support gives the flesh its enamelled smoothness and lets the modelling of the face and hands carry detail that no canvas of this size could hold.

The painting bears an attached monogram AD, and a cartouche on the reverse attributes the work to Abraham Van Diepenbeeck. An examination label from Cabinet Turquin, Paris, is attached to the reverse. The copper shows paint loss, light surface marks and small old restorations.

The frame is a Flemish ripple moulding in ebonised wood, its surface cut in waves that catch the light across the whole width. Frames of this kind were made in Antwerp in the seventeenth century for exactly this class of small cabinet picture, and they are collected in their own right. It carries a plaque naming Van Diepenbeeck, an old attribution rather than a document of one, and a small gap at the upper left of the reverse.

Abraham Van Diepenbeeck (1607-1675) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and designer of stained glass, born in 's-Hertogenbosch. He trained in Antwerp and became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke in 1636. He worked closely with Peter Paul Rubens and continued in the Antwerp tradition after Rubens died in 1640, producing religious paintings, mythological scenes and designs for prints and for church windows across the Southern Netherlands. His oil paintings on copper are noted for their refined handling and their attention to light on small scale figures.

→ What "circle of" claims, when an old frame plaque says otherwise